Kristaps Porzingis finds his stride with Warriors in March

How likely is it that the Warriors’ front office was sitting in a war room in 2015, sweating over draft boards and dreaming about the 7-foot-2 Kristaps Porzingis? KP went 4th in that draft to the New York Knicks, while the Dubs were patiently waiting at 30 for Kevon Looney, the cherry atop their championship sundae.

Golden State had other things on their mind. Little things, like dismantling everything LeBron James thought he’d built in Cleveland, destroying Lob City forever , and quietly assembling the most devastating offensive ecosystem the NBA had ever seen. The lottery? That was somebody else’s problem.

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A decade later, Porzingis is wearing blue and gold at a time when the player and franchise need each other more than ever.

His path here reads like a career that kept getting interrupted right before the good part. He announced himself as a Latvian phenomenon in New York, earned Rookie of the Year votes, made All-Star teams, and looked like the future of the position. Then his Achilles, knees, back, hamstring, calves all at some point or another began to betray him. Trades to Dallas, Washington, Boston, Atlanta. And woven through all of it, reports of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a cardiovascular condition most fans couldn’t pronounce until it apparently started quietly rearranging his availability on a near-monthly basis. The league had a decade of watching one of the most gifted big men on the planet fight logistics as hard as he fought opposing defenses. By the time Golden State called, he was arriving as more a question than the prize.

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But that’s actually when the Warriors like their veterans best.

Andrew Bogut showed up battered from Milwaukee and became the defensive spine of a title team. Shaun Livingston, whose 2007 knee injury was so severe it nearly ended everything, reinvented himself as the most reliable backup point guard in the league. Vets like Nick Young, JaVale McGee, and late-career David West came aboard the dynasty and became made men.

The pattern isn’t coincidence. Golden State has demonstrated a specific talent for receiving complicated…

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Publish date : 2026-03-31 10:24:00

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