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The Golden State Warriors season is complete. They finished the coronavirus-altered year with a 15-50 record, good for last in the league and a spot among the eight teams that did not get invited to the season restart.
Now they focus on the draft, free agency, and most importantly, getting Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green fully healthy so they can try and make a title run in 2020-21, assuming there is a season.
No one on the Warriors will be winning any hardware when awards season comes around, but that won’t stop us from doling out some Warriors-specific awards.
But with a team this bad, the answers are murky. So I need your help. Help me out, Dub Nation.
Who was the Warriors Most Valuable Player?
How do you choose an MVP for a 15-win team? There may be wrong answers, but I don’t think there’s any right one.
Do you opt for Curry, who only needed five games to prove he was far and away the team’s bet player, and whose absence is reasons A, B, and C for the team’s poor year?
Or do you choose Eric Paschall, who was the primary reason you still felt compelled to turn on Dubs games a few times a week?
My choice is going to be very controversial: Green. Yes, Green had a wildly disappointing season (more on that later), and yes, no player underperformed their talent level by as much. It wasn’t even close.
But Green is so good — and the Warriors were so devoid of talent — that even the most disappointing version of him was better than anyone else who suited up regularly.
It was frustrating to watch, and at times painful. But he was still, in my opinion, the player who most contributed to the Warriors doing what little winning they did.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 MVP?
This poll is closed
-
15%
Draymond Green
(21 votes) -
58%
Eric Paschall
(82 votes) -
4%
Damion Lee
(6 votes) -
10%
D’Angelo Russell
(14 votes) -
7%
Steph Curry
(11 votes) -
3%
Other
(5 votes)
Who was the Warriors Defensive Player of the Year?
Well, this one is pretty similar to MVP. Green was highly disappointing on the defensive end ... but he was still good.
It’s possible for a player to be extremely disappointing and still very good, and that was Green’s defensive year (his offensive year? Not so much).
Player Impact Plus Minus gave Green the 24th-best defensive rating in the league — a far cry from his Defensive Player of the Year days, but still a very good mark.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 DPOY?
This poll is closed
-
46%
Draymond Green
(61 votes) -
29%
Marquese Chriss
(38 votes) -
3%
Eric Paschall
(4 votes) -
11%
Glenn Robinson III
(15 votes) -
3%
Willie Cauley-Stein
(5 votes) -
1%
Andrew Wiggins
(2 votes) -
0%
Alec Burks
(1 vote) -
3%
Other
(5 votes)
Who was the Warriors Rookie of the Year?
I’m going to say something controversial: Even after Paschall’s outstanding rookie campaign, I still think Jordan Poole has the brightest future of any Warriors rookie. Poole flashed the playmaking chops and defensive potential that made me think he could by a dynamic player if his jump shot comes around, as it’s expected to.
But this isn’t a future award, and Paschall was clearly the team’s best rookie.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 ROY?
This poll is closed
-
96%
Eric Paschall
(125 votes) -
0%
Jordan Poole
(1 vote) -
0%
Alen Smailagić
(0 votes) -
1%
Juan Toscano-Anderson
(2 votes) -
0%
Mychal Mulder
(1 vote) -
0%
Ky Bowman
(1 vote)
Who was the Warriors Most Improved Player?
For the purpose of this exercise, I’m defining the award the way it is defined when NBA media members vote on it: Most improvement year over year. So while a player like Poole ended the year way better than he started it, he doesn’t count.
Some people might go the Andrew Wiggins route, since he seemed notably better in a Warriors uniform than he had been in a Minnesota Timberwolves one. But to me, this award belongs firmly to Marquese Chriss, who wasn’t even supposed to make the roster (or the league this year) but now looks like a staple of next year’s team.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 MIP?
This poll is closed
-
87%
Marquese Chriss
(109 votes) -
3%
Andrew Wiggins
(4 votes) -
2%
Alec Burks
(3 votes) -
5%
Glenn Robinson III
(7 votes) -
1%
Other
(2 votes)
Who was the Warriors Most Disappointing Player?
Unless you want to fault Curry for his injury, there would seem to only be two options here: Green, and D’Angelo Russell. Neither player was anywhere near as good as they needed to be for Golden State to have a good year.
For me the choice is easy: Green, simply because I never thought Russell was going to be particularly good.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 MDP?
This poll is closed
-
28%
Draymond Green
(35 votes) -
11%
D’Angelo Russell
(14 votes) -
19%
Jordan Poole
(24 votes) -
1%
Andrew Wiggins
(2 votes) -
37%
Willie Cauley-Stein
(47 votes) -
2%
Other
(3 votes)
Who was the Warriors Most Surprising Player?
“Most surprising,” in this case, means good.
I was a little tempted to have Poole be my answer here, simply because he flashed some tools that I had absolutely no clue he had. But I have to pick Paschall, who simply was an entirely different player than anyone was expecting when the Warriors used a second-round pick on him.
Poll
Who was the Warriors 2019-20 MSP?
This poll is closed
-
51%
Eric Paschall
(63 votes) -
25%
Marquese Chriss
(31 votes) -
0%
Jordan Poole
(1 vote) -
10%
Damion Lee
(13 votes) -
3%
Andrew Wiggins
(4 votes) -
7%
Ky Bowman
(9 votes) -
0%
Other
(1 vote)
Well, this was a depressing article. Sorry.