What’s next for Steph Curry and the Warriors after quiet elimination in Minnesota?

MINNEAPOLIS — Steph Curry, already slumped in his chair in the visiting locker room at Target Center, sank lower and tilted his head back so his eyes pointed at the ceiling. The frustration was visible on his expressionless face, in his steely eyes.

Hours earlier, the Golden State Warriors’ unofficial mantra entering Game 5 against the Minnesota Timberwolves had been borrowed from the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who shocked the world by rallying from a 3-0 deficit to beat the New York Yankees. Curry remembers it well. He was a junior in high school when Kevin Millar, with his Sox down 3-1, said the line that encapsulated the Warriors’ mood: “Don’t let us win tonight.”

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The coded meaning: The Warriors were feeling pretty good about Curry returning from his hamstring injury for Game 6. But when asked about his chances of playing if the series extended, Curry wasn’t much in the mood to entertain what-ifs. It no longer mattered. Minnesota didn’t let them win. The Warriors’ season ended with a 121-110 loss to the Timberwolves, a gentleman’s sweep to bruise their egos, with Curry in a tan sweatsuit.

This pill the Warriors had to swallow went down like a tennis ball. They couldn’t win one game to potentially get Curry back in the Western Conference semifinals. One game to keep this season alive and see what it could’ve become.

“The only solace you can really take was that we had a chance,” Curry told The Athletic. “It’s kind of the ultimate gut-punch because of that. Makes it worse. You just don’t want to go out like that.”

Five minutes after the final buzzer, Warriors controlling owner Joe Lacob slid into a courtside club down the tunnel of a celebrating Minneapolis arena, complimentary of the home team but more willing than others in his organization to voice what many believed.

“Disappointing,” Lacob said, settling into a 10-minute conversation with The Athletic. “I really hoped we could extend the series and I’m …”

This is where he paused, understanding his next statement would come off as a discredit to the Timberwolves, but he fired it off anyway.

“I am pretty positive that if we had Steph, we’d have won this series,” Lacob said.

Curry said he liked his chances for Game 6 but, his voice tinged with defiance, reminded of the uncertainty of hamstrings: “I have no idea because I haven’t played live yet. Only reason that was a possibility was because we have three days. … If you play live, you can check off that box, and then you can go. But I never got to that.”

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The revisionist history doesn’t ultimately matter. What if Draymond Green didn’t get suspended in Game 5 of the 2016 Finals? He did. They lost to Cleveland. Nine years later, Curry strained his hamstring. They lost to Minnesota.

But Lacob’s sentiment is notable when attempting to get a read on the front office’s planned path forward. The lead decision-makers — Lacob, general manager Mike Dunleavy, assistant general manager Kirk Lacob — don’t plan a major shakeup, team sources said. They’re plotting a retooled middle of the rotation below Curry, Jimmy Butler and Green, still believing that veteran core can contend.

“It’s in some ways kind of a win to get here, to get (to) the second round,” Lacob said. “Yeah, we lost four games to one. Not good. But to a team that is playing very well. They took the Lakers out four to one also with two of the greatest players in the world on their team. We didn’t have one of ours. So we can all sit here and make what-ifs, judgments, but I can’t be really upset with what happened, given that we just didn’t have our biggest force.”

The Warriors went 23-7 with Butler and Curry in the lineup and beat the second-seeded Houston Rockets in the first round. They maintain a belief that the pairing could’ve reached the conference finals and possibly beyond if given the healthy opportunity.

But the consolation prize of believing they were good enough to compete with any team only amplifies the urgency for the Warriors to make the necessary adjustments to build on this season.

Ordinarily, when a team feels close, Curry said, major changes don’t feel so necessary. But he’s been through this enough times to know standing pat isn’t prudent. Butler’s contract lines up with Curry’s. They both have two seasons left.

“On the surface, that’s why he signed for two more years — our belief we can make it work,” Curry said of Butler. “And we’ve proven that the last three months. Just gotta figure out what is going to get us to the next level as a whole. One guy can’t win it. Two guys can’t win it. It’s gotta be a team.”

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There are no early indications that the Warriors will be at the front of the line of the yet-to-materialize Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes, league sources said. As they enter the summer, team sources said, the internal plan and conversation is about how to best reform the role players around the Curry and Butler duo, not chase another star.

Jonathan Kuminga is the most notable swing piece. The Warriors are expected to extend his $10.2 million qualifying offer, which will make him a restricted free agent in July, giving them a level of leverage as the sides figure out his future.

Kuminga has had a turbulent four seasons with the franchise, punctuated by a roller coaster last few weeks. Coach Steve Kerr pulled him from the rotation in the Houston series, putting his lack of fit and questionable future with the franchise into the spotlight. Then after Curry’s injury, Kuminga re-entered the picture again and dropped these point totals the final four games against Minnesota: 18, 30, 23, 26.

“I was listening to the guys behind me tonight give running commentary — T’Wolves fans,” Lacob said. “(Kuminga)’s the guy they talked about all night long. He’s the only guy that could really guard (Anthony Edwards) out there. Did a pretty damn good job. He had a tough situation with the DNPs from the last series, and to bounce back from that, I give him a lot of credit. I’m a big fan of his.”

