Steve Kerr Claims This Is Not The Warriors' "Last Dance" Season
This season has been a bumpy roller coaster ride for the Golden State Warriors.
From the drama that surrounded them in the preseason with Jordan Poole and Draymond Green to having to battle injuries to Andrew Wiggins taking a leave of absence to fighting for their playoff lives late in the year, many are now wondering if this is it for the defending NBA champions.
Creating a dynasty is not as hard as maintaining a dynasty and right now, the Warriors may be showing cracks in what has been a near flawless decade of dominance.
However, head coach Steve Kerr does not feel this way at all, as he is not giving up on his team or giving into the notion that the 2022-23 NBA season is Golden State’s “Last Dance” season, similar to what he experienced with the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen during the 1997-98 season.
“This is not ‘The Last Dance,’” Kerr told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami recently. “That’s not the case here at all. I know that Joe (Lacob) would love to keep this thing going. He’s been incredible in his financial commitment to keep this team strong and relevant for a decade. He’s always committed to that. So I think there’s a really good possibility that we keep things going here.”
With just five games remaining on their schedule, the Warriors find themselves 40-37 on the season, just one game ahead of teams currently in the Play-In region of the Western Conference standings. Should the Warriors make the playoffs this season, they will do so with their most losses since their first championship in 2015.
The absence of Andrew Wiggins still looms large over this franchise, as Wiggins was an instrumental part of their championship success a season ago, but the Warriors still remain confident in their overall abilities.
This is a proven team that still has its championship core intact and while they have not looked like championship contenders during the regular season, Golden State always kicks things into a higher gear entering the playoffs.
Just a season ago, this team was 47-22 heading towards the playoffs and then they lost 7 of their final 13 games. The struggles this season are much more apparent, but this organization always has their eyes on the big picture and that is competing for and winning championships.
Stephen Curry is now 35-years-old, yet he is having one of the best seasons of his career. Klay Thompson is now 33-years-old and is not the same player he was before his major leg injuries, but he is still one of the best three-point shooting threats in the league and has shown flashes of his scoring brilliance on the floor this season. As for Draymond Green, he remains a top-tier defender in the NBA and arguably one of the best facilitating forwards the league has ever seen.
The Warriors know what they are capable of and while it appears that they are beginning to fall off a little bit, all they need is a little bit of doubt to go on another title run.
Will that happen this year?
Time will tell whether or not the Golden State Warriors can repeat as champions, but if there is one thing we know, it is that this team is not going anywhere and this core group of Kerr, Curry, Thompson and Green will remain together, fighting for championships until the day they all retire.
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