alongside Curry and Draymond Green<\/a> will give coach Steve Kerr the core he needs to compete in the ultra-tough Western Conference.<\/p>\n\u201cI think we made a big jump adding Jimmy Butler,\u201d general manager Mike Dunleavy said Friday. \u201cThis time last year I was probably concerned about our ability to have like a No. 2 guy. We went out this year, we got that, and now I feel better going into next season having a guy like Jimmy on our roster. … I just overall feel like we\u2019re in much better shape right now than we were a year ago. We\u2019ll keep chipping away at this thing. As long as Steph, Draymond, Steve as well as our coach, as long as they\u2019ve still got their fastball, we\u2019re going to keep pursuing titles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The addition of Butler from Miami made an immediate impact for the Warriors. They were 25-26 when he made his debut in February and the team posted a 27-8 record overall in the regular season, play-in tournament and playoffs when both Butler and Curry were in the lineup.<\/p>\n
That had the Warriors believing they could make another title run before Curry went down with a hamstring injury in a Game 1 win against the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n
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Golden State then lost the next four games and couldn’t extend the series long enough for Curry to return as the team lacked enough options on offense without its best player.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s our sun. This is the solar system, he\u2019s our sun. You\u2019re not going to duplicate Steph any time soon,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cSo any talk of do we need to change our offensive system, to me is kind of laughable. … It\u2019s like what we\u2019ve done has been incredibly powerful. Steph is, again, one of the all time greatest players, playing at the peak of his power still, I think, or very close to it. We\u2019re going to keep doing what we\u2019re doing. Anything else would be a disservice to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The big questions this offseason are filling out the roster around the big three stars with the biggest unknown being the status of Jonathan Kuminga.<\/p>\n
Kuminga had a promising start to the season before being sidelined by an ankle injury for 31 games. The team added Butler during his absence and Kuminga struggled to fit in when he returned and played only sparingly \u2014 if at all \u2014 in the playoffs before Curry got hurt.<\/p>\n
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Kuminga averaged 24.3 points in the final four games, showing the ability that could make him an attractive target for other teams when he becomes a restricted free agent this summer.<\/p>\n
The Warriors have the right to match any offer sheet he signs but could opt to seek a sign and trade and use Kuminga as a chip to fill other holes with players who fit in better with Curry, Butler and Green. Kerr described Kuminga’s situation late in the season as \u201csquare peg, round hole.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll in all, he\u2019s a guy who\u2019s got a lot of talent and a lot of ability,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cStill growing, still raw in many ways, but a lot of what we have to figure out is roster construction and the combination. Basketball is always a five-man game, and combinations were tricky. They just were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other major need for the Warriors is adding more shooters to space the floor and more size throughout the lineup both to be better against bigger perimeter players and to have a bigger defensive presence that allows Green to play power forward rather than center like he did late in the season.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t want to start next season with Draymond as our starting 5,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI think it\u2019s doable for the last 30 games like we did this year, but you see the toll it takes on him. He\u2019s talked about it too.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 The Golden State Warriors head into the offseason following a second-round playoff exit having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3782],"tags":[7,200,164,313,867,295,1208,307,152,3954,6,5034,573,863,308],"class_list":{"0":"post-38069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-timberwolves","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-draymond-green","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-jimmy-butler","12":"tag-jonathan-kuminga","13":"tag-miami","14":"tag-mike-dunleavy","15":"tag-minnesota","16":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","17":"tag-minnesotatimberwolves","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-next-season","20":"tag-stephen-curry","21":"tag-steve-kerr","22":"tag-timberwolves"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114520011948443600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}