Grading Warriors' 2025-26 Season As Team Enters Much-needed Nba All-star Break

Grading Warriors' 2025-26 season as team enters much-needed NBA All-Star break originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Rest and a reset, physically and emotionally, are a must for the Warriors with 27 games remaining in the 2025-26 NBA regular season.

Just like last season and the preceding years as well, the All-Star break has come at the perfect time for the Warriors. Coach Steve Kerr knows it and can feel it.

“Every year the All-Star break just seems to come at the right time,” Kerr said prior to the Warriors’ win Monday night against the Memphis Grizzlies. “The players are pretty wiped out.”

The Warriors have gone through the wringer this season. Multiple factors have led to them going into the break with a 29-26 record and being far behind their preseason expectations. There have been devastating injuries, drama, non-stop storylines and a whole lot of highs and lows.

Now that the Warriors can take a breather and get away from the game for a few days, here’s how they grade out going into the stretch run.

Offense 

Grading the Warriors’ offense whenever Steph Curry misses time, and now an injured Jimmy Butler too, is an incomplete picture. The Warriors on the season are going into the All-Star break ranked 15th in offensive rating (114.3), exactly in the middle of the league. They’re also exactly 15th since the new year began, but 28th after losing Butler for the season. 

The Warriors inconsistently still rely heavily on the 3-point line, whether Curry suits up or not. They have one or two players who can actually drive into the teeth of the defense and make plays. Butler was their best player out of the post, and they’ve recently turned to big man Al Horford down low. 

Simply put, this has been an average offense all season.

Grade: C

Defense 

Defense has been a different story for the Warriors. Going into the break, the Warriors are eighth in defensive rating (112.5) and have been top 10 for quite some time now. Since Jan. 1, however, the Warriors’ defense has dropped to league average at 15th overall (113.7).

Looking at the traditional numbers, the Warriors are third in steals per game (10.0) and a lowly 22nd in blocked shots per game (4.4). They have the pests and a smart system, and also still lack size. A healthy Horford has been a huge help protecting the rim, and so should bringing in a 7-foot-2 reinforcement.

The Warriors are a gritty but imperfect defensive bunch.

Grade: B-

Stars

The All-Star Game won’t be the same without Curry. The reigning All-Star Game MVP is basketball’s best showman and fans of all ages flock to him. And if it weren’t for a few health setbacks, Curry would be well on his way to another All-NBA nod. 

Curry is leading the NBA in 3-point attempts per game (11.5), 3-pointers made per game (4.5) and free throw percentage (93.1). In 39 games, Curry is averaging 27.2 points, 3.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game while shooting 46.8 percent from the field and 39.1 percent from 3-point range. Defenses continue to treat him like he’s about to turn 28 instead of 38, and understandably so. But losing his co-star was a major blow. 

Before going down to a season-ending torn ACL, Butler was all the Warriors could ask for. He was dominant the first three weeks of January and finished his second season with the Warriors, averaging 20.0 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game (38 games) with 51.9/37.6/86.4 shooting splits. Butler, by every advanced metric, was a top 15 to 20 player in the entire league. 

Rounding out the Warriors’ Big Three is Draymond Green. This season hasn’t been as kind to Green as it has to Curry and Butler, health withstanding. Green is averaging his fewest minutes per game since his second season, his fewest rebounds per game since his second season, his fewest assists per game since his third season and his lowest field goal percentage since the Warriors’ lost 2019-20 season. 

The All-Star break is as needed for him as anybody. 

Grade: B+ 

Additions 

The Warriors’ one addition at the trade deadline can’t be mentioned here until the final report card of the season. Kristaps Porzingis played 17 games for the Atlanta Hawks, and if all goes right, he’s expected to make his Warriors debut in the team’s first game coming out of the break on Feb. 19 against the Boston Celtics, the team he won the 2024 championship with.

Seth Curry is excluded since he was a late signing as the team’s 15th man and has played two games for a total of 32 minutes this season.

That leaves Horford, De’Anthony Melton and rookie Will Richard.

Horford and Melton being healthy and consistent has been a revelation for the Warriors. Melton ranks seventh in the NBA in plus/minus since season debut on Dec. 4, and Horford has been a shining example of fundamentals mixed with heart and hustle at 39 years old. Since Christmas, Horford has averaged 8.8 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.1 blocked shots while playing 20.1 minutes per game.

How many other second-round picks from last June’s NBA draft have been as good as Richard? How many players in the entire draft have been as good as him? Richard, taken No. 56 overall, has been a top 10 player in his draft class.

Grade: B

Youth

Sending Jonathan Kuminga, plus Buddy Hield, to the Hawks for Porzingis put an unceremonious end to his Warriors tenure and the team’s Two Timelines Plan. Kuminga was in more headlines than games played this season and averaged 12.1 points and 5.9 rebounds per game in his fifth season for the team that drafted him No. 7 overall in 2021.

He wasn’t the only youngster to pack his bags. Trayce Jackson-Davis was sent to the Toronto Raptors for a 2026 second-round draft pick. Fellow center Quinten Post has also seen his role diminished as of late. 

But Moses Mody started each of the Warriors’ last 29 games. He has scored in double figures in 14 of his last 15 games and easily is having the best season of his five-year career. 

While Moody has entrenched himself in the starting five, Brandin Podziemski is a key player off the bench with 19 starts sprinkled in. Podziemski’s stats are incredibly similar to last season. Though he hasn’t made the leap in Year 3, Podziemski is a solid rotation player whose ceiling might not be much higher than his floor.

It’s time to make an addition to this category, and the player probably should have been here long ago. Gui Santos is 23 years old and has grown into much more than a spark of energy and effort. He works with almost any lineup, gives the Warriors real size and goes into the break having scored 10-plus points in seven of his last eight games after having eight such all last season.

Grade: C+

Health 

Only one scenario could bring this grade down to an F: Curry sustaining an injury like Butler’s. 

Any chances of the Warriors seriously competing for a championship went out the window the moment Butler let out a scream and held his knee on Golden State’s home court. The Warriors now are 4-7 since his injury and 6-11 on the season without Butler. 

Curry missed the Warriors’ final five games going into the break because of right patellofemoral pain syndrome, an issue that, in layman’s terms, is called “runner’s knee.” It could always be worse. That world, however, would be doomsday for the Warriors. 

Grade: D- 

Overall 

“We’ve had three different teams this year,” Melton said Wednesday night.

Early on, the Warriors faced the difficulty of a schedule no other team in the league had to deal with, while Melton still was rehabbing and Horford couldn’t stay healthy. They got healthy, were hitting their stride and then the season turned upside down with Butler on the ground. The Warriors now are in recovery mode, waiting for a healthy Curry and Porzingis to hopefully be ready to roll right out of the break.

Being where they are in the standings and staring at their record doesn’t meet preseason expectations. But multiple obstacles have got in the way, and with 27 games remaining the Warriors are the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference and have a very hard but somewhat possible path to a top-6 seed. 

At the very least, the Warriors are bound for another date with the play-in tournament.

Overall: C+

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