A fundamental axiom of NBA basketball is that mediocrity fails. In the Modern Era, no team seeded lower than No. 3 has won The NBA Finals. Teams that are outside of the top six but not awful enough to earn a high lottery pick are in what I call the zone of death: not bad enough to improve via the draft, and not good enough to contend.

Being mired in mediocrity isn’t fun for either players or the fans, and it is where solid teams go to die. It isn’t hard to determine that the Warriors sit squarely in this zone. Ever since the legendary 2021-22 run, the team has bounced between the play-in and getting beaten badly in the second round.

As both Stephen Curry and Draymond Green begin to fade, it is clear that time is running out for the Warriors. However, the Warriors aren’t just doomed to watch the final years of their legends waste away in the Play-In. No. They are uniquely positioned so that they could both go all-in or all-out. Here, I will present both options and their respective pros and cons. There is no correct answer. The only certain thing is that inaction isn’t an option.

Option 1: All-In

The Warriors have pieces, and (potentially) a high draft pick. While the team failed to acquire star PF Giannis Antetokounmpo at the trade deadline, he will surely be back on the market this offseason. It’s likely that Warriors legend (according to some) and one of the best scorers of all time, Kevin Durant, will be on the trading block as well.

Kawai Leneord, Jarrett Allen, and Zion Williamson are all other potential options. The Warriors don’t have the most capital, but they can surely work out a deal including PG Brandin Podziemski, SF Jimmy Butler III, and draft picks for another scorer.

The two primary advantages of this method both revolve around Curry. First, Curry, no matter how old, is still one of the best in the game. The team has two or three years left before Curry laces up the sneakers for the final time, and capitalizing on his final productive year would be smart. Going all-in now allows the franchise to extract the most possible value from those sunset years.

Additionally, the team has struggled to find a true secondary scorer to create open looks when Curry is on the bench or off his game. While Butler takes a decent number of shots, his usage is still lower than your typical secondary option. I think flipping Butler and a pick for an upgraded scorer could certainly give this team the boost they are looking for.

Re-signing Kristaps Porziņģis as a big man will be crucial. Without any solid size in the frontcourt, the Warriors will regress into the patterns we know so well: giving up second-chance points and getting out-rebounded.

However, this option isn’t without its risks. Historically, teams that go all-in have a bad record. The 2024 Clippers, 2021 Nets, and  2024 Suns all will surely attest to the risks of betting big with aging, injury-prone stars. With this method, it is surely championship or bust, and the window will look smaller than ever. A single injury could derail the team’s chances, and a failure to capitalize on the window would result in years of misery for the fans. 

Option 2: Tank

The Oklahoma City Thunder (twice). The San Antonio Spurs. Even the earlier Warriors. A lot of the premier teams and dynasties in NBA history have been built by tanking.

The idea is simple: if you aren’t good enough to win it all, why waste years stuck in the middle and just be as bad as possible? The logic runs that the worse you are, the better the draft picks, so the better the chance of getting the next generational talent.

Cleveland with LeBron James, the Spurs with Victor Wembanyama, Detroit with Cade Cunningham, and Minnesota with Anthony Edwards are all great examples of franchise cornerstones being found through tanking.

For the Warriors, this would look like a lot of selling. Butler would surely go, and Porziņģis would not be re-signed. I think one thing about tanking is that it inevitably raises questions about both Curry and coach Steve Kerr.

Kerr is a horrible talent developer, consistently failing to develop relationships and cultivate the abilities of top draft picks. Considering he recently signed an extension with the Warriors, I’m not sure if he’s the coach who can turn Warriors lottery pick into a star, assuming they keep the No. 11 overall choice in the upcoming NBA Draft.

The real difficult question is Curry; every part of me wants him to retire a Warrior in a couple of years, but trading him for picks would be incredibly helpful. I still can’t mentally justify that, though. However, another concern that arises with Curry is that he is just too good — when a team is trying to tank, a player like Curry who can drag them to wins isn’t the type of guy you want on your roster.

So, tanking ultimately leads to the question of how much nostalgia the team can sacrifice, certainly one of the toughest questions to answer for any franchise. There are many pros to tanking; building a strong core can lead to dynasties and a much longer window for success. A team like the current Spurs on Thunder will contend for a lot longer than a team like the Cavaliers.

Tanking isn’t perfect, as many bad teams in recent years will be sure to tell you. While teams like the Pistons surely had to struggle through bad stretches, they’ve started to succeed. I don’t think tanking is a surefire way to win it all, but it can certainly be successful. My biggest concern with tanking is that Silver is actively trying to disincentivize it. Silver abhors the idea of teams intentionally losing, and every year, he adds more and more anti-tanking rules. Changes to the NBA Lottery are surely on the way. So, will tanking still be a viable route to rebuilding in the future? Only time will tell.

To say that either option will be a guaranteed home run would be laughable. Many all-in teams have failed, and many tanking teams have been stuck at the bottom for decades. There is no guaranteed way to win a championship, and if there was, you bet that every single GM this side of London would be doing it.

However, I believe that failing in an attempt to succeed is more glorious than not trying at all. I would rather take the shot, shoot for the stars (or in the case of tanking, for the ground) and miss than not shoot at all. A 1 percent chance at success is better than zero, and with the way things are going, the status quo sure looks like a zero.