Kurtenbach: What the Warriors need to sell by the NBA trade deadline

The clock is ticking toward Thursday at noon and the NBA’s trade deadline, and let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake for the Golden State Warriors in these final hours:

This isn’t just about roster construction or luxury tax gymnastics. It isn’t about draft pick protections or the “Two Timelines” theory that has pivoted from a plan to a punchline.

No, this trade deadline is about the only currency that actually matters in professional sports.

Buster Posey famously said that sports are the “memory-making” business.

With all due respect to Posey, I think he had it slightly off. If you’re really doing it right, a sports team is in the business of selling hope.

And right now, the Warriors are bankrupt in that department.

Tuesday’s 113-94 loss to the Sixers was a crescendo of consequences in a season that, as it stands as of the writing of this column, is heading directly towards inconsequence.

Lifeless, lackluster, or lame don’t even begin to describe the Steph Curry-less Warriors’ effort against a Philadelphia team without Joel Embiid.

“This was not a good vibe for us tonight,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the game, suggesting the trade-deadline chatter was at fault for the performance. “You can’t sulk; you can’t feel sorry for yourself.”

But the Warriors’ performance on Tuesday was a hint at the reality of the final months of the season without a move. Even with Curry in the lineup, the Warriors know this season is doomed as things currently stand.

If Dubs general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. finally lands the “big fish” in a long-rumored, long-anticipated, but logic-defying heist for Giannis Antetokounmpo, or even if he makes a secondary move that actually adds a quality player (or two) to the roster, there is a reason to keep the lights on for this season.

Even if it’s only a faint glimmer, a move signals that this campaign, as cursed and disjointed as it has felt since October, can still materialize into something.

It tells the fans, and more importantly, the Warriors’ locker room, that the present matters.

It sells some hope.

But if 12:01 p.m. comes on Thursday, and this roster remains untouched? There is simply no reason to believe.

Ever since Jimmy Butler went down — and let’s be honest, for a significant chunk of time before the injury — the Warriors have been fundamentally joyless. It’s a chore to watch them because they look like playing is a chore for the team.

Even Curry, the human personification of basketball “joy,” looks like a man who has spent too many hours in his car on the Bay Bridge.

When the Greatest Shooter of All Time is playing without that signature vivacity and verve, the rest of the roster stands zero chance of executing “Warriors Basketball” as Kerr envisions it.

That system requires life; it requires a collective belief that the extra pass leads to something meaningful. Right now, it’s just five guys going through the motions, trying to get to the next game, the next week, the next month, and finally, perhaps even mercifully, the offseason.

There is no joy to be found in the “wait and see” approach, in waiting until the summer to be rebuffed on a Giannis trade again.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but in the NBA, hope deferred makes a franchise irrelevant.

Look at Jonathan Kuminga — the ultimate symbol of this frozen-in-amber era. He is disgruntled, despite having little standing to be so, and he plays a brand of basketball that is the antithesis of Golden State’s DNA. He’s ball-stopping on offense and ball-watching on defense, seemingly counting down the minutes until the summer when the Warriors can entertain trading him — a dance they’ve performed every winter and summer for the last three years. Keeping him past Thursday isn’t “investing in the future”; it’s just prolonging a mutual misery.

All those “championship habits” Kerr loves to cite have been replaced by a malaise that starts at the top and trickles down to the end of the bench.

The fan base doesn’t need a guarantee of a fifth ring. They’re smarter than that. What they need is proof of life. They need to know that the front office recognizes that the status quo is an insult to Curry’s waning prime.

If a deal happens, the season officially starts Thursday. Just like last season, it becomes a sprint to see if the new pieces can ignite the old ones. It becomes a narrative of redemption.

If no deal happens, the season officially ends Thursday. The remaining games will be nothing more than a 30-game wake for a dynasty that didn’t know how or when to say goodbye.

Something, anything, has to happen.

Give the fans a reason to care. Give Curry a reason to smile.

The Warriors need to sell at the deadline: sell us all some hope.

Because right now, the cupboard is bare.