Updated Sep 15, 2015 at 5:41p ET
If ain't broke, don't fix it, the adage goes.
The Golden State Warriors are apparently ignoring that, as instead of fixing "it," they're buying a new one.
According to Inside The Warriors, the team is revamping it's training, strength and conditioning staff, despite coming off a season in which the Warriors won the championship with the fourth-fewest regular season games missed games due to injury:
"The person now overseeing that department is Lachlan Penfold, whose hiring as head of physical performance and sports medicine was announced in July. He previously worked in a variety of sports in the sports science-rich country of Australia.The Warriors did not renew the contract of head athletic trainer JoHan Wang while director of athletic performance Keke Lyles and strength and conditioning coach Michael Roncariti went to the Atlanta Hawks.
"The changes occurred despite the Warriors combining to have players miss only 80 games due to injury and beating the injury-plagued Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.
"'They did a great job," Warriors assistant general manager Kirk Lacob said Thursday at the Sports Analytics Innovation Summit of last season's staff. "Obviously we did a lot of things really, really well. For various reasons, most people aren't back this year. All of their contracts were up anyways, so it's not like anyone was fired.
"'But we kind of had a vision and Steve (Kerr) had a vision too of the way we wanted to structure that whole department. It was going to be with or without those guys regardless. We were perfectly happy to have them as part of that or not.
"'Yeah we did great last year. We've got to do better this year."
The Dubs take chances and, recently, they've paid off. This one might not, but that's not a condemnation of the decision. Injuries happen — usually from freak occurences — and no staff can fully prepare and prevent that, or force an injury to recover and rehab before its ready.
Golden State was lucky with injuries last season. Next season is a whole different beast, and it seems like they're taking a smarter approach.
(h/t Inside The Warriors)
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