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In the near future I’ll be sharing a series of polls discussing matchups of former GSW players who are draft picks during the Two-Timelines era. This concept wasn’t seeded by stats or hindsight. This was seeded by emotional gravity: draft expectations, peak belief, and how long you kept hoping. Pure feelings.
Kevin Durant left in the summer of 2019. That moment didn’t end a dynasty as many feared (or desperately desired from jealous fanbases outside of the Golden Empire), but it did start a new hope.
Over the next six years, the Golden State Warriors drafted several players who became part of something complicated, beautiful, and occasionally heartbreaking. It was a project that became what fans came to call the “Two-Timelines” era. Some of these players won championship rings. Some made you grab the remote and turn the volume up. Some broke your heart slowly, over multiple seasons, in ways you didn’t fully process until they were already gone. And maybe some of them you knew were never gonna fit in with Stephen Curry and Steve Kerr, but you held out hope. Most of them are no longer here.
And we know for a fact that Dub Nation has the power to provide so much love and positive energy to the franchise that the players suddenly morph from “meh” into giant killers before your very eyes. So with that in mind, now it’s time to answer the question that actually matters. Not which of those ex-draft picks was the best, who had the highest PER, or the most efficient season.
The question is: which of those departed GSW picks were you secretly rooting for the most?
This bracket lives at the intersection of three things: how much was put on a player’s shoulders on draft night, how high your belief actually rose during their time here, and how long you kept the faith even when the evidence got complicated. There’s no hidden agenda (OR IS THERE??), just an honest accounting of how Warriors fans actually felt, in real time, about each of these players.
Eight players. Three rounds. One crown.
THE OFFICIAL BRACKET
FIRST ROUND
1 Jordan Poole vs 8 Alen Smailagic
4 Eric Paschall vs 5 Trayce Jackson-Davis
2 James Wiseman vs 7 Ryan Rollins
3 Jonathan Kuminga vs 6 Patrick Baldwin Jr.
SEMIFINALS
W(1/8) vs W(4/5)
W(2/7) vs W(3/6)
CHAMPIONSHIP
So without further ado, here’s the bracket folks!
1. Jordan Poole
28th overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft
You remember exactly where you were when Jordan Poole started cooking in the 2022 playoffs. Don’t lie. You were on your feet, screaming at the TV. This was supposed to be the guy who eventually took the keys from Steph and kept the dynasty breathing. Young, filthy with the ball in his hands, shimmy already loaded and ready to deploy on whoever was unfortunate enough to be guarding him. The Bay had already written the next chapter in its head. Jordan Poole was going to be here forever.
Then Draymond threw a punch and the universe shifted.
But before all of that — before Washington, before the struggles, before everything — Jordan Poole was EVERYBODY’S guy. And the emotional peak of that belief, the moment when the whole fanbase collectively decided this kid was going to be GREAT here, is higher than anyone else in this bracket. That’s why he’s the 1 seed.
2. James Wiseman
2nd overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft
Close your eyes and remember draft night 2020. The No. 2 pick in the entire draft. Seven feet tall. Hands like a point guard. A shot-blocking presence that made you dizzy just watching the highlights. The Warriors had just survived the worst season in franchise history and the basketball gods handed them James Wiseman as a reward. The rebuild was supposed to start right there. This was the guy who was going to anchor the next decade while Steph showed him everything he knew.
What followed was a torn meniscus, a lost season, flashes of brilliance in 12-minute bursts, and eventually a trade to Detroit that the fanbase processed in silence because nobody quite knew what to say.
Wiseman’s gravitational pull on draft night was enormous. Nobody in this bracket carried more expectation in that moment. Nobody. That earns him the 2 seed, and it isn’t particularly close.
3. Jonathan Kuminga
7th overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft
Five years. Five years of “this is finally his season.” Five years of scoring rampages that had you ready to anoint him the next face of the franchise, followed by inexplicable DNPs that had you arguing with strangers on Twitter at midnight. Kuminga was the most complicated relationship Warriors fans had with any player in this era. Talent was never the question. It was always right there.
