It’s been 40 years in the making, but the Golden State Warriors are finally heading back to the NBA Finals. By virtue of a sloppy 104-90 win over the Houston Rockets in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals on Wednesday night, Golden State will play the Cleveland Cavaliers for the NBA title.
When looking at how the Warriors got to this point, it’s important to remember where this organization was just a few short years ago. With only two winning seasons from 1994-2012, Golden State was once a long-time laughing stock of the NBA.
It took an ownership change, a few surprising coaching moves and an original front office philosophy to turn around a franchise that hadn’t seen much success since moving out west in 1962.
Here is a look at six different ways the current version of the Western Conference champions were built.
1. Selected Stephen Curry with the Seventh Pick in the 2009 NBA Draft
Courtesy of the Associated Press: The selection of Curry in 2009 may have been dumb luck.
Leading up to the 2009 NBA draft, Golden State worked out both Brandon Jennings and Jonny Flynn. In fact, the team’s brass at that time was extremely interested in Flynn, who was the buzz of draft season after an impressive performance at Syracuse. With the Minnesota Timberwolves making the decision easier by selecting Flynn at six, the Warriors ultimately decided on Curry over Jennings.
We don’t need to be experts to understand how this panned out for Golden State. While Jennings did put up some pretty big games for the Milwaukee Bucks before being dealt to Detroit in 2013, he’s never been a consistently good player. As for Flynn, he played in a total of 154 games for Minnesota, averaging just 10.2 points and shooting 40 percent from the field. All said, the Syracuse product was out of the league within three years.
2. 2012 NBA Draft
Courtesy of USA Today Sports: The 2012 draft was a key moment in the building of this team.
The selections of Draymond Green and Festus Ezeli midway through the 2012 NBA draft may not have drawn much attention when they happened, but they were key moves in the building of this team. A former Vanderbilt center, Ezeli was the final pick in the first round, 30th overall. Plagued by injuries in his first two NBA seasons, Ezeli has worked his way back into shape, and right into the Warriors’ playoff rotation. He is actually coming off a breakout performance in the Western Conference Finals. The young center put up 12 points and nine boards in the team’s series-clinching Game 5 win over Houston.
Meanwhile, the Warriors added former Michigan State forward Draymond Green with the 35th pick. That might prove to be one of the best picks in franchise history. After riding the pine for most of his rookie season, Green picked up his game somewhat last season, going for an average of 6.2 points and 5.0 rebounds per outing. However, it was this season that saw Green breakout big time. He earned All NBA First-Team Defensive honors while putting up 11.7 points, 8.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game. Taking his game to an entirely new level, Green has been one of the best all-around players in the playoffs. He averaged 14.4 points, 12.2 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game in the conference finals. Now viewed as a potential max-contract player, Green figures into the team’s long-term future.
As if adding Ezeli and Green to the mix wasn’t enough, Golden State also possessed a lottery pick in this draft. And while it took Harrison Barnes two years to find a real role on the team, he has picked his game up in 2014-15, going for 10.1 points and 5.5 rebounds per game while shooting 41 percent from three-point range. Most recently, Barnes sparked a late surge by the Warriors to pull away from Houston in Game 5 of the conference finals. He scored 13 fourth quarter points in a coming-out party on one of the biggest stages the game has to offer.
None of these three players will end up as perennial All-Star performers, but they excel in what the Warriors have asked of them. With the star players already on this team, that’s all Golden State needed.
3. Ownership Change, Front Office Shakeup
Remember when Warriors fans booed new owner Joe Lacob during the Chris Mullin ceremony some three years ago? That seems like ancient history right now. Coming off Chris Cohan’s disastrous tenure as the team’s owner, fans were jaded. From 1995-2010, the 16 years that Cohan owned this franchise, it finished with a winning record just two times. The Warriors also earned a playoff spot a total of one season during that span. From horrible front office personnel decisions to an inability to get an arena built in Oakland, Cohan’s tenure as the Warriors’ owner will go down as one of the worst in NBA history.
In July of 2010, Cohan’s tenure as the team’s owner came to a conclusion. He sold the Warriors to a group headed by Joe Lacob and Peter Guber for a then NBA record $450 million. Promising to take a hands-on approach, these two fans of the team changed the culture around the organization. From shaking up the front office by bringing former player-agent Bob Myers into an assistant general manager role to helping lure Jerry West to the franchise as a consultant, it was readily apparent things were different in Oakland. In reality, this was the start of the Warriors’ transformation from laughing stock to title contender.
