Dieter Kurtenbach: If Steph Curry can't save the Warriors, we're truly in the final days

Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News on Dec 17, 2025

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Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr says he isn’t doing a good job.

I’m inclined to believe him.

Because right now, the Dubs aren’t a basketball team. They are a desperation experiment. It’s no longer “Strength in Numbers,” it’s “Throw Spaghetti at the Wall and Pray it Looks Like Art.”

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. It looks like a mess. And it reeks of panic.

Steph Curry has scored 87 points in his first two games back from injury. Eighty-seven. He’s playing at a first-team All-NBA level in his late 30s, defying physics, logic and Father Time.

And it hasn’t mattered.

This, friends, is what the terminal stage of a once-great dynasty looks like.

When the “Save Us, Steph” button — the franchise’s panic switch that has bailed them out of every jam since the Obama administration; the one that even Team USA used in the Olympics — isn’t working, it’s over.

Alas, the button has been pressed so hard it’s now permanently stuck in the console.

If Steph dropping nearly 90 points in 48 hours doesn’t overcome the problem, you don’t have a slump. You have a corpse.

Look around at the carnage. Kerr’s on-court relationship with Jonathan Kuminga has reached an impasse, again. But beyond the that will-they, won’t-they drama, look at the personnel: This rotation changes more often than NBA teams switch uniforms these days.

(I’m saying it’s a lot. I’m that old guy now.)

Will Richard went from a nobody second-round pick to a rookie starter back to the end of the bench so fast he probably got whiplash. I’m not sure what he did or didn’t do to deserve any of it.

Same with Kuminga: The 23-year-old forward played five good games and was anointed a permanent starter. Now he’s permanently on the bench. The meaning of the word permanent is really getting pushed here, but at least we can say the Dubs’ success isn’t permanent.

Quentin Post played well for exactly one week, so naturally, Kerr is now riding him like he’s prime Andrew Bogut — at least until he decides on Thursday that Post is unplayable.

Remember when Seth Curry showed up, played roughly 15 minutes in his first two games, and wasn’t seen from again?

Oh, and how can we forget Pat Spencer? One minute he’s in the G League, the next he’s in the starting lineup, forcing the Dubs to play a 2-3 zone because a Curry-Spencer backcourt has all the defensive authority of a speed limit sign on I-5 outside Modesto. Everyone ignores it, and someone is going to get hurt.

It’s frantic. It’s debasing. And worst of all, while it’s intriguing if you’re someone who views sports as expensive reality TV, if you actually like basketball, it’s creating a downright boring product.

Steph is trying, but no one is coming to save him or the Dubs.

Al Horford doesn’t play.

Draymond Green is a shell of his former self. We have to be honest about that. He’s effective on one end of the floor for mere spurts, a part-time defensive coordinator who can no longer guarantee overall team competence on that end of the floor, let alone dominance.

And Jimmy Butler? The grand acquisition? He looks nothing like a superstar. He looks slow, unexplosive, and frankly, like a negative on the defensive side. He’s wandering around the court like a tourist looking for a coffee shop.

It’s a tough watch.

And for the first time in a decade — excluding 2020, which luckily doesn’t count as a year — the Warriors can’t even lie to themselves anymore.

Since the 2022 title, the Dubs have been able to operate on an often delusional hope:

“If we just get healthy.”

“If we just click for a week.”

“Just get through the play-in tournament, and there’s a chance.”

The lies we tell ourselves …

But that’s all gone now.

This team — even if everything “clicks” — isn’t beating the Rockets in a seven-game series. They aren’t touching the Spurs, the Nuggets or the Thunder.

This organization used to pace the field. But they’ve been fully overtaken. Now they’re getting lapped.

The only reason this brand of mediocre basketball isn’t resulting in a truly lost season is that the Western Conference has decided to be terrible at the bottom. The bar for the final play-in spot is 10-16.

But the Warriors have become irrelevant.

The Warriors are 14-15, stumbling over a bar that is lying on the floor.

They are wasting greatness. They are taking the twilight of the greatest shooter who ever lived and surrounding him with fads, G Leaguers and fading stars, hoping the spaghetti sticks.

It won’t. It’s not. It’s just sliding down the wall.

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