Golden State Warriors' Greatness Matched Only by Their Fragility

This wildly successful Golden State Warriors season somehow feels fragile.

Wait, what?

Is this crazy?

Is it ridiculous to wring hands over this team? This 36-2 monster? This living, breathing deluge of long-range shooting, ball movement and chemistry?

Probably.

But only a little.

Yes, these Warriors are almost incomprehensibly good. They ran up the longest season-opening winning streak in NBA history, and Stephen Curry has been the most accurate high-volume shooter we've ever seen.

If the season were to end today, the Dubs would own the fifth-highest average margin of victory in NBA history, per Basketball-Reference.com, and Curry would win his second MVP award.

It's also true that the highs of last year's title run have still been there.

For a few minutes a game, Golden State can hit a level above that of any other team in the league. Sometimes it feels like that level transcends every team from every era. And that's usually all it takes: One short scoring outburst, usually by Curry, and most of the Warriors' games are finished.

And that's as good of a transition as any to dive into the gnawing frailties of this generally dominant team, which is more singularly dependent on Curry than ever before.

Living and Dying With Curry

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With the MVP on the floor, the Warriors have obliterated opponents by 22.7 points per 100 possessions, a figure notably higher than the plus-17.0 they posted with him on the court in 2014-15. Both numbers are fantastic, but what happens when Curry sits is more significant.

Last year, the Dubs proved they could tread water without him, getting outscored by just one-10th of a point per 100 possessions in the minutes he sat. They've fallen apart sans Curry this season, posting a minus-4.8 net rating roughly equal to the one amassed by the 15-24 Milwaukee Bucks.

Only once this year (their Jan. 11 win over the Miami Heat) have the Warriors been outscored with Curry on the floor, per Ethan Strauss of ESPN.com:

On-off splits and plus-minus stats are far from perfect, but it's clear the Warriors have only become more dependent on Curry. Which is why all those typical defending-champ worries that arise after a 100-game season—fatigue, overuse, etc.—are bigger threats now than ever before.

If Steph goes down, Golden State is barely competitive, let alone a threat to do much damage in the playoffs.

A Rising Tide

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Curry aside, in a broader way, Golden State's superiority felt more secure last season.

At this time in 2015, the Warriors' net rating of plus-12.9 was comfortably ahead of the Dallas Mavericks', who ranked second at plus-7.7, per NBA.com. Though the Warriors' net rating is significantly higher now than it was a year ago, their standalone dominance is nothing like it used to be.

Because the San Antonio Spurs aren't like they used to be.

As the Warriors have statistically improved, so have the league's other top-end threats.

San Antonio's net rating has been a bit higher than Golden State's on the season and significantly better since Dec. 1, per NBA.com.

To be fair to the Warriors, all those games before Dec. 1 still count, and they outperformed the Spurs (and everyone else) during that season-opening month. But it's also true that San Antonio has been better than the Warriors for more than half of the season now.

That post-Dec. 1 sample is getting bigger, and it's doubly worrying for Golden State that both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder are healthier and more potent than they were at any point last season.

Golden State has improved. It's just that the other legitimate title contenders have improved with them.

And while the Warriors avoided all but one of them in the playoffs last year (and that team, the Cavs, was far from its full strength), it's probably a mistake to assume that will happen again.

Conflicting Goals

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The Warriors have never had more incentive to dominate a regular season because the top seed in the West has never been more valuable. Getting it means having to face only the Spurs or the Thunder in the playoffs before a seemingly certain date with the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.

So in addition to facing the general pressure of repeating and fighting off any of the natural malaise that afflicts a defending champ, the Warriors must weigh the pros and cons of pushing hard through the middle of April.

Do they chase a 73-9 record? Or do they rest players to preserve them for the postseason, possibly losing the top seed in the process?

Curry's left shin bruise illustrates the dilemma.

"I'm not going to sit out four weeks," Curry told Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle, mentioning the timetable it would take for his shin to fully heal. "So we've just got to figure out how to protect it when I'm out there on the floor and keep playing."

Seems like a risk, doesn't it?

In one sense, it's strange that a team this powerful could somehow still feel so fragile. You would think that seeing it triumph last year then play at an even higher level to start this one would inspire more faith, not less.

Well-Founded Fears?

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It's easy to forget just how charmed the Warriors' 2014-15 season felt. They were playing with house money the entire time. And this year is just...different.

Would an analogy help?

It's like the Dubs set the land speed record last year, out of nowhere, in a jet-propelled machine hauled out of some half-mad tinkerer's garage. Everyone was taken up in the raw thrill and improbability of it, never acknowledging how dangerous the whole thing was—how it could have blown apart spectacularly at any second. It never did.

And now they've got to do it again—against a tougher field while trying to recover from the high and the physical toll of doing it the first time.

If that doesn't crystallize the feeling, try understanding this: Being a Warriors fan means you're not used to being free of the prickly, unshakable suspicion that things are going to go wrong. Turns out it takes more than one title to correct a couple of decades of negative conditioning.

Admittedly, you're just not in a rational place if you're insecure about a 36-2 team. And you're certainly not in a position likely to incur sympathy from any of 29 other fanbases around the league.

But there's something worth worrying about here.

It's a good thing this year's Warriors showed early on they can be even better than they were a year ago.

They'll have to be.

Follow @gt_hughes on Twitter.

Stats courtesy NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com. Accurate through games played Jan. 11.