Most Dangerous Teams Headed into the 2015 NBA Playoffs
Warn your favorite—or adopted—NBA playoff team.
Dangerously good postseason competition is coming.
Identifying the scariest of all playoff participants is twofold. First and foremost, late-season momentum is taken into account. If a team is performing especially well at the most crucial point of the season, there is every reason for potential opponents to quake in their overpriced sneakers.
Complete bodies of work matter, too. A season-closing six-game winning streak does not make the seventh-place, sub-.500 Boston Celtics any more likely to upend the second-place Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round.
Basically, we're asking one question: Which teams are going to make the most convincing pushes for a title right now?
For that reason, the ensuing company is exclusive. Although we'd like to believe every squad is on equal footing, some are just more threatening than others. And some are just plain lethal.
These are those teams.
Atlanta Hawks
1 of 5
Count out the Atlanta Hawks only if you're prepared to be wrong.
Some of their pomp and promise admittedly appears lost following a mild late-season malaise. They've struggled to play .500 basketball since March, during which time their defensive execution has noticeably regressed, at times seeming downright bad.
But these "struggles" came at a time when nothing truly mattered. The Hawks had the Eastern Conference sewn up for a while, and their entire body of work speaks for itself.
Only two other teams, aside from Atlanta, finished the regular season inside the top seven of offensive and defensive efficiency: the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors. Though the Hawks have looked shaky on defense lately—the absence of a premier shot-blocker and defensive rebounder looms large—their selfless, super-effective brand of offense isn't going anywhere.
"Atlanta thinks on its feet and sways even the best defenses where they want them to shift while it whips the ball around or turns corners," writes Yahoo Sports' Kelly Dwyer. "If the participants stay ready, Atlanta should see scads of open shots."
Ringing endorsements don't get any louder.
No part of the road ahead suggests those endorsements should stop ringing, either. The Hawks are matched up against the Brooklyn Nets to start, a team they manhandled—and subsequently swept—during the regular season, winning all four meetings by an average of 16.8 points.
Against their two potential second-round foes—the Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks—the Hawks are a combined 5-2. They won't face a true challenge until they reach the Eastern Conference Finals, and that's only if the Cleveland Cavaliers are waiting. And Atlanta is 3-1 against them.
To that end, the Hawks are dangerous because they're a 60-win outfit with a semi-clear path to the conference finals and the offense necessary to dispatch any real threat they might incur.
Cleveland Cavaliers
2 of 5
Beware of the Cavaliers.
Since beginning the season 19-20, LeBron James and crew are a league-best 34-9, edging out even the indomitable Warriors. Kyrie Irving is flourishing as a No. 2 option, J.R. Smith is shooting an absurd percentage from deep, Tristan Thompson is a dark-horse Sixth Man of the Year candidate and James is healthy.
Kevin Love can even be found smiling these days.
More important than everything and anything else, the Cavaliers have the makings of a championship-caliber defense entering their first-round dance with Boston. We knew they could score, so their fourth-ranked offense checks in at "Yawn" on the surprise scale. It's their defense that was dissected and doubted to no end.
Rightfully so, too. They're 20th in points allowed per 100 possessions, and the last squad to win a title while ranking outside the top 10 in defensive efficiency for the regular season was the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers.
But the Cavaliers are playing like the next exception. From the trade deadline (Feb. 19) through April 8 (when they started benching everyone), they allowed only 101 points per 100 possessions, good enough for a top-10 mark during that span.
Timofey Mozgov is providing just enough rim protection, Iman Shumpert and James are pressuring the perimeter, both Smith and Love look engaged and Irving isn't overplaying (as much) for steals. If this collective effort holds, the Cavaliers will remain a competent defensive unit.
And if they remain a competent defensive unit, well, look out.
Golden State Warriors
3 of 5
After giving the New Orleans Pelicans high-fives for securing a playoff berth, be sure to also offer your condolences. Their reward for such late-season heroics is more bitter than sweet, as it sets up a first-round date with the Warriors, who are galloping giants until proved otherwise.
And proving otherwise won't be easy. Or even possible.
This is a team that ran out of things to play for long ago yet still finished the regular season on a tear. Golden State went 16-2 through its final 18 games and enters the playoffs with a league-leading defense, a top-two offense and the sixth-best record in NBA history.
Owning home-court advantage through the postseason only makes the Warriors more dangerous. They've lost just two games at Oracle Arena, the last of which came on Jan. 27, nearly three months ago.
Scarier than anything else, though, is this notion that the Warriors have yet to show their entire hand. They were so good during the regular season, fourth quarters became optional for their starters.
Stephen Curry ranks 143rd in fourth-quarter minutes (417). Anthony Davis, by comparison, has nearly 100 more final-period ticks on his legs (514), despite appearing in fewer fourth quarters.
Imagine what the Warriors will do when their best players are available from start to finish. They outscore opponents by 3.8 points per 100 possessions in fourth quarters now, which is fine. But their average through three is a plus-13.9.
There's nothing else to really say, mostly because no combination of words can adequately portray just how unbelievably dominant the Warriors remain.
Los Angeles Clippers
4 of 5
Don't look now, but the Los Angeles Clippers are dangerous again.
Things were weird for head coach Doc Rivers' crew early on. They still are to an extent. The Clippers are no longer the Pacific Division alpha dog, and their defense isn't what it was last season. They rank 15th in points allowed per 100 possessions, down from seventh in 2013-14.
Still, they're red-hot right now. Check out some of their key splits dating back to March 1:
| 109.0 | 5 | 101.1 | 9 | 7.9 | 3 |
Floor balance is back in the locale formerly known as "Lob City." Chris Paul can see through bodies and is averaging 22 points and 11 assists since March 1, DeAndre Jordan is a double-double mutant, J.J. Redick has parking-lot range and Jamal Crawford is healthy again.
Oh, and Blake Griffin is still channeling his inner LeBron. He's averaging 20 points, 7.7 rebounds and 5.8 assists since returning from a staph infection in his right elbow, numbers that are right in line with his season-long marks of 21.9 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.3 assists.
Shallow bench and all, the Clippers are ready for a playoff push teeming with consequence, as NBA.com's Lang Whitaker drives home:
"A couple of 55-plus win teams going at it in the first round of the playoffs? That's where we are now, as the power-heavy Western Conference gives us this clash of the titans. The Clippers have won a lot of games since coach Doc Rivers and Paul arrived, but they haven't won anything in the postseason of substance. This series gives them the opportunity to do exactly that.
"
San Antonio is dynastic, Jordan is speeding toward free agency, Paul has yet to reach the Western Conference Finals and the Clippers franchise itself has never made it past the second round. So yes, the stakes are high.
Good thing, then, that the Clippers are entering the postseason on fire.
San Antonio Spurs
5 of 5
If you weren't already pumped for the Clippers-Spurs circus, this should do the trick.
Two of the hottest teams are going head-to-head. One is a dynasty nearing its end, still dangerous as ever, trying to rewrite the book on never-ending excellence. The other is the Clippers.
Ending up with the No. 6 seed isn't exactly what the Spurs had in mind, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. Nor does it mean the Clippers won't take them seriously.
"You probably never want to play the Spurs in the first round if you have a choice," Griffin told reporters, per the Los Angeles Times' