Chris Paul’s season ended earlier than it has in over a decade. He’d made the playoffs for 14 straight seasons. He was a fixture of May basketball. But with the Warriors, Paul missed the playoffs despite teaming up with three other future Hall of Famers. Before this year, the last time he played for a lottery team was 2010. Life was different back then. Paul was 24 and in his athletic prime. It was five teams ago, before he created pick-and-roll nirvana in Los Angeles with Blake Griffin. His first child, Chris Paul II, was only one year old; he’s now on the cusp of the preps basketball hype ma ..read more

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr appeared on 95.7 The Game’s Willard and Dibs show the day after his Golden State Warriors were pummeled by the Sacramento Kings in an embarrassing season-ending beatdown in the play-in tournament, lamenting what could have and frankly, what should have been. “This felt like a 50-win team to me. Feels to me like we should be down 1-0 in a series, not having the season finished,” he said. Kerr is right, the Warriors were supposed to be in contention. They constructed, albeit awkwardly, a veteran-leaning roster expecting to compete. The shame of it all is the Warrio ..read more

Klay Thompson wants us to live in the present. I think he’s living in the past. But ultimately, we should expect him to be part of the Warriors’ future. Following what was inarguably his worst performance as a professional basketball player in the Warriors’ season-ending play-in tournament loss to the Kings — a game where Thompson’s defense was as poor as his offense (and he went 0-for-10 from the floor) — it was impossible not to wonder if the pending unrestricted free agent had played his last game for the Dubs. He clearly had the same question, as he made a little show of spinning around as ..read more

By TIM REYNOLDS | AP Basketball Writer Golden State guard Stephen Curry knew he was running out of chances to play in what would be his first Olympics, so he and his wife Ayesha started planning many months ago about how to make the Paris Games work for their family. Their growing family, that is. Ayesha Curry revealed in March that she is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child and the baby is due in June. That’s not entirely by accident; the couple thought ahead with hopes of keeping the Olympic months of July and August clear — just in case. “We thought about it ahead of time, which was nic ..read more

SAN FRANCISCO — In 1998, Steve Kerr was one of the several Chicago Bulls who left the franchise after winning the team’s sixth title. “There was a documentary about what a disaster the whole thing was, you guys might want to watch it,” Kerr quipped Thursday. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Kerr won the 1998 NBA Championship and never played for the Bulls again. Their Last Dance ended the greatest dynasty in modern NBA history. With the Warriors, Kerr will see a completely different end to another dynasty. The Warriors, winners of four titles in the past decade with Kerr as h ..read more

SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors’ play-in loss in Sacramento was the story of Moses Moody’s season, and really the story of his career to this point. Moody was out of Golden State’s rotation heading into the single-elimination Kings game. The 10th man in a nine-man playoff rotation, he’d been just edged out because of the matchup: The Warriors wanted Kevon Looney to play more than usual because of his defense against Domantas Sabonis. Rotations tighten in the postseason as star players ramp up their minutes, and Moody got squeezed out. He’d been the odd man out all year. At one point this year, th ..read more

Despite his many flaws — two suspensions this season, punching teammate Jordan Poole last season — Warriors star Draymond Green will go into the summer knowing that his longtime coach still has his back. In his season-ending news conference Thursday, coach Steve Kerr called the team’s relationship with the volatile Green “complex” but added that he’s one of the most loyal, smartest and competitive players he has been around. Kerr was asked if Green will be a changed person moving forward or if the team accepts that the veteran’s unpredictable behavior could lead to another suspension – like th ..read more

SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors have an aging roster that just finished a middling season. They just paid a ludicrously large luxury tax bill with a team icon hitting free agency. They have a responsibility to compete for titles as long as Steph Curry remains great and a moral obligation to keep their dynastic core intact — possibly contradicting needs. That sounds like a summer of migraines for Mike Dunleavy Jr. The Warriors’ general manager was disappointed to be sitting at a podium on April 18 rather than, say, June 18 for his end-of-season debrief. After a quick opening statement, Dunleavy re ..read more

SAN FRANCISCO — Inside a Chase Center already turned over for a quiet summer, Klay Thompson sat down at the podium with a fat lip and a twinkle in his eye. A smirk formed around the corner of his lips as he batted down the first question about his future. He’d be naive if he didn’t expect to be asked about his pending free agency. But he wanted to get what seemed like a planned routine off his chest. “You don’t want to talk about the season first?” Thompson asked rhetorically. “You want to talk about the future? That was a lot of games played, man. That was a pretty big accomplishment. What’s ..read more

Where do the Warriors go from here? Their champion core is now aged and embarrassed. Their young players are not good enough to protract the dynasty. The Warriors are stuck in between stations. Add the NBA’s new, increasingly punitive (some could argue vindictive) luxury tax rules and a standard of excellence that won’t be compromised (not so long as Joe Lacob runs the team and Steph Curry is on it), and Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. might have the most challenging job in basketball. There are a million directions he can go. But balancing all the Warriors’ needs, there’s one route ..read more