If Warriors Keep Their 2026 Nba Draft Lottery Pick, They Must Not Miss

If Warriors keep their 2026 NBA Draft lottery pick, they must not miss originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Warriors on Sunday will set foot into the last room they care to enter, yet they’re delighted to be there.
That’s the rational outlook of a team in the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery, a place generally reserved for losing records. Golden State earned its ticket to the festivities with a 37-45 season and its elimination in the play-in round.

The Warriors will be represented by assistant general manager Larry Harris, who is willing to consider any good-luck charms coming his way. They hold the No. 11 slot, with only a 2 percent chance of rising to No. 1. They have a 9.4 percent chance of landing in the top four of what evaluators consider the elite tier of a very deep draft.

“It’s really good,” Harris said Friday. “We certainly want to land in the top four. “It would be great to have the No. 1 pick, even two, three or four. Love to be greedy and get No. 1.”

Regardless of where the pick lands, it will play a crucial role in the Warriors reshaping a roster in need of an upgrade to compete in a deep Western Conference. Whether they keep it or trade it, this is their best chance to reverse their downward trajectory.

The question the Warriors’ front office must answer, certainly if they land among the top four: Do we keep the pick or trade it in a package that would return an established star young enough to energize the team’s aging core and perhaps be a pillar for the next generation?

This is Golden State’s fourth lottery pick in the 15 years since CEO Joe Lacob and his partners brought the team. They drafted 7-foot-1 center James Wiseman No. 2 overall in 2020, with 6-foot-7 forward Jonathan Kuminga (seventh) and 6-foot-6 wing Moses Moody (14th) coming in 2021. None of the three has achieved All-Star status, a level attained by multiple players taken later in those drafts.

This lottery pick is the Warriors’ opportunity to prove they have learned from the past and can apply those lessons to a franchise with an acute desire for a young star. To find their next All-Star, whether it’s someone with that distinction on his resumé or someone who projects to get there within a few years.

“With the prep work we’ve done and leading into the (draft) combine that’s starting next week,” Harris said, “we feel very, very, very good about this draft and getting someone that we can add to our roster that will be young, exciting, and our fans can get behind.”

They’ve put in the work, according to Harris, who says he personally attended roughly 90 college games last season, accounting for a fraction of those attended by the team’s five-person scouting staff.

The investment is in line with Lacob’s willingness to spend whatever it takes to pursue success. The franchise always exists at or above the luxury tax lines, and that’s tough to reconcile with a team that finished eight games below .500.

The finish was a reality check for a roster that last season paid franchise superstar Stephen Curry $59.6 million, secondary star Jimmy Butler III $54.1 million and four-time All-Star Draymond Green $25.9 million. Curry is 38, Butler and Green each 36. So, the quest for an infusion of impactful youth is borderline desperate.

The lottery is Golden State’s “prize” for a sub-mediocre season.

“We would prefer not to be in this lottery,” Harris conceded. “That would be first and foremost. But when you’re in it, yeah, I think you’re anxious. It’s like, anything else, it’s like, ‘Hey, we’ve done all this work, so how about let’s be rewarded and get the No. 1, two or three or four pick?’

“It makes the decisions much more impactful. When you’re that close to one, two, three or four, it opens up a lot more avenues with other teams.”

The hope is that Harris can bring the kind of good fortune that shone upon him 21 years ago, when he was the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks. Entering the 2005 lottery with the No. 6 pick, they scaled up to No. 1 and selected center Andrew Bogut.

No 7-foot center projects as a high lottery pick in the ‘26 draft, but the top four – forward Cameron Boozer, forward AJ Dybantsa, guard Darryn Peterson, center/forward Caleb Wilson – are all freshmen with intriguing but fickle upside.

If the Warriors reach the top four, they will have highly attractive options. If they stay at No. 11, they’ll have appealing options. Either way, their goal is to use the pick to address acute needs.

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