Despite the Golden State Warriors falling short in the playoffs, they will not desperately pursue Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo if he becomes available, according to The Athletic.
“There are no early indications that the Warriors will be at the front of the line of the yet-to-materialize Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes, league sources said. As they enter the summer, team sources said, the internal plan and conversation is about how to best reform the role players around the [Stephen] Curry and [Jimmy] Butler duo, not chase another star,” The Athletic’s Sam Amick and Marcus Thompson II reported in the aftermath of the Warriors’ elimination.
The Butler trade rejuvenated Curry and the Warriors, who transformed from a fringe play-in team to a playoff team overnight.
But as it turned out, a 35-year-old Butler can no longer single-handedly carry a team deep in the playoffs without Curry.
The ill-timed hamstring injury Curry sustained in Game 1 ended the Warriors’ season prematurely as they got swept in the next four games to bow out of the playoffs.
Warriors Don’t Plan to Break Up Core
Despite Butler’s failure to win a game without Curry against the No. 6 seed Minnesota Timberwolves, the Warriors do not plan to break up their Batman-Robin pairing, even with the ramblings of Antetokounmpo’s potential exit from Milwaukee this summer.
“The lead decision-makers — Lacob, general manager Mike Dunleavy, assistant general manager Kirk Lacob — don’t plan a major shakeup, team sources said. They’re plotting a retooled middle of the rotation below Curry, Jimmy Butler and [Draymond] Green, still believing that veteran core can contend,” Amick and Thompson wrote.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob is firm in his belief that his team would have advanced to the Western Conference Finals and even beyond had Curry been healthy.
“I am pretty positive that if we had Steph, we’d have won this series,” Lacob told The Athletic.
They were one game below .500 when they made the Butler trade. Their 23-8 record was the third-best in the NBA since Butler made his debut on Feb. 8. They had the best defense in the NBA and leaned on that when they took down the No. 2 seed Houston Rockets in the first round.
Joe Lacob Views This Season as a ‘Win’
Unfortunately, Curry’s injury derailed the Warriors in the second round after squeezing out a 99-88 win in Game 1. It all went downhill from there without the main hub of their offense.
“It’s in some ways kind of a win to get here, to get (to) the second round,” Lacob told The Athletic. “Yeah, we lost four games to one. Not good. But to a team that is playing very well. They took the Lakers out four to one also with two of the greatest players in the world on their team. We didn’t have one of ours. So we can all sit here and make what-ifs, judgments, but I can’t be really upset with what happened, given that we just didn’t have our biggest force.”
In theory, the Warriors can trade Butler for Antetokounmpo in a straight swap. But it would take more than Butler for the Bucks to agree, even if Antetokounmpo requests a trade to Golden State. The Warriors can trade up to three first-round picks and have a slew of young players led by restricted free agent Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody.
But as the recent playoffs — last year and this year — have shown, it will take more than two stars to win. Adding more depth to withstand another Curry or key starter injury is what the Warriors want to fix this offseason.
