Are the Hawks Really as Good as the Warriors?

The Atlanta Hawks are the hottest team in the NBA. They've won 13 games in a row and now comfortably occupy the catbird seat in the East: They hold a five-game lead over the second-place Wizards with a record of 34-8.

They've outscored their opponents by 10.3 points a night in winning 27 of their last 29 games. That stretch includes wins over Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Portland, the Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis and Toronto, all on the road. As a frame of reference, those nine teams have a combined home winning percentage of .705, not including those losses to the Hawks in the last two months.

The Hawks' hot streak has analysts all over the Internet calling them the best team in the league. ESPN, Yahoo!, NBC, CBS, Sports Illustrated and NBA.com all have the Hawks atop their most recent power rankings.

Second place in each of those rankings? The Golden State Warriors. And even a cursory look into the numbers makes one question if the Hawks are really as good, let alone better, than the Bay Area team that is well on its way to becoming one of the best of all time.

Even judging by standard winning percentage, the Warriors come out a bit ahead of the red-hot Hawks. Golden State has won at a .846 clip while the Hawks sit on an .810 mark. 

Point differential, though, is a better predictor of future wins and losses than an actual win-loss record. For that reason, it's important to take a look at per-game scoring margin as well, which you can do by clicking the little circle next to "Pt Diff" in the chart above. The Warriors come out significantly ahead on that score, too.

The Warriors' plus-11.7 scoring margin is also the fourth-largest scoring margin in NBA history, while the Hawks' plus-6.8 mark barely cracks the top-90. 

We know that per-game numbers can be a bit misleading sometimes, though, because of the element of pace. So let's check out some per-possession numbers instead, just to make sure something's not off here. 

Wouldn't you know it, the Warriors come out even farther ahead when adjusting for pace. They've been better than the Hawks on both sides of the ball, and their Net-Rtg (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency, a measure of scoring margin per 100 possessions) is approaching twice that of Atlanta.

Though we often lionize "clutch time" performance, the true mark of a good team is blowing other teams out of the water so that the game never even reaches the clutch. The Warriors this season have won 25 games by double digits, while the Hawks have only won 17 such games. 

When the game does get into clutch time, though, the Warriors are still better. 

Atlanta's clutch numbers are really, really good. They've won 18 of 24 games that have been within five points at some point in the last five minutes, outscoring their opponents by an absurd 28.7 points per 100 possessions in those contests. 

The Warriors' clutch numbers, however, are not of this world. They've only played 11 games that have reached clutch time and have won nine. They are scoring and defending at a rate that would so far exceed the best offense and defense of all time that they don't even reside in the same universe. Their per-100 possessions scoring margin in the clutch is an obscene plus-60.7. 

So here we've established that the 33-6 Warriors are significantly better than the 34-8 Hawks on a per-game and per-possession basis, as well as in terms of how often they blow teams out and how they perform in close games. 

Not only that, but the Warriors have played a more difficult schedule (21st in SOS, according to Basketball-Reference.com) than the Hawks (28th), thanks to the fact that they reside in the Western Conference while the Hawks ply their trade in the decrepit East. 

Basketball-Reference's Simple Rating System (SRS), which combines average point differential and strength of schedule, has the Warriors pegged as the sixth-best team of all time, and that's before accounting for Monday night's 122-79 shellacking of the Nuggets. I wouldn't be surprised if, by the time this article posted, they'd moved up to third or fourth. Before their win over Detroit, the Hawks ranked just 121st. 

As good as the Hawks have been of late, Golden State is just flat-out better, and it frankly isn't all that close.