Warriors Complete 15-Man Roster With Georges Niang After Foot Injury
Golden State closed camp a month early by adding Niang and Brandon Williams — but with Butler and Moody hurt, the real number is 13.
Elite corner shooter, but a full year lost to injury and bench role cap his value.
- Niang signed one-year deal to fill final roster spot
- Missed all of 2025-26 with September foot fracture
- 40.6% from three in 2024-25 across 79 games
- 40.1% career 3PT over past seven seasons
- Butler and Moody out to start — real number is 13
After nearly two months of silence, the Warriors slammed their offseason door shut on Tuesday, signing veteran forward Georges Niang to a one-year deal to complete a full 15-man roster for the first time since their 2021-22 title run. Point guard Brandon Williams inked his own one-year contract earlier the same day, giving Golden State two low-cost bench additions a month before training camp opens.
Here's the catch: 15 is a paper number. With Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody both expected to miss at least the opening months rehabbing injuries, the functional roster is really 13. That matters for anyone eyeing this team's usage picture, because the wing spot — the 3 — is now Golden State's most glaring hole.
Niang's arrival is a reunion nearly a decade in the making. He spent 2017 training camp with the Warriors and averaged 18.4 points and 6.7 rebounds on 42.1% from deep for their G League affiliate in 2017-18. The intervening years turned him into exactly the kind of floor-spacer Steve Kerr covets: a 40.1% three-point shooter on 4.3 attempts per game across his last seven seasons, and 40.6% across 79 games between Cleveland and Atlanta in 2024-25.
The obvious red flag is health. Niang fractured his foot last September and missed the entire 2025-26 season. That's out of character — he rarely missed games before — so the Warriors are betting it's an outlier rather than a trend. It's the same glass-half-full logic they're applying across the roster.
The Fantasy Fallout
For fantasy purposes, Niang is a spacing specialist coming off a lost year, buried behind Draymond Green, Gui Santos and rookie Yaxel Lendeborg at forward. The bigger roster read here favors the guys already ranked. Brandin Podziemski played all 82 games last year (2025-26), putting up 13.8 points and 27.8 fantasy points per game — and with Butler and Moody sidelined, his workload only gets safer. De'Anthony Melton (24.1 FPTS/G in 49 games in 2025-26, #150 overall) and Al Horford (22.6 FPTS/G in 45 games, #168) are the other names to track, though Horford's form is trending down, at -9.9 fantasy points over his last five.
Verdict: file Niang under WATCH. He's a genuine knockdown shooter and a clean fit, but a bench role plus a full season lost to injury make him a preseason monitor, not a draft-day target in standard leagues. If early camp reports have him healthy and playing meaningful small-forward minutes while Butler heals, revisit — corner threes on a Curry-led offense have value. Until then, prioritize Podziemski, who's the real winner of this thin wing rotation.
