As the Warriors walk the complicated line between the present and the future, Stephen Curry’s heyday will not last forever

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr repeatedly identified the 20-game mark as the first point where he could make an honest assessment of what his team was and, more importantly, what it could be advancing. We are at that point. Entering Tuesday’s clash with the Boston Celtics, the Warriors are 11-9, good enough for seventh place in the West and just one game behind fifth place.

They are also only two games up in the loss column at number 12 of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Truth be told, the Warriors are an average team. They can beat anyone. They can lose to anyone. They pulled some rabbits out of the hat with a 19 and 22 point rally to beat the Lakers and Clippers, respectively, but seven of their 11 wins were against teams below 0.500.

Is this a playoff team? Assuming good health, probably. It’s hard to imagine a team with Stephen Curry not at least doing the expanded play-in round. Furthermore, the Warriors are nowhere near a contender. Under normal circumstances, with a player like Curry entering the end of his career with only one year left on his contract after this season, the urgency to update the squad would be in full swing.

But in this case, Golden State has an ace up its sleeve, and that ace is Klay Thompson. If you want to have the most upbeat point of view for the next nine months of the Warriors, they spend the rest of the season developing newcomer James Wiseman, break the playoffs, choose a stallion with the Timberwolves’ first 2021 turn and then become candidates again when Thompson returns next year.

Call me a pessimist, but I can’t see all of this happening. To begin with, Minnesota’s choice is among the top three protected areas, and at the moment, the Wolves are on the statistical line for one of the first three choices. In that case, the choice would be left unprotected in 2022. In other words, unless the Warriors negotiate that choice, there is a decent chance that it will mean nothing to their 2021-22 list.

More importantly, the idea that Thompson will return shooting at all cylinders seems like a range. When the next season begins, Thompson will not have played an NBA game for nearly 30 months. He’ll be 31 in a week, which means he’ll be 32 a few months into the next season and, as we know, he’ll come out of a torn ACL and a torn Achilles.

If the Warriors don’t make big moves, a 90 percent Thompson is probably not enough. It is not even certain that a 100 percent Thompson places the Warriors among legitimate competitors. Seeing how great Kevin Durant and John Wall are so far, as they are both in tears from Achilles, gives the Warriors hope that Thompson can return to what he was before. This is misleading, however, in the fact that Durant sat 18 months from the day he tore his Achilles, and Wall sat for 21 months. Thompson will attempt to return 12 months after Achilles’ rupture.

“That extra time to rehabilitate and become strong again can make a big difference,” Dr. Alan Beyer, orthopedic surgeon and chief medical officer at the Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Southern California, told CBS Sports. “You just don’t know how one guy is going to come back instead of another. Those are two major injuries, and those things are cumulative. … I’ll say this: if you depend on one player, Klay Thompson or another, come back after one rupture of the ACL and a total rupture of Achilles and being the same player he was before these injuries, is a bet. It is a very big bet. “

None of this suggests that Thompson should not be expected to return as a really good player. Whether it’s 85 percent of your old self or whatever, it’s going to be good. You wonder about the defense, but at the very least, he will be a great marksman and, when the 2022 playoffs arrive, Thompson will have almost 18 months of post-Achilles injury to Durant.

But that’s assuming that Thompson didn’t suffer any other injuries, even the smallest ones that hinder his progress as he tries to regain his previous rhythms. As Dr. Beyer said, these things are cumulative. Wiseman seems to have a lot of potential, but is he ready to contribute at the championship level in his second season? Does anyone who wants the Warriors to select with the Minnesota choice, that choice must convey, be ready to contribute as a newbie?

It is a big unknown when the Warriors effectively need everything to go almost exactly according to the plan to return to containment in the short term. And if next year doesn’t go as planned, Curry will now turn 33 and enter the final year of the contract.

Nobody thinks he is leaving, but if he looks up and sees a team that prioritized the future at the expense of maximizing its ever-smaller cousin, can we be so sure? The Warriors could, and perhaps probably will, hire you to a great extent before that, but then you are paying an older Curry on a team that cannot realistically compete for titles. You have, in essence, become the Trail Blazers with Damian Lillard.

All of this points to the Warriors making strong moves to ensure containment, at least to the extent of their control, in addition to placing all their eggs in the Klay return basket. It is rumored that the Warriors are interested in Lonzo Ball. In theory, Ball would fit in very well with Curry and Thompson next season as a guy with the kind of high-IQ DNA and movement that Kerr likes. Ball has always needed snipers and gunners around him to thrive, and his accelerated instincts and defensive versatility scream at the Warriors’ basketball.

Still, this movement, or equivalent, does not significantly change the Golden State’s temperature. Jonathan Tjarks of Ringer recently suggested that the Warriors think A lot of even bigger, throwing a Godfather offer at Wizards to Bradley Beal. It would certainly cost the Warriors Wiseman and the choice of Minnesota, plus more future choices in all likelihood, but the thought is that Curry is a unique player in a generation, and when you have that type of player, you don’t let your scale-building mind start jumping far ahead.

Instead, you do what the Heat, Cavaliers and Lakers did when they got their hands on the main LeBron James. You give this type of superstar the parts he needs to compete, because you know that having this type of superstar is the rarest of the NBA’s luxuries that cannot, under any circumstances, or in any way be wasted.

What makes it complicated, once again, is that Wiseman and the Minnesota choice are the only major remaining assets of the Golden State. Once the Warriors handle this, they will be practically all-in for the foreseeable future with what they receive in return. You can look at the Warriors exchanging Wiseman and a possible choice from the top five, like the Lakers exchanging Brandon Ingram and a choice from the top five, but the difference is that the Lakers package won Anthony Davis.

Beal, if the Wizards made it available, it’s not Davis. But Beal is such a good player that it would give Curry a chance to at least compete this season, and next season, with Beal, Thompson, Curry and Draymond Green, you would be talking about a first rate candidate.

For the record, Beal apparently continues to say behind closed doors that he is committed to Washington, according to The Athletic. But it’s not what Beal wants (as far as you think Beal would actually fight a trade); it’s about what’s best for Wizards. I’m with Tjarks. I think a Warriors offer centered on Wiseman and Minnesota’s 2021 pick could potentially call Washington’s bluff “we’re not trading Beal” and, if I did, and Washington relented, I would accept the deal if I were the Warriors.

I understand the counterargument of using Wiseman and the choice of Minnesota to usher in the next era of Warriors basketball, as the Spurs were able to do with Kawhi Leonard without ever having to fall from the playoffs, but in the spirit of Bradley Beal not being Anthony Davis, you are really trying to get James Wiseman into Kawhi Leonard’s conversation.

Chances are, when Wiseman and whoever comes from Minnesota’s choice are ready to lead a candidate, Curry, Thompson and Green will be gone. For me, it’s a very big risk to take when you have Stephen Curry on your team. Switching to Lonzo can be a good start, but if the Warriors really want to do the right thing for Curry – whether trying to get into Beal’s seemingly inevitable draws or being creative by some other way – they’ll have to think much more than that.