As you all know the Golden State Warriors won the 2022 NBA Championship. Even without Klay Thompson for the first half of the 2021-22 season, the Dubs started out really strong before Draymond Green got injured, Steph had an very un-Steph five week stretch where he wasn’t hitting the shots we came to expect, and the eventual return of Klay messed with the team’s chemistry.
With all those late-season struggles, there were a lot of open questions about Golden State going into the 2022 NBA playoffs. In many ways, the Warriors had favorable match-ups during the postseason and that allowed the team to get healthy, back into shape, build chemistry and for Steve Kerr to find the right combinations.
Whatever excuses some may come up with, Golden State worked out the kinks a defeated the Denver Nuggets, Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics for their fourth NBA championship in the last eight seasons.
The Warriors 2022 Weaknesses Will Be Their 2023 Strengths
The scary thing is that with all the things that were working against the Warriors this season are strengths going into the 2023 season. Here’s five reasons why the Golden State Warriors will be better next season and are regarded as the favorites by the best basketball betting site to not only be one of the best teams next season, but win the 2023 NBA championship.
1. Improved Health: Due to two major injuries, Klay Thompson missed more than two full NBA season. Curry missed nearly a full season in 2019 after injuring his hand, and Draymond Green was in and out of the lineup this season. Barring any other injury going into the 2022-23 season, the Warriors big three will be healthy for the first time since mid-2019 and when those three are playing with one another, the Warriors are always formidable.
2. Together: Not only will they not be injured, they will be health together. Up until the first round of the 2022 NBA playoffs, the trio of Curry, Thompson and Draymond had only played 11 minutes together in the last three seasons.
The Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green trio has played 11 minutes total together the last three seasons. Difficulty of playoff task rising for a group that hasn’t been able to line all their major pieces up at the same time.
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) March 17, 2022
That won’t be the case for the upcoming season.
3. Locked Up: Continuity is important on any team and that’s looking like a hge plus for the Warriors next season. Save for Otto Porter Jr., the core of the Golden State team that played the most minutes in the playoff run will be back. Every indication is that the Warriors will do their best to bring back Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II. Those two along with the Klay, Steph and Draymond, Andrew Wiggins, and Jordan Poole, you have seven of their main rotation players returning.
4. Greedy Just because you win a championship, doesn’t mean you’re satisfied. There’s an excitement that continues onto the next season after a successful title run. At least that’s what Steve Kerr’s experience has been:
“Yeah, my experience is when you win a championship you get better the next year,” Kerr said. “If you keep going after that, it starts to wear you out. That third year for us, trying to get a three-peat in ’19 was brutally difficult.
“But whether I was a player or now as a coach, you win that first one, there’s a freedom that comes with it. There’s an excitement, and that carries over into the second year.”
And Kerr should know, he’s experienced the ups-and-downs of having won nine NBA championships as a player (5) and coach (4).
5. Getting Younger: Yes Curry, Thompson and Green are all 32 years or older, but that doesn’t mean the rotation will be older overall. We will expect the 23-year old Jordan Poole, the 19-year old Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody, we well as former #2 overall pick James Wiseman (21) to log significant minutes come 2023. And the Warriors will have a full season to integrate these younger, talented players into their system of ball movement.
The Warriors have the luxury to allow Wiseman, Kuminga and Poole to make mistakes while still winning games.
5. More Experienced: At times, Warriors fans were frustrated with Andrew Wiggins, Looney 6nd Poole as they learned the Warriors system and figure when to do their thing. All that frustration with ill-timed shots (Poole), missed layups (Looney), and lack of aggressiveness (Wiggins) paid off as they, for the most part, finally solved how best to leverage their strengths within the Warriors system.
Not everything will be full-on rosy for the Warriors. As we mentioned their trio are all on the older side and the younger guys are still very inexperienced.. However I don’t think anyone would argue — based off what the team went through the last couple seasons — there are certainly more positives for Golden State to look forward to.
