Warriors’ all-2000s team: No, it’s not just the 2017 starters

This is the last in a series on the major Bay Area pro teams’ top performers of the last 25 years. The all-2000s 49ers, Sharks and Giants were unveiled over the last week.

If most of the players on this list celebrating the first 25 years of 21st-century Warriors basketball are from after 2010, that’s not a coincidence.

In the first 10 years of the millennium, the Warriors made one postseason run. They shuffled through five head coaches. They were a cult classic: a local club with a rabid fan base who endured what was at one point the longest playoff drought in the league.

Then they drafted Steph Curry.

In Curry’s 16 seasons with the Warriors, Golden State has won four championships and made the NBA Finals twice more. Since 2011, no team has won more games. They became the class of the NBA, both on the court and in the boardroom. They may not have been light years ahead of everyone, but they definitely catapulted into pole position as a perennial winner and league darling.

The 2017 squad has a convincing argument as the greatest team ever. That team didn’t set the regular-season wins record like Golden State did the year before, but it solved basketball like no other group has. Those Warriors introduced an aura of inevitability to the inherently unpredictable enterprise of the sport. That closing lineup captures the height of the Warriors’ golden era.

With this 10-man rotation of the best Warriors of the past 25 years, Steve Kerr — the obvious All-Century Warriors head coach — won’t have a problem finding lineup combinations that work.

Point guard: Steph Curry

Two league MVPs, including the only unanimous one ever, four championships, 10 All-Star and All-NBA selections, two scoring titles, a steals title, All-Star and Finals MVP.

Perhaps the most influential player to ever touch a ball, Curry changed the way basketball is played at every level. And with the Warriors, he turned the franchise from a medium-sized sports organization into one worth the GDP of a small country.

There will never be another Steph Curry, and Warriors fans are the luckiest alive to have watched him grow, amaze, overcome, revolutionize the sport, shoulder the franchise and blossom into an all-time icon.

Shooting guard: Klay Thompson

There are no championships without Klay. No Splash Bros without Klay. No legendary Game 6s without Klay. No 37-point quarter or 60 points on 11 dribbles.

Small forward: Andre Iguodala

The Warriors’ dynasty took off when Iguodala bought into coming off the bench. He was an All-Star before then, but by committing to a role with lesser status, the 2015 Finals MVP became the embodiment of a champion.

Power forward: Kevin Durant

They won an NBA-record 73 games then replaced Harrison Barnes with Kevin Durant. All these years later, it’s still absurd to think about.

Durant was only a Warrior for three seasons. But two Finals MVP awards, three All-NBA selections, cheat-code scoring and two unimpeachable titles make him an easy pick.

Center: Draymond Green

The defining defender of his generation, even if he doesn’t have as much Defensive Player of the Year hardware as others. What Curry is to the revolution of offense, Green is to the other end of the court.

The Warriors’ defensive rating in their championship years? First, second, 11th, and first. That’s Draymond.

Sixth Man: Andrew Bogut

When Kerr took over, he considered Bogut the best defensive big in the game. The Warriors ran much of their halfcourt offense through him, using his screen-setting and passing as a hub. In five seasons as a Warrior, Bogut won a championship and finished in the top 10 of Defensive Player of the Year voting twice.

Bench: David Lee

Lee ranks seventh in win shares among Warriors this century — just 0.2 behind Iguodala. The franchise reached new heights when Green usurped Lee in the starting lineup, but Lee was a two-time All-Star in his own right.

A nightly double-double threat, Lee was the last of his kind: a ground-bound footwork savant on the block who played true power forward without being able to stretch the floor. On this list, Lee represents the bridge between a bygone era and the current one.

Bench: Jason Richardson

The first holdover from the pre-dynasty years, Richardson played the fourth-most games as a Warrior in the 2000s — behind only Curry, Thompson and Green. Never an All-Star but often exciting, Richardson became the first player since Michael Jordan to win back-to-back dunk contests.

A mainstay on the 2007 We Believe Warriors, Richardson averaged 19.2 points per game in Golden State’s first-round upset over top-seeded Dallas. His ceiling as a player was lower than Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson, Gilbert Arenas or even Jordan Poole, but Richardson had more staying power with the franchise.

Bench: Antawn Jamison

A Warrior for five seasons at the turn of the century, Jamison was on some dreadful teams. But he grew up with the franchise and represented the franchise as well as possible before its glow-up. Scoring 51 points in back-to-back games isn’t something to turn one’s nose up at.

Bench: Monta Ellis

A huge part of some of the most fun backcourts in the league, Ellis averaged 22.7 points per game in the four seasons before Golden State traded him. His legacy, ironically, is that trade. Although he starred for Golden State, the Warriors never would’ve had the run they did had they held on to Ellis.

Honorable mentions: Kevon Looney, Baron Davis, Andrew Wiggins