Since Kevin Durant’s departure in the summer of 2019, the Warriors have searched and been connected to a number of stars and big names around the NBA.
The conference finals currently feature a few, such as Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam and New York Knicks forward OG Anunoby. Add Pacers center Myles Turner to the mix, too.
There have been odd-pairing realities such as adding D’Angelo Russell and Kelly Oubre Jr., and the rumors of LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and even trying to reunite with Durant at this season’s trade deadline last February. The Warriors instead acquired Jimmy Butler, giving Steph Curry a co-star on the same timeline as him, putting everything into these next few seasons.
With the five-year anniversary of the original date for the 2020 NBA Draft, before being delayed five months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, now less than a month away, it’s crystal clear who has been the Warriors’ biggest miss. It’s the man who has become a Midwest hero while staking his claim as a villain for all of New York.
Tyrese Haliburton is the real one who got away.
Playing revisionist history with the 2020 draft isn’t going to do the Warriors any favors. Gifted the No. 2 overall pick after a season in which Durant had already left for the Brooklyn Nets, Klay Thompson missed the entire year to a torn ACL he sustained in the 2019 NBA Finals, a broken hand held Curry to just five games and the Warriors won a total of 15, the front office stood on a landmine.
Hindsight is always an advantage in an argument. The Warriors saw a team ravaged by injuries, undersold what Curry still could accomplish after five straight trips to the Finals and began their failed two-timeline project, starting with James Wiseman.
Packaging the pick for another proven player or trading back should have been the two options the Warriors were weighing with their top pick. If the Warriors were slotted anywhere lower, Haliburton believes he would have been the selection, as opposed to sliding all the way to the Sacramento Kings at No. 12.
“I was disappointed that they (had) the No. 2 pick because I felt like if they were anywhere out of the top three, I felt like I was going to be the pick,” Haliburton told Tim Kawakami, then of The Athletic, in December of 2023.
A contingent of Warriors coach Steve Kerr, owner Joe Lacob and then-general manager Bob Myers led a private pre-draft workout at a Las Vegas gym to see what Haliburton was all about. He displayed all the skills that now have him one win away from the Finals. Haliburton called that session “the best workout probably of my life.”
That’s the way Myers remembers it, too.
“He did what he does,” Myers said in December of 2023 ahead of a Pacers vs. Milwaukee Bucks game while on the set of ESPN’s “NBA Countdown.” “He made a ton of shots and we looked at each other and said, ‘He might be pretty good.’ Different kind of shot, kind of a set shot, but he made them all.
“What bothers me more than anything was his workout was good (but) when we met with him after, I should have known then because of how he is as a person and as a leader. Because you meet with people, you talk to them. But that conversation left a mark because of how smart he is and how confident (he is). It’s not fake, it’s not arrogant, it’s confidence.”
Everyone has tried to change Haliburton’s unorthodox shot at some point in his career. His first two weeks at Iowa State, coach Steve Prohm went through any drill he could think of to get Haliburton to shoot with more traditional fundamentals. Yet every time Haliburton used his mechanics, the ball kept going in.
He had seen enough. Prohm was convinced to let Haliburton shoot his way for as long as he’d be at Iowa State. Kerr was on the same page as Prohm after going through his workout and watching film of him shoot 42.6 percent on threes in two college seasons – 43.4 percent on 3.2 attempts per game as a freshman mostly playing shooting guard, and then 41.9 percent his sophomore year when Haliburton had a way higher usage rate with the ball in his hands as a point guard who put up 5.2 threes per game.
Kerr had one message after the draft to one of his former assistants who was given the opportunity to mold Haliburton: Don’t change him.
“The Warriors were after me pretty hard,” Haliburton revealed on a 2023 episode of “The Old Man And The Three.” “Coach Kerr called Coach [Luke] Walton when I got drafted and was like, ‘We love him. Love his jumper, don’t touch it. It’s going to go in.’ “
Isn’t it ironic? The Warriors were known to be high on Haliburton going into the draft. Just not at No. 2.
For how much love he has for Jonathan Kuminga, Lacob was even more taken aback by the potential of Wiseman on a team that figured get Thompson back, witnessed the development of Jordan Poole in what was otherwise a lost season and always has lacked the size the big man who played three college games would have brought.
But Thompson tore his Achilles in a pickup game the day of the 2020 draft, right as he was expected to reunite with his Splash Brother and make another run with the Warriors. Haliburton was the one in waiting, and he loved the idea of being Curry’s teammate.
“That would be huge,” Haliburton said in an NBA Draft Combine Zoom call. “Steph being one of the best point guards ever to play the game of basketball and probably the best shooter ever to play the game of basketball, it would be big for me to learn from him and just kind of pick his brain.
“And then take that challenge on in practice as well, because if I can stay in front of Steph and guard, I feel like I could probably guard anybody.”
There isn’t anything that Kerr loves more than a player who has a natural feel for passing. Haliburton in that same Zoom declared himself to be the best facilitator in the draft, a trait that became obvious early on. Haliburton just played a perfect – yes, perfect – game of basketball in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, dropping 32 points, with 12 rebounds and 15 assists without a single turnover, becoming the first player in playoff history to have that stat line.
Oh, and his four steals were a nice little addition as well.
He has the size at 6-foot-5 that has always worked next to Curry. Haliburton already had experience on and off the ball in college. He wasn’t a teenager or one-and-done player, but someone who had 57 games of college experience and was two months from turning 21 years old when Haliburton played 30 minutes for the Kings in his NBA debut.
When he first played for Kerr at the 2023 FIBA Men’s World Cup, Haliburton shot 51 percent from the field with a 47.2 3-point percentage and led Team USA in both assists and steals. When he won gold at last year’s Paris Summer Olympics, Haliburton didn’t complain about his role and lack of playing time next to a long line of Hall of Famers but learned while quietly nursing an injury and soaking in the experience.
The names are aplenty. The theoretical star power has created some crazy Photoshop graphics. Butler is here now, and that’s the reality the Warriors must navigate to add to their hardware.
As the Warriors watch the playoffs from home or anywhere else, Haliburton is the real one who got away, the star who could have brought even more bling in the present and built a golden bridge to more dynastic years in the future.
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