30 reasons for excitement with 30 days to go
There are 30 days until the Golden State Warriors begin the 2024-25 NBA season. So here are 30 things I’m excited to watch this year. After all, 30 is kind of an important number in Warriors land.
- It’s Warriors basketball! Isn’t that, in and of itself, worth being excited about? You get to watch, at minimum, 82 games of your favorite basketball team. Sure, they might frustrate and anger you from time to time, but it’s still half a year watching your favorite team play the greatest sport ever invented. Which is doubly important if the Niners keep playing like this.
- Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis taking sophomore leaps. Both players dramatically outperformed expectations last year, with Podziemski being an easy All-Rookie selection, and TJD being the last man out. Most encouragingly, both players found their success in ways that are not just sustainable, but give them something to build off of. Sometimes a player’s rookie success looks like an outlier, but it’s pretty easy to project a whole lot of growth for these two.
- Jonathan Kuminga blossoming into a star. Stars are made, not born, and they’re rarely predestined. So it’s still entirely possible that Kuminga will never reach his enormously-high ceiling. But he sure showed last year that he could be an All-Star … or something even greater.
- Thunderous dunks from Jonathan Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins. Kinda speaks for itself, doesn’t it? What more could you want than two of the best athletes in the league flying high and trying to break the rim off the backboard?
- A chance to shock the world … again. The Warriors shocked the world when they won their 2015 title. In 2017 and 2018 it was more expected, but they shocked the world again in 2022. Could they make it three times of dramatically outperforming industry expectations?
- Christmas day showdown. Warriors. Lakers. Steph Curry. LeBron James. Draymond Green. Anthony Davis. Christmas day. If that doesn’t excite you, then what are you doing here?
- Big men raining threes. The Warriors used their second-round pick on Quinten Post, a 7-footer who shot 42.9% from deep during his junior and senior seasons at Boston College. That’s a wrinkle to the Warriors offense that we haven’t seen much of!
- Make that two of them. Also, Kevon Looney is apparently hard at work in the lab, getting an NBA-ready three-point shot. Could we see the debut of that this season?
- A revamped offense. The Dubs’ offense could use a little bit of freshening up, and here comes Terry Stotts just in time. The new assistant coach was the mastermind behind a Portland Trail Blazers offense that routinely outperformed its personnel. He won’t rework Golden State’s motion offense, but he will revamp it.
- Threes on threes on threes. Klay Thompson may be gone, but the Warriors still have Curry and Podziemski, and now the’ve added Buddy Hield to the fold (to make no mention of Post!). It should be another season with a whole lot of three-pointers.
- TJD above the rim. Last year we got to see a plethora of lobs and rim-running screen-and-rolls once Jackson-Davis entered the rotation. Expected a steady stream of those. It’s something that had been sorely missing from the offense, and I’m so happy to have it back.
- Draymond Green, still defensively elite. Green’s days of winning DPOY are probably behind him, and his days of making the All-Defense team might be, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that on any given night he’s still the best defensive player alive. His instincts and intelligence are still second-to-none, and it’s a true delight watching him patrol the court.
- Angry Steve Kerr. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it sure is entertaining when it does. Let it out, coach!
- Klay Thompson’s return. We don’t have to wait long to see Klay again. The Dubs welcome the Dallas Mavericks to town on November 12, just the 11th game of the season. The ovation that Thompson will get, in his first game against the Warriors, will be thunderous … and bring a tear to my eye.
- Championship memories. This season marks 10 years since the Warriors dynasty first began, in Kerr’s debut season with the club. It was a magical year that kicked off a magical run. The Warriors will probably wait until more players are retired to do a full-on reunion celebrating the 2015 championship, but you can expect to hear a lot of stories, and watch a lot of highlights from that season as the year goes on.
