For the last 10 games, the Golden State Warriors have been in a disastrous slump. Winning only three of those games, one might say the team’s recent struggles have been due to Stephen Curry’s absences after his recent tailbone injury. Curry is a major factor in the Warriors’ success: without him, the team lost by 53 points (and at one point were down by as much as 60) to the Raptors, an underwhelming squad that is 19-30 this season.

What also cannot be ignored is that the three out of 10 games they won have been against mediocre teams at best, and only one of those games was without Curry. When Curry is in the lineup, he is consistently called upon to put up big numbers in order for them to squeak by with a win.

This is because the role players on the team simply aren’t cutting it. On paper, players like Kelly Oubre and Andrew Wiggins seem like a great match, but they’re just not a good fit. Other players such as Damian Lee who is a solid shooter and Juan Toscano-Anderson who is a solid two-way player with good efficiency, but the two are being asked to perform at a level beyond their abilities. 

Lee remains the team’s “sixth man” while only averaging six points a night. Toscano-Anderson, who was called up from the G League (minor league NBA) around a year ago, has been starting for the team on some occasions while averaging less than five points a game.

Next, the team has two rookies, Nico Mannion and James Wiseman, who may one day become fantastic NBA players, but right now they are simply too young and underdeveloped to have a strong, positive impact on the team’s chances. 

The Warriors really only have two options at the moment: they can either rebuild for the distant future or trade away young players and future draft picks for pieces to fit the current roster. Even when Klay Thompson comes back, and even if he is 100 percent the player he was before his injuries, the current setup of relying on young and inexperienced role players while hoping Curry drops 30 to 40 points a night over 82 games is not a winning formula. 

Neither option guarantees the team success, which is why I think the Warriors’ best option is to go all in. Stephen Curry is a once-in-a-generation athlete, the best three-point shooter to ever play the game. What are the chances that they can ever get a player like him again if they rebuild? As Michael Jordan said, after hearing that the Bulls’ owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, and general manager Jerry Krause, wanted to rebuild the team after winning the 1997 NBA Finals: “No one is guaranteed rebuilding in two, three, or four years.  The Cubs have been rebuilding for 42 years.” Overall, the Warriors need to find a way to be able to pick up a star-caliber player with the young assets and draft picks they have because of the fact rebuilding is not guaranteed to work out due to the draft being so random and they have a once in a generational talent in Curry which is very rare to come by.