Buried on the bench for weeks, Jonathan Kuminga showed his potential against Minnesota, scoring 18, 30, 23 and 26 points in the final four games of the series. (Cary Edmondson / Imagn Images)

Lacob’s loyalty to Kuminga is well-known. He was an influential voice in the 2021 NBA Draft choice and has remained a proponent of Kuminga through the highs and lows. It’s nearly impossible to believe Lacob would let Kuminga sign an offer sheet elsewhere and walk away for nothing. A reunion between the sides is still on the table, league sources said.

But both sides are expected to explore sign-and-trade scenarios, those sources said, which would open up the market and theoretically give Kuminga the contract and fresh start he’d desire while bringing the Warriors back rotation players of immediate value. The Warriors’ decision-makers believe they need more positional size across the board — center and otherwise.

But it’s mid-May. Nothing about Kuminga’s future is decided. Dunleavy’s front office and Kuminga’s agent, Aaron Turner, will need to work through the various options. If he were to return, there’s been talk about Kerr giving the four-man combination of Curry, Kuminga, Green and Butler more of an early-season runway, and Butler has discussed working with Kuminga this summer.

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“There are certainly things he has to improve on, but he’s 22 years old,” Lacob said. “He’s got a hell of a lot of potential, and I would think he would be a part of our future plans. Now we’ll have to see how the market all shakes out. We have a lot of evaluating to do. Not me necessarily. But everybody — from coaching staff to basketball operations. We’ll kind of sit around and talk about how we want to construct the team for next year and what the situation is with respect to him.”

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Brandin Podziemski is another critical player as the Warriors move forward. He had his best game of the series Wednesday, finishing with 28 points on 11-of-19 shooting with six rebounds and four assists. Much of his production came too late, after the Warriors were climbing up a steep hill, but it was a sign of life for a player who’d struggled mightily in the previous three games.

“There were times in this series where he was hesitant to shoot,” Kerr said. “I thought he could have gotten 10 or 11 3s off tonight, and we needed those. I told him that after the game. I said, ‘When we get back here next year, you are not gonna turn down a single shot.'”

Podziemski, the 19th pick in the 2023 draft, is the Warriors’ most established young player. He played his way into the rotation as a rookie, supplanting Klay Thompson. After a slow start to his second season, he turned it on in a secondary role after the Butler trade. His versatility as a 6-5 guard, his basketball IQ and his willingness to grind make him a valuable player.

But the Warriors might need more from him. They certainly did in this series. He looked overwhelmed for most of these playoffs, the first of his career, raising questions about whether he’s a potent enough scorer to warrant his role.

After a rough first four games, Brandin Podziemski led the team in scoring Wednesday. He’s an intriguing piece of the Warriors’ future — and also valued around the league. (Jesse Johnson / Imagn Images)

“It’s part of the playoffs,” Kerr said. “I lived it as a player. It is a mind game … It’s really easy to lose your confidence. Teams throw different schemes at you. You have a bad game and everyone is talking about your shooting percentage. It feels like you’re on an island. I’ve been there. Nobody cares in January if you have two games where you’re 4 for 20. But in the playoffs, everybody’s writing about it, everybody’s talking about it. You feel exposed. That’s a big part of playoff experience, understanding you have to keep firing and stay aggressive.”

It wasn’t a unanimous call, but the Warriors opted to keep him this past offseason instead of cashing in his noteworthy value on the trade market. Several teams called with appealing offers, league sources said. They were told no.

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But the need for offensive punch was magnified this postseason. Some in the organization who landed on the side of exploring Podziemski’s value see a need for more of a Jordan Poole-type of playmaker — a confident shooter and offensive creator who can share in the playmaking load with Curry and Butler. Both veterans will require rest and management next regular season.

But Podziemski is 22, set to make $3.6 million next season and is laden with intangibles. That makes him worth keeping, especially if he grows more confident offensively. But it also makes him valuable around the league.

Do they use him as one of the few commodities they possess or continue his development while he’s on a team-friendly deal?

“I would hope our young players take yet another leap,” Lacob said. “I get very upset when I read all this crap on the internet, these comments by people, you know, ‘This guy’s crap. That guy’s crap. The drafts were terrible.’ Bull—! Our drafts were not bad at all. These guys are very young. They’ve had to fit into a very difficult situation with experienced players. It’s not like they can just go out and put up numbers. So I think we’ve drafted very well. We’ve got some good young players.”

But the backbone of the organization remains what it has been for more than a decade. Kerr and Dunleavy are expected to remain in place. Butler is the new co-star. Green is expected to remain. Then the ecosystem still operates around Curry, entering his 17th NBA season next October as the man who still props it all up.

“I have a great coach and I have a great GM,” Lacob said. “I have no problems with anything in respect to them. Mike made a fantastic trade. Before we made that trade, we were one game under .500 and it didn’t look like we were going anywhere. We won a first-round series against a very good up-and-coming team with a lot of athleticism and size. I thought it was a hell of a win. Got us pretty tired probably for this series, and maybe that was just too much to overcome. In that first game (against Minnesota), Steph looked like he was going to cook, right? But what are we going to do? Stuff happens.”

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos of Jimmy Butler, Steph Curry and Steve Kerr: Elsa, Tim Warner, Mike Ehrmann, Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)

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