Steve Kerr is getting closer to a starting five. He is also making clear that the Warriors are still a long way from looking like a finished team.
Kerr said he is leaning toward a lineup of Brandin Podziemski, Gui Santos and Yaxel Lendeborg alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green. But the coach paired that growing clarity with a blunt assessment of where Golden State stands a week before the regular season.
“We’re not anywhere close to where we want to be, but we’re working on the right things,” Kerr said.
That tension — one question getting answered while another remains open — has become the defining theme of the final stretch of the preseason. The Warriors have not finalized their starting lineup, but they are close enough that the shape of it is becoming visible. What is less settled is whether that structure translates into readiness.
Friday night’s preseason finale against the Portland Trail Blazers at Chase Center is the last chance to sort through those details before the season begins Wednesday, Oct. 21. Kerr has said the team is a week away from the regular season, which leaves little time for the kind of experimentation that preseason usually allows.
Podziemski looks like the clearest piece of the puzzle. He is considered a near-lock to start after signing a five-year, $110 million extension, and his strong training camp has only reinforced that status. Lendeborg, the team’s first-round pick in June’s draft, has also impressed in camp and is part of the lineup Kerr is leaning toward.
Santos is in that mix as well, giving the Warriors a projected starting group that would pair two established veterans with three players whose roles are still being defined. That is part of what makes the current moment feel both orderly and unfinished: the names are starting to settle, but the broader picture is not.
Kerr has not finalized the starting lineup, and the uncertainty is not limited to one spot. Al Horford’s inability to play in back-to-backs means he cannot be treated as a fixed starter, and Charles Bassey, who started in Draymond Green’s absence during the preseason win over the Lakers, is not viewed as a starting candidate at the moment.
That Lakers game offered a useful snapshot, but not a clean answer. Golden State won 101-89 in Las Vegas, yet Kerr still described the team’s execution as “scattered” at this point. He said the Warriors are “working on the right things,” but the performance did not erase the larger questions about cohesion and consistency.
The contrast is what makes the final preseason game matter. The Warriors may be close to naming a starting five, but Kerr’s comments suggest that settling the lineup is only one part of the job. The other part — getting the group to look connected, organized and ready — is still in front of them.