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Jul
Team Profile
Golden State Warriors: Five things you need to know
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Highlights
One Australian anchored the first Warriors championship, and another arrived as the dynasty ended.
- Andrew Bogut started at centre for Golden State's 2015 championship team.
- Alex Toohey was drafted by the Warriors in 2025 and waived in December.
- Golden State went 37-45 and lost in the play-in to Phoenix in 2025-26
When Golden State won the championship that started everything, an Australian was starting at centre.
Andrew Bogut anchored the defence of the 2015 Warriors, the team that turned a 40-year drought into the most influential dynasty of the modern era. Eleven years later, Alex Toohey arrived at the same franchise and never got on the floor – drafted in 2025, injured, waived by December.
Between those two Australians sits the whole arc: four championships, the greatest regular season ever played, and a 2025-26 campaign that finished 37-45 with no playoffs at all.
The dynasty is over. Working out what replaces it is the only story in the Bay.
Australians who have played for the Golden State Warriors
Andrew Bogut is the most significant Australian in Warriors history and one of the most significant in the NBA's. Born in Melbourne in 1984, he became the first Australian selected first overall in an NBA draft when Milwaukee took him in 2005.
Golden State acquired him in March 2012, in the trade that sent Monta Ellis to the Bucks – a deal that was unpopular in the Bay at the time and looks, a decade on, like the moment the franchise changed direction. Bogut gave the Warriors the rim protection and passing hub their small-ball offence needed, and in 2015 he started at centre as Golden State won its first title in 40 years. He was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team that season.
He was traded to Dallas in July 2016 to create the cap room that signed Kevin Durant, then returned to the Warriors in 2019 after winning an NBL MVP with the Sydney Kings.
Alex Toohey is the most recent. The Canberra forward was drafted 52nd overall in 2025 as part of the seven-team deal that sent Durant to Houston, signed a two-way contract and was assigned to Santa Cruz. A knee injury ended his season, required surgery, and Golden State waived him on 8 December 2025. The Warriors brought him back to Las Vegas for the 2026 Summer League while he continued rehabilitation, and he is targeting a return before the 2026-27 season.
Also worth noting: Lachlan Olbrich played for Golden State's Summer League team in 2026 and won the Summer League title with them, though he has not appeared for the Warriors in the NBA while Taran Armstrong earned a two-way contract with Santa Cruz but was waived during the 2025-26 season.
2026-27 team snapshot
Golden State enters the new season having run out of road.
The Warriors finished 2025-26 at 37-45, fourth in the Pacific Division, and lost in the play-in tournament to Phoenix. They failed to improve on the 48-34 of the previous year. They were also the oldest team in the league, with an average age of 29 and four starters over 35 on opening night.
Stephen Curry, 37, played 43 games and averaged 26.6 points on 39.3 per cent from three, and was selected as an All-Star. The problem was not his level. It was that he was available for barely half the season, and Golden State had no answer without him.
The offseason has been about holding the frontcourt together rather than rebuilding. Kristaps Porziņģis re-signed on a veteran extension on 30 June, Al Horford re-signed on 6 July and Charles Bassey on 9 July. Gui Santos was extended back in February, Pat Spencer's contract was converted to a standard NBA deal, and Trayce Jackson-Davis was traded to Toronto for a second-round pick.
The one genuinely new piece is Yaxel Lendeborg, signed to a rookie-scale contract on 1 July after a strong Summer League in which he scored 21 points with 10 rebounds in the championship game.
Why the Warriors matter
No franchise has changed how basketball is played more recently, or more completely.
Golden State did not invent the three-point shot. It proved that a team could be built entirely around it, and that a 188cm guard could be the best player in the world. Every roster in the league now carries shooting bigs and switchable wings because of what happened in the Bay between 2015 and 2022.
Four championships in eight years is the record. The stylistic influence is the legacy.
1975, and the 40 years after
Golden State's first championship as a California franchise came in 1975, when Rick Barry led a side nobody expected to sweep the Washington Bullets in the Finals.
