Gui Santos and the art of conformance

Whew. 2026 has already been a year.

Tonight, the Golden State Warriors play their last game for a week. The odds are as steep as ever given that they are hosting the rising San Antonio Spurs, and playing without Steph Curry (and Jimmy Butler, and Kristaps Porzingis). The results so far this season aren’t below expectations, perhaps even approaching disastrous – given the season-ending injury to Butler – but the Warriors find themselves successfully treading water.

Which, sometimes, has to be enough.

The Warriors are not trying to win the West right now. They’re trying to survive it. Jimmy Butler is gone for the year. Steph Curry is watching in street clothes. Kristaps Porzingis hasn’t unpacked his bags yet. And somehow, Golden State is still in the playoff picture.

This is defiance. This isn’t the comfortable hum of a contender finding rhythm. This is a franchise duct-taping its present together long enough to protect its future.

WHO: Golden State Warriors (29-25) vs. San Antonio Spurs (37-16)

WHEN: Wednesday, February 11th, 2026; 7pm PST

WATCH: NBCSBA

It took a few months for the team to get healthy, and then that turned into a fleeting reality as Seth Curry quickly succumbed to back problems, and then of course, Butler’s knee; followed by Curry’s (less disastrous) lingering knee issue finally forcing him off the court.

But this is a different Western Conference. The top of the bracket with the Spurs and Thunder doesn’t look soft exactly, but the rest of the playoff field looks… feasible – even for a banged Warriors crew. Golden State sits in the 8th spot. Still in the dreaded play-in tournament, but with some wiggle room underneath them.

Jimmy Butler’s season ended before it ever truly began, Steph Curry is pacing the sideline instead of bending defenses, and Kristaps Porzingis remains more of a gamble than reality, a theoretical partner in a future version of this team that has yet to take the floor. Meanwhile, the Western Conference continues to accelerate without apology.

And yet, somehow, Golden State is still here – imperfect, incomplete, and hovering stubbornly in the middle of the bracket as if daring the standings to shake them loose.

Because this isn’t really about traction, or development curves, or even draft position. It’s about what this franchise ultimately values when forced to choose between possibility and coherence.

When the Warriors moved on from Jonathan Kuminga, they weren’t simply reshuffling the rotation; they were reaffirming something foundational about how they believe basketball should be played alongside Stephen Curry. Upside is enticing. Autonomy is intoxicating. But neither carries much weight here if it disrupts the geometry that makes everything else function.

In a league obsessed with star ascent, Golden State quietly chose alignment.

Among the many crazy things that have emerged through the cacophony, the strangest may well be that somehow, Gui Santos has become the power wing that coach Steve Kerr and the Warriors needed Kuminga to turn into. Whether it was a miscasting or not, this is a wild swing of fortune.

A year after the Warriors used a valuable lottery pick to select Kuminga in 2021, Santos came into the league as the 55th (out of a total of 60) player selected. Fast forward a few years, and though Kuminga definitely played a significant role in the post-Durant championship, he’s gone. Instead, some unheralded guy from Brazil has cemented a spot in the team’s rotation as the focus narrows in preparation for Curry’s return – alongside newly arrived stretch big, Porzingis.

Santos – who hadn’t logged a double-double prior to this calendar year – just had the biggest play of his career with a frantic side-step layup. A game winner for a team that needs to rack as many wins as possible, but is about as bare in the cupboard as any roster in the league. A rebuilding project stalled mid-stage, with partially constructed new options staged next to a paused ongoing priority.

But Santos keeps finding himself on the positive side of basketball plays.

How?

How does this complete unknown player find such an easy fit in a system that couldn’t seem to figure out how to effectively deploy a rangy, impressive athlete with a nose for the basket like Kuminga?

Conformance.

First of all, it’s important to understand that this isn’t an end state. Santos comes into this season with ample experience in the G League – a place where the Warriors have been sure to mirror as much of their NBA systems as possible. That system requires a certain level of conformance. This current state is the result of years of ongoing continual improvement.

Importantly, those improvements haven’t just been the cool stuff that makes Santos feel good about his highlight reel.

Santos is 3rd on the team in regards to shooting efficiency, and 4th lowest in usage. More simply: he’s not forcing anything. And this brings us back to the headline – the thesis here. This isn’t necessarily about what a player can do. Not in this system. Instead, it’s a question of not just how much you help, but how you do it.

If anyone’s forcing it, that player had better have the number 30 on the back of his jersey.

This is Golden State’s strategy. Not the tactics; the strategy. The steering principles that help them define what win conditions they want to chase as a team, it’s all about Curry. Anyone that even slightly detracts from that ultimate pursuit is a negative – regardless of how well they rebound, or how nasty their first step off the dribble may be.

So while this team waits for the next iteration – with Curry and Porzingis both forecast to be back in the team’s next game – there’s still some value to glean from what’s still here. There’s a pattern to what works in Golden State that isn’t exactly new, but is somehow still being constantly uncovered. The Warriors work best with players that – to borrow the colloquialism of LeBron James – fit in, don’t fit out. The system thrives on conformance.

Players like Nick Young and Dennis Schroeder were horrible fits here, despite being decent. Kuminga was a more complicated question. Or maybe not. Sure, his rebounding and willingness to attack the rim seemed to fill the gaps that his athleticism was ample to fill, but he never fixed the biggest gripes from his coach’s system perspective: high usage (JFK ranked 3rd), and low efficiency (13th in TS%).

Santos then, is a teacher’s pet.

And while conformance is a loaded term these days, it’s a prerequisite for success in a system that features an all time great like Curry.

It’s not a glamorous word, and it’s certainly not one that resonates loudly in a league that markets individuality, but within this ecosystem it carries real weight. Golden State does not begin its evaluation with a player’s ceiling; it begins with a quieter question – how naturally does this player bend toward Stephen Curry’s gravity?

The Warriors don’t optimize for isolated brilliance. They optimize for amplification. Every cut, every extra pass, every relocation beyond the arc is part of a larger choreography designed to distort space in Curry’s favor. If a player requires possessions to feel impactful, this can become suffocating. If he understands that impact can exist in restraint, the system tends to reward him generously.

Santos is finding success with this team not just because he conforms to the system – but because he understands what the system wants the most… That eurostep is pretty nice too.

I know there’s a hater out there that expects to see this game called a scheduled loss. Well not here! Warriors beat the odds, go absolutely nuclear from deep, and head into the break with back-to-back inspirational wins.

Also, I’m doubling down on that Spurs versus Lakers prediction.