Courtesy of USA Today Sports: The Warriors went from the worst owner in the NBA to one of the best ownership groups.
For Lacob, a former part-owner of the Boston Celtics, this was a dream come true. Not only was he able to lay claim to a larger ownership stake in Oakland, he became the not-so-silent partner between Guber and himself. That has translated into a somewhat refreshing feeling for fans in Northern California—fans who had initially booed him off the court at Oracle Arena.
While culture can change due to the philosophy of a team’s ownership group, Myers needs to be given a ton of credit. After being brought in to be mentored under then general manager Larry Riley, Myers was promoted to general manager one year after his hiring in April of 2011. In his first draft as the team’s top personnel guy, he landed the three players mentioned above. One year later, Myers was able to land Andre Iguodala in a sign-and-trade with the Denver Nuggets. This was a representation of how the Warriors became a somewhat attractive destination for free agents. Since then, Golden State has been linked to anyone from Kevin Love and Dwight Howard to LeBron James. It’s simply astonishing how things can change in such a short period of time. In addition to this, Myers has made all the right free agent decisions. The signings of Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa this past offseason may fly under the radar, but they were key components in the team’s run to the NBA Finals.
More than that, Myers success can be summed up by some of the moves he did not make. An example of this would be NOT dealing Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes, among other moving parts, to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love.
4. Andrew Bogut-Monta Ellis Trade
As we mentioned above, this deal was initially slammed by Warriors fans and those close to the organization in Northern California. Why trade the face of the franchise for an injury-plagued center that wasn’t even going to play that year? When Golden State traded Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks for Andrew Bogut and Stephen Jackson in March of 2012, the team stood at 17-21 and was still somewhat in the playoff race. Following the trade, and with Bogut sitting out, Golden State finished the season 6-22. At that point, it seemed like much of the same for this organization.
However, the new ownership group and a soon-to-be retooled front office had their eye on the future. They sacrificed the remote possibility of earning a playoff spot that season for adding a long-term answer at the center position—a position that had been disastrous for the franchise in recent years. Since actually appearing on the court for the Warriors during the 2012-2013 season, all Bogut has done is help lead the team to three consecutive playoff appearances. This deal also aided in the maturation process of Stephen Curry, who was no longer playing second fiddle to Ellis in the team’s back court.
5. Andre Iguodala Sign-and-Trade
This trade might not seem like a big deal on the surface, but it announced the Warriors as players in the big-time free agent market. In the same offseason as the Warriors were reportedly making a play to sign Dwight Howard, they settled on one of the best all-around players in the Association. And it’s paid off big time since. It’s not a coincidence that Golden State has won more games (118) in the two years with Iguodala in the fold than it won in the previous three years combined. A table setter off the bench, it’s Iggy’s calming influence that has helped Golden State’s second unit become the best in the Association. Now going up against LeBron James and the Cavaliers, this veteran’s defensive abilities will definitely be put to the test.
6. Hiring of Steve Kerr, Firing of Mark Jackson
Courtesy of USA Today Sports: Kerr is one of the most successful first-year coaches in NBA history.
To those close to the Warriors last May, it wasn’t a surprise that this team fired a successful head coach in Mark Jackson. There were multiple reports of rifts between the head coach and front office. Outside of the bubble in Oakland, it was a shock. After all, Jackson led the Warriors to two consecutive playoff appearances—one more than they earned in the 17 years prior to his arrival.
Even as shocking as the Jackson firing might have been, the Warriors brass doubled down on the idea of bringing in a former front office executive in Steve Kerr, who was also drawing interest from the “mighty” New York Knicks. Attempting to replace a successful head coach with someone that had no previous experience on a NBA bench was a risky move. Going up against New York in the courting process was certifiably insane. However, Kerr chose Oakland over the largest media market in North America.
The rest is pretty much history.
While Jackson should be commended for changing the culture within Golden State’s locker room, there’s little doubt that Kerr is one of the primary reasons this team is heading to its first NBA Finals in 40 years. From a pure coaching standpoint, the two just aren’t comparable. It also helps that Kerr made the relatively quick decision to bring in veteran assistants such as Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams. That shouldn’t go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things.
Photo: USA Today Sports