Warriors poised to take a step back as free agency opens

Golden State Warriors' Chris Paul chats with Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry during a timeout in the first quarter at Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024.

Ahead of Steph Curry’s age-36 season, the Golden State Warriors appear to have bumped into a worst-case scenario summer.

The team is prepared to lose franchise legend Klay Thompson in free agency, according to multiple reports. They also waived Chris Paul on Sunday after being unable to find a way to use him in a win-now trade.

Upgrading the roster — one that missed the playoffs in 2023-24 — without Thompson will be difficult. As flawed as he is, the shooting guard made the fourth most 3s in the league last year, at a 38.7% clip.

Improving becomes doubly challenging without having the option of using Paul’s $30 million non-guaranteed contract in a trade.

That leaves the Warriors with Curry and Draymond Green in the twilight of their primes. There will be ample opportunities for their young core of Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis to take steps forward. And the departure of Paul and presumed exit of Thompson resets their payroll.

The Warriors are set to get out of the luxury tax for the first time since 2020 — a stated goal of owner Joe Lacob — but won’t have the cap space to sign an impact free agent. To acquire an All-Star, they’ll have to send away one of the young players the organization covets.

“It would just have to be something that we felt unequivocally changed the direction of our franchise,” general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said of packaging young players in a trade. “We like those guys and think they’re going to be really, really good, but it would have to be something that makes us a lot better than that.”

Golden State projects to have a payroll around $146 million without Paul, meaning they’ll have the $12.8 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception available, plus the $4.7 million bi-annual exception. They can also potentially sign-and-trade Thompson or dip from their young core to acquire a different veteran, but the paths to replace Thompson and Paul are effectively closed.

With Paul and Thompson last season, the Warriors paid the highest luxury tax bill ever, only to miss the playoffs as the 10th seed in the West. Unless the Warriors reconcile things with Thompson at the 11th hour or use him in a sign-and-trade, they are on the verge of letting two veterans walk for nothing in return.

Thompson, a four-time NBA champion, is expected to work with Golden State to facilitate sign-and-trade options, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Curry, Draymond Green, and Steve Kerr had publicly expressed a desire to keep the dynastic trio together for the rest of their careers, but every indication points to that era being on the brink.

The Warriors acquired Paul for Jordan Poole and a heavily protected future first-round pick in a trade that now amounts to a salary dump because they couldn’t flip Paul this past week.

In hindsight, the Warriors could have tried to use Paul or Thompson in a trade before last season’s trade deadline, when they were expiring contracts. But Golden State was confident in making a playoff run, and each was a big part of that pursuit.

The most important factor to consider, as always with the Warriors, is Curry. The superstar averaged 26.4 points per game and was named to the All-NBA third team. He’s still capable of leading a contender, but every year that goes by without the Warriors putting one around him runs the risk of that no longer being the case. Curry is signed through the 2025-26 season.

In a recent press conference, Dunleavy stressed internal development as the easiest way to improve the team. But it would take more than a significant leap from Kuminga, Moody, Podziemski and Jackson-Davis for the Warriors to return to playoff contention in the deep Western Conference this season. And again, there’s a risk to waiting for them to blossom.

Without a Paul trade and without Thompson, the Warriors aren’t good enough to compete in the West and don’t have clear avenues to get there. The most expensive lottery team in history looks destined for the same fate, only as a more affordable version.

The television show “Community” has a famous episode called Remedial Chaos Theory. In it, seven different timelines unfold between the seven different members of the study group based on who walks downstairs to grab the pizza delivery. Most of the timelines are relatively harmless, with outlandish sit-com plots unfolding between the group.

In the darkest timeline, Donald Glover’s character returns with the pizza to an apartment on fire, a character with a gunshot wound and the group in utter disrepair. You’ve seen the meme.

For all the talk of timelines with the Warriors, the team may be entering their darkest timeline: with eight figures in expiring contracts squandered, a franchise legend walking away, and a responsibility to do right by Curry without an easy path to do so.

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