Golden State Warriors: 5 bold predictions for 2017-18 NBA season

3. McCaw outplays Young…but gets less minutes

Patrick McCaw and Nick Young ostensibly fill the same role for the Warriors. Both are natural 2-guards. Both are floor spacers with a little skill sprinkled in. McCaw’s talents lie as a playmaker and Young’s as a shot creator (or so he believes), but both can put the ball on the floor.

Young is stronger than his 21-year-old teammate, and is a better shooter from deep at this early stage of McCaw’s career. Both of these gaps should shrink this season, and McCaw is better essentially everywhere else.

He makes better decisions with the ball. He’s more instinctual defensively, and provides more consistent activity on that end. After a championship run, McCaw has big game experience that few players enter their second NBA season with.

It was not token experience, either. McCaw played significant minutes in the title-clinching Game 5, and delivered.

He is, in all likelihood, a better overall player than Young right now. If not, he will become better at some point during the 2017-18 season. However, Young will remain ahead of him in the rotation.

For one, Young will benefit from the Pachulia rule: Kerr rewards veterans who take less by keeping them in the roles they were promised. It is part of the Warriors’ coach’s harmony-over-optimality philosophy.

The other reason — which the Warriors will never admit — is that the more McCaw produces, the more value he has in restricted free agency next summer. The Arenas Rule will limit his first and second-year maxes, but should a team poison pill him (as the Brooklyn Nets did with Tyler Johnson in 2016), Golden State will be faced with a difficult choice.

McCaw is the team’s best player under 25, and will become more valuable each year. Andre Iguodala is aging. Klay Thompson may walk in two years if the team opts to give Green its second supermax. Suppressing his value this season under the guise of “doing right” by a discount-accepting veteran is the smart, and therefore likely, play by Kerr and co.