NBA Trade Deadline 2012: Golden State Warriors Add More Questions Than Answers
One of the more active teams leading up to and at Thursday's 3 p.m. ET trade deadline, the Golden State Warriors certainly grabbed plenty of headlines this week.
Whether or not they made any real progress, however, will remain unclear until at least next season.
Warriors GM Larry Riley and the rest of the front office answered the organization's biggest question of whether or not a Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry be successful when they sent Ellis to Milwaukee along with second-year big man Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown's $7 million expiring contract for former first overall pick Andrew Bogut and ex-Warrior Stephen Jackson on Tuesday.
They wasted little time re-routing Jackson to San Antonio just prior to Thursday's deadline in exchange for swingman Richard Jefferson and a lottery-protected first-round pick.
Before analyzing the winners and losers of these trades, let's first consider what the Warriors actually accomplished at the deadline.
In terms of moving Ellis and Udoh for Bogut and Jefferson, the Warriors just got much older and much more expensive. Specifically, they became eight years older and $18 million more expensive over the next two seasons (assuming player and team options were all picked up).
They also managed to get bigger and, probably most importantly, get into this year's loaded draft. By plugging rookie Klay Thompson and Bogut into the starting five, the Warriors will add six inches and 35 pounds to their first unit. And with San Antonio sitting second in the Western Conference, it's a safe bet that their first-round pick will be coming to the Bay.
The winner of the trade with Milwaukee won't be clear for at least another season.
Barring a miraculous second-half surge from the Warriors, Bogut likely will not suit up for the club before next training camp. Warriors executives are willing to wait for his return (after missing on so many big men over the past year, they may not have had any other options), but hoping for a healthy 2012 season out of the big man is a big role of the dice. Bogut logged just 12 games this season before breaking his ankle and has missed 76 games in the previous three seasons.
The Warriors front office writes off his injury history as more freak events than nagging problems, and also credits the injury issues as one of the reasons as to why he was available. Certainly the stellar play of Milwaukee's frontcourt (specifically Drew Gooden and Ersan Ilyasova) in his absence helped facilitate this deal, but so did the potential that the Warriors saw in Ellis' backup, Klay Thompson.
On the surface, the Warriors gave up a lot to get a player with a lot of potential, but also an injury history. In addition, they appear financially hamstrung for at least the next few seasons. It's rare that an NBA team gambles on an injury-prone player, gets older and takes the financial loss all in one deal, but that's what the Warriors appear to have done.
Bogut and Thompson playing alongside Curry and David Lee does make for a formidable unit on the offensive end. But Curry and Lee still struggle defensively, and Bogut may not have the athleticism to cover their mistakes like Udoh did.
If Bogut stays healthy, though, he is their most legitimate center in years. He has great size (7'0", 260 lbs), and playing with Lee, the Warriors should have the best passing frontcourt in the league.
The Milwaukee trade looked a lot worse before Riley pulled the trigger on Jefferson and the pick. Jefferson's not even a shell of his former self,—his 9.2 points and 41.4 percent from the field are both career-lows—but he's still a reliable three-point shooter and should be a clubhouse boost.
Adding that pick from the Spurs and buying a second-round pick from the Hawks, though, at least gives some certainty to their deadline dealing. The picks won't be great (based on current rankings, the Warriors would have the 27th and 51st picks in addition to New Jersey's 35th pick), but this draft class gets its praise from its depth.
The Warriors will certainly need those draft picks to produce since, as mentioned above, they won't be players on the free agent market for some time. And if either of their injury-prone cornerstones gets injured, they'll need superstar production from these picks.
