Sports
Predicting Warriors' Breakout Players for 2023-24 NBA Season – Bleacher Report
The Golden State Warriors’ hopes for the 2023-24 NBA season might be mostly tied to a veteran core, but they still have a few breakout candidates on their roster.
If enough of these pan out, the Dubs’ championship chances could become exponentially greater.
The following three players figure to have the greatest opportunity for skyrocketing their stock this season.
Despite being the second-to-last pick in this year’s draft, Jackson-Davis has a chance to immediately step into a rotation role.
His four-year stay at Indiana gave him more polish than most incoming rookies, and he happened to flash a Warriors-style skill set throughout his tenure. His passing growth in particular (career-high 4.0 assists per outing this past season) makes it easy to imagine he could hit the ground sprinting in Golden State.
“What I like about Trayce; he plays the way we like to play,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters. “Good passer, dribble handoff guy at the top of the key, good screener, gives us a lob threat that we don’t otherwise have, which is a really nice addition.”
Jackson-Davis can both fit in as a passer and quick processor and stand out as an above-the-rim big. That means he should not only thrive in this system but also has a chance to enhance it by adding athleticism at the center spot.
Nothing would brighten this organization’s outlook more than Kuminga’s star rising.
Drafted seventh overall in 2021, he has tantalized with enviable physical tools and flashes of high-level ability, but he has yet to harness everything consistently. He is hoping that a tireless offseason will unlock what could be game-breaking ability.
“At some point, it’s going to come to everybody’s eyes,” Kuminga told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole. “And I’m just looking forward to that. At some point, all the work that I did throughout this summer is going to pop out to everybody.”
Kuminga’s first priority is becoming a rotation regular, but the opportunity is there for him to become so much more. He put that potential on full display during the club’s preseason opener, netting a team-high 24 points (8-of-14 shooting) to go along with eight rebounds, four assists and two blocks in his 24 minutes.
Moody perhaps hasn’t transitioned quite as smoothly as some expected when Golden State made him the No. 14 pick of the 2021 draft, but he is clearly trending up.
He played more games (52 to 63) and more minutes (11.7 to 13) as a sophomore than he did as a rookie, and he carved out an even bigger role in the team’s most recent playoff trip. He appeared in 12 of the team’s 13 postseason contests and wound up logging the club’s eighth-most minutes in the Western Conference semifinals.
He can energize this group with his shot-making and defensive activity, and he has done a better job of cleaning up—and speeding up—his decision-making. His lowest turnover percentage to date was the 4.0 mark he posted in the 2023 playoffs, per Basketball-Reference.
If the Warriors have more trust in him, his role could grow substantially. They need more youthful energy and athleticism in their backcourt group, and he has the best chance to scratch those itches.