With just over a week until the Feb. 8 NBA trade deadline, teams across the league are weighing their options and making calls — but will the Warriors make a move?
While Golden State certainly could strike a deal with another organization, Dub Nation might not want to get its hopes up that the struggling Warriors will make an impactful trade to ease their recent woes.
The Warriors’ odds and internal expectations of such a move that “meaningfully moves the needle” steadily has decreased over the last month, The Athletic’s Anthony Slater reported Tuesday, citing team sources not authorized to speak publicly.
Per Slater, Golden State was on the “fringe” of the Pascal Siakam trade market before the Toronto Raptors traded him to the Indiana Pacers — and now, the Warriors essentially are in trade limbo.
“This only further shoved the Warriors into what appears to be a trade deadline trap of circumstance without a clear path for upward or downward mobility,” Slater wrote. “They’re in NBA no-man’s-land.”
Golden State entered the 2023-24 NBA season in win-now mode, shipping off young players like Jordan Poole and Patrick Baldwin Jr. to acquire 19th-year guard Chris Paul, along with adding other court-savvy vets like Dario Šarić in free agency.
The idea was to surround Steph Curry and the rest of Golden State’s core with a team that could take advantage of the moment, but at the season’s halfway point, the Warriors are No. 12 in the Western Conference with a 19-24 record.
If there aren’t any players on the market they feel are worth the price — possibly young star Jonathan Kuminga, or perhaps Andrew Wiggins, just as he appears to find his groove — it remains to be seen if the general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Warriors will in fact make an impactful trade.
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