For much of the 2024-25 season, one of the biggest stories for the Golden State Warriors was how much of a steal the rookie extension they agreed to with Moses Moody looked. Shortly before the deadline, the Warriors and Moody agreed to a three-year, $39 deal that will begin this year, after he spend last season on the final year of his base rookie contract.

To that point, Moody had looked the wing equivalent of Kevon Looney. He was steady and reliable, with veteran savvy. He was respected by all his teammates and constantly stoic. He virtually never made a mistake, but was rarely a difference-maker. A deal that paid him $13 million a year felt perfectly fair for both sides.

But then the season began, and it appeared that Moody had turned a corner. He was more aggressive than before, looking for — and creating — his own shot, drawing consistent contact, and forcing action on defense. He shot a career best from deep, while also firing with much greater volume. During a stretch in early 2025, Moody — normally a glue guy who wouldn’t fill up the stat sheet — scored double figures in 18 out of 20 games.

And then things came crashing down. It was a frankly shocking end of the season for Moody, who entered the postseason as the starting shooting guard and ended it out of the rotation. He started to wear down towards the end of the regular season: in his last six games he scored a total of 36 points on 13-for-40 shooting, with just five free throws attempted. He had an up-and-down start to the postseason, and then things turned disastrous: in the team’s first-round Game 7 win over the Houston Rockets, Moody was held scoreless as he missed all five of his shots. In their series opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Moody was again held scoreless, this time missing all four of his attempts. He went 0-for-5 again in the second game of the series, scoring three points on a trio of free throws. With that, he was gone from the rotation. Even with Steph Curry sidelined, Moody could barely find any playing time in Games 3 and 4 of the series, totaling three points. Over a vital five-game stretch, the former lottery pick had scored just six points, had shot 1-for-17 from the field, and had looked completely lost. It wasn’t just the scoring, either. Moody had just five rebounds, one assist, and neither a steal nor a block during that stretch. His defense was nonexistent, and his offense was vacant; it was enough to make you wonder, if just for a second, if he would ever be the same.

He did end things on something of a high note, with a slightly-redemptive 12-point performance in the season-ending loss. But that wasn’t enough to eliminate the sour taste that his season ended on. He slowly devolved from a starter on one of the hottest teams in the NBA, to a struggling bench piece, to someone unplayable, sitting on the sidelines of a must-win playoff game while Gary Payton II played more than 25 minutes.

Which leads us to the question: can he return to being a rotation piece in 2025-26, his fifth NBA season? The answer certainly needs to be “yes,” or the Warriors are in a world of trouble, both financially and from a roster-building perspective. And there’s really no reason to think the answer is anything but that. Yet oddly enough, it will probably take Moody taking a step backwards in order for his role to be reprised.

Last season he broke out, but he did it by developing parts of his game that he hadn’t relied on earlier in his career. As those elements grew, he became a touch too dependent on them. When they were taken away, he had nothing to fall back on.

Moody piling on the points is a delightful thing, but it’s not a necessary thing. The Warriors don’t need him to score; what they do need, is for his defense, decision-making, and effort to not ebb and flow with the points. That’s well within Moody’s wheelhouse, and it seems likely he’s reset over this offseason, and will return to looking like a steal in the upcoming year.

Maybe he’ll even get that starting role back…