The Warriors entered NBA trade deadline season desperate to return not to contention, but simply to competitiveness. And Golden State certainly has emerged as a competitive contender after trading for six-time NBA All-Star Jimmy Butler on the eve of the Feb. 6 deadline.
The Warriors (34-28) have won nine of their first 10 games with Butler and, after Tuesday night’s 114-102 win over the New York Knicks, held onto the Western Conference’s highly sought-after No. 6 seed from the tumbling Los Angeles Clippers.
With radiant energy throughout the organization and profound on-court momentum heading into the final 20 games of the 2024-25 NBA season, the Warriors are going for more than just making the playoffs as a lower seed. Second-year Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski and 11th-year coach Steve Kerr told 95.7 The Game’s “Steiny and Guru” and “Willard and Dibs,” respectively, about Golden State’s newfound playoff-seeding ambitions on Wednesday.
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“I think the sixth seed was the bare-minimum expectation; from the staff, from us, after the trade deadline,” Podziemski told Evan Giddings and Guru Johnson. “And obviously we’re here [sixth seed] now, we’re like three games behind the [Houston] Rockets for the five spot. The three seed is only [5.5 games] away.
“We got the whole month of March and a little bit of April left ... easy-strength schedule in the Western Conference left and the teams above us got to play each other a couple times, so someone’s going to lose. Thankfully, Houston, we have the tiebreaker with them, we [have the] Memphis [Grizzlies] tiebreaker. We’re just trying to get as high as we can. The higher we can get, the more home games we can get in the playoffs. That’s the goal.”
The Warriors aren’t content with barely avoiding the NBA play-in tournament; they’re aiming for a spot in the West’s top half.
As Podziemski mentioned, Golden State very well can pass the Grizzlies (38-23, No. 4 seed) and the Rockets (37-25, No. 5 seed). For what it’s worth, Memphis is 3-7 over its last 10 and Houston is 5-5.
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Kerr essentially agreed with Podziemski’s outlook on the Warriors’ push for higher playoff seeding.
“I think we can move up further now, given what’s transpired the last couple weeks,” Kerr told Mark Willard and Dan Dibley. “We’ve made a pretty quick rise up the standings. We’re only a few games behind Houston, We have the tiebreaker over them … we play them one more time; I don’t think that spot [No. 5] is out of the question.”
However, Kerr isn’t looking too far ahead. The nine-time NBA champion is keeping track of the West’s playoff race on a game-by-game basis.
“You start looking too far ahead and you get out of sorts," Kerr said. "The only thing we’re focused on is just winning the next game. But of course, we look at the standings every day and look at the scores every night, and we’re trying to climb as high as we can, for sure.”
The No. 1-seeded Oklahoma Thunder (50-11) virtually has the top spot locked up. And the Los Angeles Lakers (39-21, No. 2 seed) and the Denver Nuggets (39-22, No. 3 seed) will be hard to catch – though not impossible, for Golden State at least.
But the surging Warriors surely are on the right path to hosting at least a first-round playoff series at Chase Center. Considering where Golden State was roughly a month ago, Podziemski, Kerr and the Warriors will take it.