Kurtenbach: Too good to tank, too bad to matter — the Warriors are trapped in purgatory
Thursday night at Chase Center was a cold splash of reality right to the face:
Despite the beautiful arena and the constant development around it, the Golden State Warriors have officially moved into basketball’s worst neighborhood.
The Celtics strolled in and methodically dismantled the Dubs. Even with a little garbage-time hustle, the Steph-less Warriors looked exactly like what they are right now: a team walking slowly toward a dead end.
This isn’t hell.
NBA hell comes with lottery ping-pong balls and a shiny new 19-year-old savior to sell the fanbase.
No, this is much worse. The Warriors are stuck in basketball purgatory. They aren’t bad enough to actively tank — they’ve already stumbled into 29 wins. But with Steph Curry’s runner’s knee keeping him in street clothes for at least the next four games, any fanciful dream of pushing for the No. 6 seed in the West is cooked.
They’re adrift in a sea of mid, completely without a compass.
They’re locked into the PIT.
The Play-In Tournament is a neat little gimmick cooked up by the league office to give mediocre teams a reason to pretend April matters. But for Golden State? It’s just a holding cell.
And in that cell, everything lacks meaning.
It’s a tragedy, but watching this version of the Dubs is enough to make you wish you were watching a genuine, shameless, bottom-feeding tank job. At least those teams have a directive. Every loss is a quiet high-five in the front office.
You can sell hope when you stink. You can dream on the college phenoms and tell yourself help is on the way.
The Warriors literally did this in 2020. There was a purpose then. Positivity, even. (Just don’t look up what they actually did with that No. 2 overall pick.)
That’s not present for this Warriors team.
The franchise spin machine is going to crank up and tell you the next few weeks are a “vital evaluation period” for 2026-27 and beyond.
It’s pure, hollow corporate-speak designed to buy time when the front office is out of answers.
Let’s be brutally honest here: What exactly are we evaluating without No. 30 on the floor? He is the sun in the Warriors’ solar system.
Without him, you aren’t evaluating a cohesive basketball team; you’re just putting a stopwatch on a sinking lifeboat.
And what are we supposed to take away from a game like Thursday? Deep in the rubble of a game where Boston led by 34, it actually looked like De’Anthony Melton and Kristaps Porzingis are guys you _need_ to keep around to put a quality team on the floor next year — keepers.
Melton is a defensive bulldog who knocks down timely shots. Porzingis provides that floor-spacing, rim-protecting dynamic that fits perfectly into the modern NBA — and, theoretically, pairs perfectly with Curry.
They are both pending free agents. Based on what we’re saw Thursday, the Warriors would be fools if they let either walk.
There’s just one massive problem: The Warriors have absolutely zero cap flexibility to keep both Melton and Porzingis on fair-market deals.
To retain that duo, the front office has to pull off some seismic, earth-shattering roster moves to create the necessary cap space. We’re talking about financial gymnastics we haven’t seen an iota of during the Mike Dunleavy Jr. era.
So, in the words of Will Smith — back to reality: The Warriors are evaluating a roster the NBA’s absurd CBA says they can’t afford to keep together. They are preparing for a Play-In Tournament they have tried to avoid but cannot. And they are waiting for their injured superstar to return to salvage a season that has already slipped through their fingers.
Hope is the only currency that matters in professional sports. Outside of Curry returning, staying healthy, and gelling with this (also fully healthy) roster in a way that puts the league on notice right before the postseason (I’m not holding my breath), where is the hope for a brighter future in San Francisco right now?
The Dubs are just existing. They’re playing out the string, trapped in the inescapable void of the NBA’s middling class — too good and proud to bottom out, not nearly good enough to make winning meaningful. They’ve become non-playable characters in someone else’s video game — out there to provide perfunctory resistance for the teams actually trying to achieve something this year. (Good or bad.)
It’s an agonizing way to live — a slow drip of disappointment.
As I said, this isn’t roundball hell. Hell has a purpose. This is a fate far worse.