Where Do The Golden State Warriors Go From Here?
The Core: Making Peace With The Letdown
First things first: For any and every player planning on being on the roster for 2016-17, this summer will be all about turning the rejection, humiliation and misery of this Finals loss into acceptance and fuel for the upcoming season.
For Stephen Curry, it’ll be a summer of rest and reflection on how he failed to live up to his billing as the back-to-back MVP. It’ll be a long three months of listening to talk about how he and his team were overrated, of ignoring people trolling his wife, of wondering what might have been if that MCL sprain in the first round had not robbed him of his consistency.
Even if they won tonight, Warriors were looking at the possibility of turning over the bottom 5-6 spots of their roster. Probably overdue.
— Tim Kawakami (@timkawakami) June 20, 2016
For Klay Thompson, his summer will be spent looking in the mirror with regret about his second straight underwhelming Finals performance (15.8 PPG on .409/300/.917 shooting in 2015, 19.7 PPG, .427/.350/.786 shooting in 2016). He’ll also spend his offseason eating humble pie, wondering if his comments about the NBA “being a man’s league” were really what helped set LeBron James on the warpath.
For Draymond Green, only the Summer Olympics will provide a distraction from the fact that his Game 5 suspension was the downfall of Golden State’s historic season, a fact that he was more than willing to admit. When a 32-15-9 with six three-pointers still isn’t enough in a Game 7, you know you’ve let your teammates down.
People ask me what GSW needs this offseason. Might sound corny, but most important thing is they move on without blaming each other
— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) June 20, 2016
The same goes for any prospective free agents who re-sign with the Warriors for next season. Harrison Barnes will need a fire lit under his ass after going 5-for-32 over the last three games of the Finals and bricking every open look he got.
Marreese Speights will need to atone for his LeBron slander and baby bottle emoji tweet. The list goes on and on, but the general sentiment remains the same: Are the Golden State Warriors still a budding dynasty that will continue to change the course of professional basketball? Or has their small-ball secret weapon been dissected and disarmed?
In other words, are the Warriors mentally strong enough to carry on as the same unbeatable team they were for 90 percent of the season, or will they let this defeat close the door on a reign that was just starting to develop?
Next: Harry B