He had a real playoff run in 2025 that had the whole fanbase ready to crown him. Then they traded him to Atlanta anyway. And now he’s out there balling like he has something to prove, which means the feelings aren’t even past tense yet.
Five years of hope with a motor still running. That’s the 3 seed.
4. Eric Paschall
41st overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft
Did anybody see Eric Paschall coming? He was a second-rounder out of Villanova on a Warriors team that won 15 games, playing in empty arenas during a pandemic season that felt like the whole world was falling apart. And somehow, impossibly, this man made that team fun to watch. Scoring 14 points a night off the bench, bouncing around the court with an energy that felt almost defiant given the circumstances, he made Warriors fans feel something they hadn’t felt in two years: genuine excitement about a new player in the present tense.
The Paschall window was short. The love was real. That’s the 4 seed.
5. Trayce Jackson-Davis
57th overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft
Nobody expected Trayce Jackson-Davis to be good. He was the 57th pick, the second-to-last selection in the entire draft. A four-year college big man who was supposedly too slow and too limited to survive in the modern NBA. And then he showed up at Chase Center and immediately looked like he’d been running pick-and-rolls with Stephen Curry his entire life. The screen IQ. The roll timing. The finishing around the rim with both hands. Warriors fans started falling for TJD almost immediately, quietly, the way you fall for a player before you’ve consciously decided to root for him.
Then they traded him to Toronto and the whole fanbase had to process what could have been.
The 5 seed for a 57th pick who could jump out the gym.
6. Patrick Baldwin Jr.
28th overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft
Patrick Baldwin Jr. arrived with a first-round pedigree, a 6’9″ frame, a shooting touch that looked effortless in warmups, and an energy that made you want to root for him before he played a single meaningful minute. He never really got the chance. Thirty-one games. 3.9 points per game. Minutes so sparse you had to check the box score twice to confirm he was even in the building. Warriors fans kept the hope alive far longer than the evidence warranted because you genuinely liked the kid and wanted the situation to be different.
It never got different. It just ended.
The 6 seed is a love letter to everyone who kept checking the rotation looking for his name.
7. Ryan Rollins
44th overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft
Ryan Rollins didn’t just leave Golden State. He got packaged into the Jordan Poole trade and shipped to Washington before he ever got a real chance to show what he could do. Most players in that situation disappear quietly. Rollins did not. He came back to Chase Center, looked the Warriors dead in the eye, and lit them up in a revenge game that nobody who watched it will forget. That’s not just athleticism. That’s a player who knew he was good enough and needed everybody else to catch up.
The 7 seed for the guy who made sure we remembered he existed. Respect.
8. Alen Smailagic
39th overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft (via draft-night trade)
Alen Smailagic was a teenage center from Serbia whom the Warriors acquired via trade on draft night 2019, and for approximately one Summer League he was going to be something. The flashes were there. The potential was visible in the way that potential is always visible in a 19-year-old who is still mostly a theory. He played 29 regular season games across two seasons and then was gone, leaving behind a small but passionate fanbase of people who watched those Summer League games and told themselves: okay, maybe.
The 8 seed belongs to every player who made us say okay, maybe. And to the people who said it about Smailagic specifically, this bracket is for you.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
These players were part of the Two-Timelines story but didn’t make the bracket. They deserve acknowledgment.
Nico Mannion — We wanted him to be the Italian Steph Curry.
Justinian Jessup — Drafted in 2020, played zero regular season games as a Warrior, carved out a career overseas.
ONE LAST THING
This bracket is not a trial. Nobody is being convicted of anything. Every single player on this list showed up, competed, and tried to make it work inside one of the most demanding basketball environments in the modern NBA. Some of them won championships doing it and others gave us moments we still talk about. All of them were, for at least one night, somebody’s favorite Warrior.
Keep an eye out as the matchups come out and get your vote out!