I recently heard Klay say in an interview, "I'm willing to play a small role in order to stay on the only team I've played for in my career." I can understand the first half of these words, after all, people have feelings, not everyone is James found that there was no hope of staying in this team to win the championship and chose to run away. But when I listened to the second half of the sentence, I was still very emotional.
Now the Warriors' meritorious players can still make up a starting lineup: trio + Looney and Wiggins, and the first four have experienced the most glorious "cosmic bravery" period. Like the Warriors, they have risen from obscurity to the top, but being a professional player is as much a challenge as life. Yes, injuries are an athlete's natural enemy, but there is much more to a career as an athlete than meets that.
What are the reasons for the decline of professional players and the specific aspects of the decline in Douyin Many bloggers on WeChat*** have analyzed it in detail, and I don't need to go into detail here. From my observations of professional players in all ball sports, those who reach the top can maintain their peak until they are 35 years old. Even after the age of 35, if they can play in a reasonable way, have a clear position on the court and can distribute their physical energy reasonably, they can play until they are 40 years old.
Curry is 36 years old, Thompson is 33 years old, Wiggins, who was born in '95, is 29 years old, and Looney, who was born in '96, is 28 years old. They're not 40 years old, so the Warriors with these veterans will never be completely competitive. And the Warriors with Kerr as the head coach should always be treated as a championship-caliber team!
Why can young players like Looney Poole play in the past? Why did Wiggins find his niche with the Warriors after a career-spanning years with the Timberwolves? The reason why the current Moody Kuminga and Podemsky can grow up rapidly is, to put it bluntly, Cole's "good teaching" and the support given by meritorious veterans such as Kuchaitang. And those players who don't play are either not suitable for the Warriors, or the ball quotient is too poor to understand Kerr's clever technical and tactical system and thinking.
I'll admit that Thompson was at a low point in his career, Green, Wiggins, Looney, but they're going to get through it! As I said before, professional players not only have to face the two enemies of injury and age, but also the enemy of the mind: career is the same as life, from a certain point you will find that what once made you successful, what you can easily do, suddenly can't be done, at this time you need to change your role and thinking, and isn't this what Clay is trying to do now?
I'm not a die-hard fan of the Warriors, but I believe that this group of meritorious players who have completed the ideological transformation and broken through the bottleneck of the mental level have every opportunity to fight for the fifth championship of their careers while the gas tank is still fueled.