Getty Chris Paul defends Stephen Curry during a game between the Phoenix Suns and the Golden State Warriors.
The Golden State Warriors may be just a year removed from their most recent NBA championship win but the club nonetheless finds itself stuck in that tier of teams just below the Association’s legitimate contenders (with no clear path toward bridging the gap).
On the one hand, the dynastic duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson will be back in effect for 2023-24 — with Draymond Green expected by many to follow suit. On the other, the Warriors are faced with significant cap/tax blockades in improving their roster around that core in free agency, and they’re running light on tradeable assets, too.
Ultimately, the team’s best (only?) course of action may be to find a high-level vet who’s willing to sign on at a discounted rate. With that in mind, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski just namechecked Golden State as a potential destination for Chris Paul in the event that the future Hall of Famer finds his way out of Phoenix.
“If Chris Paul is out there as a free agent this summer, look at the two teams in LA — the Clippers and Lakers — the Knicks in New York, the Golden State Warriors,” Woj said on NBA Countdown over the weekend.
However, not everyone is buying that the respective parties are a match for one another.
B/R: Chris Paul Could Get More Money, Minutes Elsewhere Than With the Warriors
Bleacher Report’s Greg Swartz lent a discerning eye to the latest rumors from around the league in an attempt to seperate fact from fiction. In doing so, the analyst broke down Wojnarowski’s list of potential landing spots for Paul, appraising each one individually with a buy or sell declaration.
For those members of the Dub Nation citizenry hoping to see the 38-year-old end up in the Bay, Swartz’s assessment didn’t exactly inspire confidence in a potential partnership. He branded the CP3-to-GSW possibility as a hard sell:
The Knicks and Warriors don’t even have starting jobs for Paul, and moving across the country to New York and further from his family doesn’t seem appealing. San Francisco doesn’t get Paul any closer to Los Angeles, as it’s about the same distance away as Phoenix. The Warriors can only offer a veteran minimum deal as well.
There’s also a chance that CP3 isn’t the right fit for the Warriors.
Would Paul Be a Step in the Wrong Direction?
Last season, Paul averaged 13.9 points and 8.9 assists per contest while shooting 37.5% from three-point range and 48.5% on attempts from 10 feet away from the hoop out to just inside the arc.
While those numbers are enticing considering the Dubs’ offense generated a middling 110.9 points per 100 possessions during the playoffs (ninth-best out of 16 qualifiers), there’s a chance Paul wouldn’t actually be there to provide them. The baller was out for the last four games of the Suns’ playoff run in 2022-23 and has missed 40 regular-season games over the last two years.
And issues of durability don’t usually get sorted as a player gets closer to the big 4-0.
One also has to wonder whether the famously abrasive Paul would be the right personality to bring into a Warriors locker room that dealt with the Green-Jordan Poole altercation and griping youngsters in ’22-23.