Warriors rejoin spacing revolution they started as 2025-26 NBA season begins

SAN FRANCISCO – The Warriors come into this season determined to rejoin the NBA revolution they started 10 years ago but in recent years has left them behind.

Remember when the Warriors were the NBA’s offensive trend-setters, driving the league toward a new frontier? Teams tried to emulate their strategies before realizing no one could replicate Stephen Curry.

Without Curry, they turned to quantity. They unleashed platoons – three shooters, or four, or even five – which allowed them to surpass the originators at the art of challenging a defense.

Golden State’s latest roster has enough deep shooters to allow coach Steve Kerr to lean into his most treasured offensive principle: Spacing. For the first time in 12 seasons, the Warriors can feature lineups with 3-point threats at all five positions.

And they still have Curry.

The Warriors also have Al Horford, the 39-year-old who will join 7-foot Quinten Post with the ability to threaten defenses beyond the arc. They have Buddy Hield, a 39.7-percent shooter from deep. Moses Moody shot 39.3 percent from deep last season before an injured finger led to a decline over the last month and Brandin Podziemski, at 37.8-percent in his first two seasons. Sometime in the coming weeks, they’ll have De’Anthony Melton and Seth Curry, whose career percentage from deep is better than his superstar older brother.

“Adding Al, we have a little bit more shooting down the lineup,” Steph Curry told NBC Sports Bay Area on Monday. “With QP, we saw him a little bit last year. It helps. That’s the way the league is going, and we’ve won kind of despite that over the years.”

While the rest of the league was loading up on shooters, the Warriors practically abandoned that idea. The Houston Rockets became an NBA championship contender after joining the revolution but were undone by their over-reliance on 3-pointers. The Dallas Mavericks, Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors became contenders through spacing the floor. The Oklahoma City Thunder won a championship playing a lot of four-out basketball around MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander.

Meanwhile, the Warriors were flailing in the NBA draft. Only once since taking Klay Thompson in 2011 have the Warriors drafted someone who projected as a dangerous 3-point threat: Jordan Poole, who arrived in 2019, one year after guard Jacob Evans III, a notoriously poor shooter. Wing Justinian Jessup was drafted in 2020 as a shooter but never reached the NBA. Guard Patrick McCaw brought good defensive instincts, but his 3-point shot was clunky. Patrick Baldwin Jr. (2022) was another failed attempt, and he’s still on the fringes of the league.

In the six seasons since Kevin Durant departed, only once have the Warriors assembled a reasonably deep roster of deep threats beyond Curry and Thompson, or last season, Curry and Hield. Big men Otto Porter Jr. and Nemanja Bjelica brought that component to the 2021-22 squad, and their presence was a significant factor in winning a championship.

They Warriors became champions behind the deep-shooting pyrotechnics of Curry and Thompson. Adding Durant in 2016 gave them three deep threats that, given Curry’s movement, often seemed like four.

When I asked Kerr a couple weeks ago if he’s ever in his previous 11 seasons coaching the Warriors had a roster with such a luxury of spacing, he made a concession, with a stipulation.

“Probably not – although I will say when you have Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry, the spacing doesn’t matter as much,” Kerr said. “You’re going to have three guys who can space. 

“But this is the first time we’ve really had a true pick-and-pop space 5 in Al Horford. QP at the end of the season last year gave us that dynamic, and you could see how effective it was. We’re excited about him and his ability to do that. To have two guys like that now, in an era when spacing has never been more important, gives us some things we can do differently.”

Horford is the biggest game-changer, even though he projects to play maybe 60 games, and rarely more than 24 minutes per. He averaged 62.7 games and 28.3 minutes over the last three seasons with the Celtics. But he shot 40.9 percent beyond the arc. He will be on a schedule not unlike that of former Warriors center Kevon Looney, but with more versatile set of skills, beginning with being scoring threat anywhere within 25 feet.

Horford’s presence, like that of Post, can open the floor for the likes of Jimmy Butler III and Jonathan Kuminga.

“It’s exciting,” Kerr said. “In theory, it gives Steph, Jimmy, JK, BP – all our guys who are playmakers – more room to get downhill. We’re preaching spacing every day. We’re still going to be a ball-movement team, a flow team, but in terms of overall team spacing, we’re really working hard on that.”

The Warriors in the preseason averaged 45.4 3-point attempts per game, shooting 36.6 percent. Their opponents averaged 37.2 such attempts per game, shooting only 30.6 percent. Moreover, 13 different players made at least three triples in the preseason, with six draining at least eight. Seth Curry, expected to rejoin the roster next month, did not play a minute.

After starting the trend and then going away from it, the Warriors are coming back. The OGs of the floor-spacing era are back in the fold. They’re coming hope, and it brings a level of comfort to the man who is most responsible.

“I think we’re smart enough to embrace a different style,” Curry told NBC Sports Bay Area. “We have stretch-5s that can really help us and do it on the fly but still not lose the identity of how we create shots with our off-ball movement. It’s not like you’re just going give it to somebody, have everybody to space out and go to work. That will never be Warrior basketball.”

“We want to be able to add a guy like JK and Jimmy to that mix, where they do what they do at a high level. But the mix and match that we do should hopefully carry us a long way.”

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