What followed was four decades of almost nothing. The Warriors made the playoffs sporadically, produced Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway in the Run TMC years, and became best known for the 2007 "We Believe" team, an eighth seed that beat the 67-win Dallas Mavericks in the first round.
That was the high point until 2015.
The 2015 breakthrough
Stephen Curry was drafted seventh overall in 2009, and for five seasons the question was whether his ankles would hold.
In 2014-15, under first-year coach Steve Kerr, everything arrived at once. Curry won MVP, Golden State won 67 games and beat Cleveland 4-2 in the Finals, with Andre Iguodala named Finals MVP for his defence on LeBron James.
Bogut was the starting centre, Draymond Green the defensive fulcrum, Klay Thompson the other half of the Splash Brothers. Forty years of waiting ended in six games.
73-9, and what it cost
The following season, Golden State won 73 games, breaking the 1996 Bulls' record for the greatest regular season in NBA history.
They then lost the Finals from 3-1 up to Cleveland, the only time that has happened. The response was to sign Kevin Durant, which produced championships in 2017 and 2018 and permanently altered how the league thinks about superteams.
Durant left in 2019. Klay Thompson and Curry between them missed most of the following three seasons to injury. The 2022 championship, won with Curry as Finals MVP at 34, was the last act.
The greatest Warriors of all time
Stephen Curry is the greatest shooter in basketball history and the most important player the franchise has had. Draymond Green made the defence and the passing work. Klay Thompson was the other Splash Brother and once scored 37 points in a single quarter.
Rick Barry delivered the 1975 title. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game as a Philadelphia Warrior. Chris Mullin carried the club through the lean years, and Kevin Durant won two Finals MVPs in three seasons.
Five Fast Facts
- The Warriors have won seven NBA championships across two cities: 1947 and 1956 in Philadelphia, then 1975, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022 in California.
- Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors on 2 March 1962 and averaged 50.4 points across that season – both still NBA records, and both set for the franchise now known as Golden State.
- The 2015-16 Warriors went 73-9, the best regular season in NBA history, then lost the Finals from 3-1 up.
- Andrew Bogut was the first Australian selected first overall in an NBA draft, in 2005, and started at centre for the 2015 champions.
- Golden State was the oldest team in the NBA in 2025-26, at an average age of 29.
Historical Timeline
- 1946: Founded as the Philadelphia Warriors.
- 1947: Win the inaugural Basketball Association of America championship.
- 1956: Second championship in Philadelphia.
- 1959: Wilt Chamberlain arrives as a territorial pick, and wins Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.
- 1962: Chamberlain scores 100 points against the Knicks on March 2 and averages 50.4 for the season. The franchise relocates and becomes the San Francisco Warriors.
- 1964: Reach the NBA Finals, losing to Boston.
- 1965: Chamberlain traded to the Philadelphia 76ers – a different franchise, in his old city.
- 1971: Renamed the Golden State Warriors.
- 1975: First Californian championship, behind Rick Barry.
- 2009: Stephen Curry drafted seventh overall.
- 2012: Andrew Bogut acquired from Milwaukee.
- 2015: First title in 40 years, with Bogut starting at centre.
- 2016: Win a record 73 games, then lose the Finals from 3-1 up.
- 2017 and 2018: Back-to-back championships with Kevin Durant.
- 2022: Fourth title in eight years, Curry named Finals MVP.
- 2025: Alex Toohey drafted 52nd overall, then waived in December after a knee injury.
- 2026: Finish 37-45 and lose in the play-in to Phoenix.
Looking ahead
Golden State is trying to do the hardest thing in professional sport: stay competitive while the player everything was built around gets older.
Curry turns 38 during the coming season. Porziņģis and Horford are both re-signed and both in their thirties. The Warriors are betting that a healthy Curry plus veteran size is still a playoff team, and last season suggested that bet only works if he plays 70 games rather than 43.
For Australians, the thread runs from a starting centre with a ring to a 22-year-old still rehabilitating a knee. Toohey's return, whenever it comes, is the next chapter.
