Golden State Warriors' Regular-Season Dominance Is Double-Edged Sword
It's been decades since the Golden State Warriors found themselves atop the basketball world, crowned champions of the 1974-75 NBA season.
But the Warriors' rapid rise could get a bit dicey. For as long and hard as they've fought to scale the NBA's Wild West, they could be climbing the ranks at the worst possible time.
Make no mistake, this has been a dream-like year for the Dubs. Bolstered by the arrival of Steve Kerr and his heavyweight coaching staff, Golden State has sprinted out to a league-best 33-6 start.
The Warriors sit third in offensive efficiency and first at the other end, per NBA.com. They have demolished their opponents by 13.4 points per 100 possessions. The gap between them and the second-most efficient team (Dallas Mavericks, plus-7.3) is nearly as large as the one separating No. 2 from No. 14 (Oklahoma City Thunder, plus-1.1).
As ESPN Insider Tom Haberstroh pointed out, the NBA hasn't seen dominance like this in years:
"This is more than a pattern now, it's part of potential NBA legend," wrote Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News. "It's not easy to go through 48 percent of a schedule clocking just about everybody you face, and that's what the Warriors have done so far."
Remember when turnovers threatened to prematurely end Golden State's run? Through Nov. 11, the Warriors were averaging a league-worst 22.1 giveaways per game. But in the two-plus months since, they have sliced that number down to 13.5—tied for the seventh-fewest.
"That was the point where we started to get it," Kerr told the San Francisco Chronicle's Ann Killion, "and the momentum seems to be building."
The coach isn't lying. During Monday's 122-79 dismantling of the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors tallied 30 assists against only 13 miscues. Of those turnovers, just three were committed by Golden State's starters.
Golden State's roster is littered with guys having career years, several of whom could yield the type of individual accolades that had eluded this franchise for so long.
Stephen Curry looks like the MVP front-runner. Klay Thompson should be an All-Star. Draymond Green is Haberstroh's "leader in the clubhouse" for Defensive Player of the Year.
The Dubs have a Sixth Man of the Year candidate—and it isn't either of the two former All-Stars coming off this bench (David Lee and Andre Iguodala). Rather, it's seven-year veteran Marreese Speights and his astronomical per-36-minute averages of 24.2 points and 9.8 rebounds, per Basketball-Reference.
"I think we have the deepest team in the NBA," Kerr said in November, per Antonio Gonzalez of The Associated Press. "Our roster is remarkable. Not only the depth of talent, but the versatility of that talent."
So, what exactly is the Warriors' problem?
In a vacuum, nothing. They are doing exactly what they're supposed to: feasting on bottom-feeders (18-2 against teams below .500) and holding their own against the NBA elites (9-2 against the top six teams from each conference).
But the NBA doesn't operate in a vacuum. While teams can only be expected to control what happens in-house, they're still affected by external forces.
An overloaded Western Conference presents a unique set of challenges for this 40-years-in-the-making contender.
Checking the current standings, Golden State's playoff ride would include matchups with the Phoenix Suns, Houston Rockets-Dallas Mavericks winner and one of the following four teams: Portland Trail Blazers, Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs.
That's a pretty treacherous trail. There are potential slip-ups at every stop, explosive offenses capable of sending the scoreboard into a frenzy and dominant defenses that can keep it from moving at all.
But it's par for the course in the NBA's better half, right? San Antonio's road to the 2014 Finals included meetings with the Mavericks, Blazers and Thunder. Golden State's current path looks no more precarious than San Antonio's was.
The problem is these positions are fluid. And judging by some recent activity, the Warriors' postseason route could grow exponentially more problematic over the coming months.
The finally healthy Thunder have been shooting up the standings since Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook shook off their earlier injuries. At 21-20, OKC is sitting above .500 for the first time this season, thanks to an 8-4 stretch over its last 12 games.
And the Warriors know all too well just how good this team can be, having suffered a 127-115 defeat at the hands of the Thunder on Jan. 16. During that contest, OKC got 36 points on 18 shots from Durant, a triple-double out of Westbrook and another 48 points from Serge Ibaka and Dion Waiters.
Granted, Golden State rested both Iguodala and Andrew Bogut that night, but the deepest team in basketball is supposed to survive those types of absences. What makes that loss even more ominous is that the Warriors actually played well—the Thunder just played better.
"We had a lot of breakdowns, but when it's all said and done, they were knocking down shots," Green said, per Bay Area News Group's Diamond Leung. "That's tough to guard."
It's also not an anomaly. Fueled by arguably the best one-two punch in the game, the Thunder are capable of producing similarly incendiary outbursts on any given night.
In other words, there was nothing special about that win on OKC's end.
"The real Thunder team showed up," Durant said afterward, per ESPN.com's Royce Young.
The Thunder have had a winning percentage above .700 each of the last three seasons. In the 18 games Durant and Westbrook have played together in 2014-15, OKC has kept rolling at a similar clip (13-5, .722 winning percentage).
At full strength, this could still be a banner-raising powerhouse. And it's only three games back of the eighth-seeded Suns, or three games away from being Golden State's nightmarish first-round opponent.
"The Thunder are unlike any lower seed we've seen before," wrote Bleacher Report's Dave Leonardis. "They have the talent and depth to be a legitimate championship contender. When's the last time you could say that about a team at the bottom of the playoff tree?"
Assuming the Warriors sneak out of that brutal first-round pairing, guess where they could be headed next: the Alamo City, home of the hard-charging Spurs, who are only 2.5 games back of the No. 5 seed. With reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard back in the lineup, San Antonio's surging momentum may only increase going forward.
The Spurs are a brutal draw for any team, but they have been a nearly impossible puzzle for the Warriors to solve. Golden State dropped a 13-point home loss to San Antonio in their only meeting this season, lost all four matchups with the eventual champs in 2013-14 and suffered a six-game series loss when these two squared off in the 2013 Western Conference Semifinals.
San Antonio is a big enough threat that WarriorsWorld's Daniel Leroux even suggested Golden State should consider sliding back to the No. 2 seed if it means moving away from the Spurs' side of the playoff bracket:
"It all boils down to something best articulated in a Reggie Bush Nike commercial: Whose better can be better than Golden State's better?" Leroux explained. "To me, the only teams that can claim a spot on that list in the West are the Spurs and possibly Oklahoma City."
Two teams that Golden State could realistically draw in consecutive rounds to kick off the playoffs. Two potential dream-killers the Warriors could meet before even stepping foot inside the Western Conference Finals.
In a way, this conjures up thoughts of that cliched sports saying: "In order to be the best, you have to beat the best." But I don't remember that phrase ever ending with the words, "in the first two rounds of the postseason."
It's quite possible the "reward" for the best regular-season performance in franchise history will be the NBA's toughest playoff slate.
The Warriors might have enough talent to traverse this precarious path. By any measure, this has been the most dominant team in 2014-15.
But this year will ultimately be measured by playoff success. And Golden State will have to earn any that comes its way.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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