Dub Nation, it’s been decades. We need to talk about the one spot on the floor this franchise keeps treating like a timeshare.
Four games into the season, the starting center for the Golden State Warriors has been either Draymond Green, a 36-year-old listed at 6-foot-6 if the measuring tape is feeling generous, or Graham Ike, an undrafted two-way rookie who started in just the second game of his career. Meanwhile the guy who was supposed to be the answer hasn’t been in the building since before training
camp.
Anthony Slater of ESPN published a deep dive this morning on where the Kristaps Porzingis situation stands. Of course it’s brilliantly written, but it’s beyond an injury update. This felt more like the latest chapter of a story this franchise has been living since the 1970s.
According to Slater, team sources hold “an extreme level of pessimism that Porzingis will ever play for the Warriors again.” That follows his reporting last week, alongside Shams Charania, that the Warriors had started exploring trades while Porzingis deals with a private health issue that has him “seriously contemplating his future in basketball”.
Slater also notes that the team quietly changed Porzingis’ status from “general illness” to “not with team.” He adds that the idea of voiding the contract over his absence has come up internally. That’s something being discussed, not a decision the Warriors have made. For now, they’re being patient and letting the trade market develop.
Look if a man’s body is telling him he’s done, that matters more than any of us yelling about centers. The roster problem and the human problem are both rough, and I hope Porzingis gets the health he needs for the rest of his life.
But the roster problem is very real. Two days before Slater’s piece dropped, DeMarcus Cousins went on FanDuel TV’s Run It Back with the Warriors sitting at 0-3 and lit the whole front office up.
Boogie said Mike Dunleavy has done a “s*** job” building around Curry. He said Steph “has so much more greatness to give”. He also said the front office doesn’t believe in Steph the way the rest of the world does.
Then he got to the part that matters for this conversation. He called the system outdated because it goes extremely small, pointing to a recent lineup where the tallest Warrior on the floor was 6-foot-6. His verdict on that whole philosophy: “It just doesn’t work!”.
You can argue with the delivery, and I’m sure plenty of people will. But put Slater’s reporting next to Boogie’s rant and what do you see? One is about the absence of the center the Warriors paid to fix this and the other is about the lineup they’ve been forced into because he’s gone. It’s the same hole described from two different barstools. What makes Boogie’s rant so fascinating to me is that eight summers ago, the Warriors tried to fill this exact spot with him.
In July 2018, JaVale McGee left for LeBron and the Lakers, and GM Bob Myers replaced him with Cousins in less than a day, on a one-year, $5.3 million deal. The catch was that Boogie was coming off a torn Achilles but the Warriors took the swing anyway, injury and all. When Boogie finally debuted in January 2019, Golden State became the first team in 42 years to start five All-Stars from the previous season. Steph called Boogie’s first bucket, a one-handed slam off a Kevin Durant bounce pass, “like poetry.”
The poetry didn’t last. Cousins averaged 16.3 points and 8.2 rebounds in 30 games, then hurt his quad in the first round against the Clippers. He came back hobbled for the Finals, Toronto won, KD and Klay went down, and Boogie was gone that summer.
So the man ripping Golden State for not finding Steph a real big was literally the last established star center they took a major gamble on before Porzingis. And much like Porzingis, health was an issue there too. In both cases the Warriors went after a talented big man with real medical questions and hoped the timing would work out.
When the Warriors traded Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield for Porzingis in February, ESPN described the front office as being on a “persistent search” for a rim-protecting center who could hit threes. That’s the ideal big to play around Steph; but if we’re being honest the Warriors hunt for the right big man goes back way further than Steph.
This franchise once employed Wilt Chamberlain and Nate Thurmond, two of the greatest centers to ever lace them up, at the same time. It’s almost like the Warriors decided that was enough generational big-man talent for the next 50-plus years.
And the big men who could’ve filled that void never stuck around. Robert Parish was traded to Boston in 1980 along with the pick that became Kevin McHale, and then he went on to win three titles in green. Chris Webber was the No. 1 pick in 1993 and Rookie of the Year, and he was gone after one season once he and Don Nelson couldn’t coexist. The generationally great ones either left, got traded, or never came in the first place.
The wild part is that somehow the Warriors kept winning anyway. Clifford Ray anchored the middle on the 1975 title team the very next season. Forty years later, Andrew Bogut was the defensive backbone of the dynasty’s first ring. Zaza Pachulia and JaVale McGee held the door open for the Durant years. Kevon Looney gave everything he had on the glass during the 2022 run, on knees that should’ve been frozen in carbonite. James Wiseman was a different kind of risk, a No. 2 overall pick betting on development instead of medicals, which we’re all probably sick of discussing.
Five championships since Thurmond left town, and not one of them came with a generational center. This franchise built a whole identity around letting the little guys make history while the big guys set screens and hold the door open. The question Boogie is really raising is when a philosophy that keeps winning turns into a limitation.
The good news is real, and his name is Yaxel Lendeborg. The rookie dropped 31 points, 12 rebounds and six assists in a blowout win in Denver. He’s a powerful 6-10 and 241 pounds, which lets Kerr go small with Draymond at center without the lineup feeling tiny. That’s great, and it’s also the most Warriors thing imaginable, another clever workaround for the one position they’ve never really filled. Walker Kessler dunked on them 10 times on opening night, the most by a Lakers center since Shaq in 2003. Kessler isn’t even Shaq, and the Warriors made him look like Shaq.
So here’s where I land, Dub Nation. The Warriors haven’t had a big man of Wilt or Nate’s caliber stick around and they’ve hung five banners anyway. That’s a hell of a track record for a franchise that keeps finding ways around the biggest position on the floor. But Steph isn’t getting any younger, and the latest bet on a star big man with a medical file has left Golden State right back where it started. Boogie knows that story better than anybody, because eight years ago he was supposed to be the answer.
