The Warriors might have too many good players
No, I don’t mean that as the compliment that it sounds like.
I know I’ll anger a lot of people with such a sensationalist headline, but I stand by it. The Golden State Warriors might have too many good players. If that sentence makes you roll your eyes, I ask you to read it again, and focus on the penultimate word: good. The Warriors most certainly do not have enough great players; and they most likely do not have enough very good players ... but they seem to have too many good players.
This happened last year, and it led to chaos. Steve Kerr was constantly tinkering both the starting lineup and the bench units, and no one was happy. The team lacked cohesion and chemistry, and everyone from rookies to veterans suffered from sporadic playing time — often unhappily. It’s in line to happen again this year.
To illustrate this point, let’s look at all the proven players on the Warriors roster, and give them a minutes total that represents about how many minutes I think shey should be playing each night, when healthy.
Steph Curry: 34
Draymond Green: 34
Jonathan Kuminga: 32
Buddy Hield: 28
Brandin Podziemski: 26
Trayce Jackson-Davis: 26
Andrew Wiggins: 25
De’Anthony Melton: 24
Moses Moody: 24
Kyle Anderson: 20
Gary Payton II: 19
Kevon Looney: 12
Lindy Waters III: 8
It doesn’t take a mathematician to spot the problem. That’s 312 total minutes when there are only 240 to divvy out in any given game. Yikes. You might disagree with my assessment of what minutes players should be getting, but I’m guessing whatever your calculation is, it’s not shaving 72 minutes off that list.
Now the usual caveats apply. Players will get hurt and others will get rest or otherwise be unavailable. But on the other hand, those totals above don’t include Gui Santos (who showed quite a lot of potential last year) or Quinten Post (who is a fairly NBA-ready rookie, in the vein of last year’s TJD).
There’s a reason that good teams don’t have 13-man rotations, and even if you remove Waters from the equation, well ... good teams don’t have 12-man rotations, either.
There’s no real solution here, though certainly if the Warriors are able to package multiple players for, say, Lauri Markkanen (which looks increasingly unlikely), that would make matters simpler. You’ve got to think a trade of some sort is coming eventually, because the Warriors have too many good players — and that’s not the champagne problem that it sounds like.