The Golden State Warriors are running back a team that finished tenth in the Western Conference and failed to make the playoffs.

They haven’t made the playoffs in two of the last three seasons, but there is optimism surrounding the team this year, assuming Steph Curry can stay healthy.

Curry was limited to just 43 games last season due to lower-body injuries. The Warriors were 24-19 when he played, and he remains a game-changing player. The team has plenty of experience with Draymond Green, Kristaps Porzingis, and Al Horford, and they are expecting a leap from young players like Brandin Podziemski and Will Richard, along with the addition of rookie Yaxel Lendeborg.

While many pundits and experts don’t believe the Warriors are a serious championship contender, head coach Steve Kerr believes the team can be competitive.

“We lost too many close games. We gave too many games away in the margins… The vision this year is to clean that stuff up and build some momentum,” he said at media day.

The Warriors were 17-22 in clutch games last season, which was 23rd in the league. They lost the seventh-most clutch games.

They did have a positive net rating in the clutch at +2.7, which was the 11th-best clutch net rating.

The numbers show that Kerr might have a point about how many close games the Warriors lost and how it influenced the season.

Having the 11th-best net rating in clutch situations, but the 23rd-best clutch winning percentage shows that the margins were thin and they didn’t make a play or two in the final five minutes, or a bounce or two went the other way.

They didn’t play bad basketball in the clutch; they just didn’t quite have enough to get over the finish line.

If they can catch some breaks in key moments this year and the ball bounces the other way, maybe some of those losses will turn into wins.

The margin is once again thin for the Warriors, though, especially without Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody to start the season. Butler is sidelined with a torn ACL, and Moody is out with a torn patellar tendon.

Butler has been a key player since he was acquired in 2025, and his known for performing well down the stretch. He takes a lot of pressure off of Curry, and with him out of the lineup, games become tougher to win.

It won’t be easy for the Warriors, but perhaps they can be more competitive than people think.