Copyright The Mercury News
SAN FRANCISCO — There’s a smell wafting out of the Chase Center practice facility as the Golden State Warriors prepare for the 2025-26 season. It’s a pungent cocktail: the scent of potential ahead with a restocked roster. A whiff of possibility that this might be a title-contending team. The unmistakable aroma of… Icy Hot. Lots and lots of Icy Hot. The Golden State Warriors are old. They have gray in their beards and remember dial-up internet — that kind of old. Of course, that’s not universal on the Warriors’ roster, but the four men whose knees, hips, and backs the entire season rests upon have been through the ringer more than a few times. And it leaves the Warriors in a fascinating spot, trying to squeeze one last drop of rare-vintage wine out of a barrel that’s getting awfully dusty. Steph Curry is in his age-38 season. Jimmy Butler just turned 36. Draymond Green will do the same in March. Newcomer Al Horford — the Warriors’ presumed starting and closing center — is 39. The Warriors enter the season as the second-oldest team in the NBA, trailing only the Clippers. The Dubs’ best lineup — Curry, Butler, Green, Horford, and Buddy Hield (age-33 season) — has an average age of 36. Is this a basketball arena or a museum? Combined, the new Core Four have played nearly 5,000 regular-season and playoff NBA games. And there will be days this season (and, the Warriors hope, postseason) when that experience wins games. Scoring in the league might be higher than it has been since the run-and-gun 1960s, but this is still a thinking man’s game. But this is also a young man’s game. Those brains are only useful if the bodies they live in can get on the court. Can the Dubs’ creaky core hold up for 82 regular-season games, starting Tuesday in Los Angeles on national television against the Lakers (7 p.m., NBC)? Maybe. OK, probably not. The Warriors have one of the most brutal travel schedules in the league, will always get their opponent’s best as a marquee matchup, and have 14 back-to-back sets (including two in the first two weeks) this season. Call it the Antiques Roadshow. But they’re going to give it an honest-to-goodness shot. And maybe, just maybe, it works out. Last season, the Warriors flamed out in the second round of the playoffs after Curry’s hamstring injury in Game 1 against the Timberwolves — an injury that marked the culmination of three straight months of playoff-level intensity for the Dubs to merely make the postseason. That kind of stress needs to be avoided at all costs this season. These old bodies won’t hold up under that pressure. Less sprinting, more mall walking. The good news for the Warriors is that this is their deepest roster in close to a decade. The ability to give the older “uncs” a veteran rest day now and again could allow Golden State to keep a brisk and steady pace of wins throughout the season. The solid contributions of Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga (until he’s traded, that is) should be good enough to survive the inevitable absences that define the modern NBA. A playoff berth — and not via the play-in tournament — should be the goal. Put a seasoned but healthy Warriors team in the pressure cooker that is the NBA playoffs, and anything can happen. It’s the Dubs’ pension plan for 2025-26. Of course, the most crucial player to the Warriors’ success is the human flamethrower, Curry. At 37, he looks like he’s aging backward, which is both a miracle of modern sports science and a testament to subsisting on a diet solely of opposing coaches’ tears. But even the Chef knows time is coming for him. He felt that acutely while on the bench as the Dubs’ season ended last May. He’s hoping that’s a one-off feeling. At the same time, amid his second-to-none work schedule, Curry understands his current career stage. “I know I don’t have many more (seasons) in front of me,” Curry said last month. Add in coach Steve Kerr willingly working on a lame-duck contract, and the Warriors could be looking for a new path forward within the year of saying hello to Butler, meaning that smell around Chase Center is one of desperation. But they could also replace it with the once-all-too-familiar smell of champagne and cigars. What’s your bet? Father Time or the greatest shooter who ever lived? Both are inevitable. One will win out this season.
