Historic Starts Across NBA Overshadowed by Ruthless Golden State Warriors
NBA players and teams going unnoticed and unappreciated have the Golden State Warriors to thank.
Of course, in a space where "nobody respects us" is a nauseatingly repeated motivational cliche, we know league-wide gratitude is unlikely. Better to say those having great, ignored years have the Warriors and their historically dominant season to blame.
If you're reading this, you probably know the Dubs raced out to a perfect 24-0 start, the best season-opening run in league history, before succumbing to fatigue and the Milwaukee Bucks (in some order) on Dec. 12. In the process, Golden State ran up its net rating and average margin of victory to obscene levels, putting the 1996 Chicago Bulls and their 72-10 record on notice.
Stephen Curry, last season's MVP, is somehow now a viable candidate for Most Improved Player—or at least he should be.
No wonder the Warriors have made us miss so much of what else has been going on.
Pay No Attention to the Spurs, Please
I guess maybe we oversimplified in the opening above. In addition to thanking or blaming the Warriors for obscuring the other noteworthy achievements around the league, there's a third kind of reaction. And it only applies to the San Antonio Spurs who, because they are who they are, neither avoid nor seek praise for what they're doing.
"We are the Spurs," Manu Ginobili told Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post. "We don’t get the national attention. We don’t demand that attention. We don’t ask for that attention. If it comes, it comes, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t."
The Spurs just don't care.
We do, though, and the Warriors have overshadowed San Antonio's brilliance more than anyone else's.
Consider: Through Dec. 15, San Antonio's average margin of victory is actually higher than the Warriors', according to Basketball-Reference.com. In fact, this year's Spurs are on pace to post the highest MOV in league history, with the Warriors trailing by decimal points.
Golden State's net rating remains higher, per NBA.com, but not by much.
Wins are still a big deal, and the Warriors have three more of them (and four fewer losses). But these two teams are remarkably close to one another in a number of catch-all quality metrics. And remember that 67-15 Dubs squad that ranked among the greatest we've ever seen last year?
The 2015-16 Spurs, led by the best defensive rating the NBA has seen in 40 years, are better.
On a smaller scale, Kawhi Leonard's development into a true superstar hasn't gotten the attention it deserves either. He's posting a player efficiency rating that ranks comfortably in the top five this season, per Basketball-Reference.com—checking in near Kevin Durant and LeBron James—while playing the best perimeter defense in the league.
Thanks to Curry's ongoing, landscape-altering redefinition of offensive basketball, Leonard isn't getting a whole lot of notice.
What About Us?
KD and Russ Toiling in (Relative) Obscurity
Leonard isn't the only star long on ridiculous numbers and short on recognition. Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, whose highlight-laden games are generally tough to ignore, have been posting historically significant numbers in relative obscurity, too.
If the season ended today, Westbrook's PER of 31.0 would be the highest ever compiled by anyone other than LeBron James, Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain—other than Curry, of course, who's in line to shatter the previous all-time record.
Durant's PER is only 30.1, which currently ranks 21st in NBA history. Suffice it to say there have never been teammates with numbers like that in a single season.
But unless you're a diehard Oklahoma City Thunder loyalist or a numbers-obsessed fan of the league, this is probably the first time you've thought about that.
The Remarkable Mr. Drummond
We compare the greatest wing defenders to Scottie Pippen, the most luminous stars to Jordan and the sagest head coaches to Phil Jackson. But the great Bulls teams of the '90s have another measuring stick in Dennis Rodman, the best rebounder the game's ever seen, whom we use to contextualize (and usually embarrass) today's top boardsmen.
Andre Drummond is on pace for the greatest non-Rodman rebounding season we've ever seen. He's hauled in 425 boards through his first 26 games in 2015-16, the most since Rodman grabbed 429 in the first 26 games of the 1994-95 season.
And by hauling down a ridiculous 25.2 percent of all available rebounds when he's been on the floor, Drummond is on track to post the sixth-highest single-season rebound rate in league history.
Whiteside's Rejections Rejected as News
Hassan Whiteside's block rate of 11.5 percent (through 23 games) is higher than any we've ever seen over a full season. Even if his rate declines by 2 percent, he'll still be just the fourth player in league history to post a figure of at least 9.5 percent—Manute Bol (seven times), Jim McIlvaine (twice) and Serge Ibaka (once) are the only others to swat away shots at that rate.
And it's worth noting that nobody since Shawn Bradley in 1995-96 averaged as many minutes as Whiteside with a block rate of at least 9.4 percent.
The Miami Heat center is turning away shots at an unprecedented clip.
The Threes Are Flying
Curry's three-point volume is flat-out unheard of, which has made it difficult to appreciate the way long-distance gunning has picked up across the league. And though nobody is within sniffing distance of his 11.1 attempts per game (in just 34.9 minutes), there are nine other players getting up triples this year at frequencies that would rank in the top 50 of all time.
James Harden (8.3), Damian Lillard (7.7), Robert Covington (7.5), Paul George (7.4), Wesley Matthews and Kobe Bryant (7.3), Kyle Lowry and C.J. Miles (7.2) and Klay Thompson (7.0) are all on track to jack up treys at historic rates. And the varying success levels—Curry's at 45.8 percent while Bryant has hit just 23.5 percent—show the long ball isn't just a weapon for high-efficiency snipers anymore.
Only 30 times in league history has a player attempted more than 550 triples. Barring injury, we might get 10 this year alone.
Chances are you'll hear mostly about Curry, who could fire up 800 or so, obliterating the previous record of 678 set by George McCloud in 1995-96.
Earned Attention
None of this is to say we should focus on other teams and players around the league at the expense of the Warriors.
The Dubs deserve the outsized attention they're getting because even if the Spurs have been as impressive by some measures, and even if others around the league are pursuing their own historic goals, we've just never seen a team run up numbers and wins while upending the dominant paradigm like this.
Per Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com:
"That’s where the Warriors stand right now, embodying and defying fundamental rules simultaneously. Jump-shooting teams can’t win, except when they never lose. You can’t fall in love with the jumper, except when you’re Stephen Curry and your jumper always loves you back. A big man standing shorter than 6-foot-6 in socks can’t guard anybody, except when he’s Draymond Green and he guards everybody.
"
They're allowed to ruin it for everyone else.
And if you still feel slighted by the lack of attention for your favorite team or player, remember: None of these numbers will mean much if Golden State doesn't crescendo with a championship.
In that sense, everyone else has a chance to ruin things for the Warriors.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise indicated. Current through games played Dec. 15.
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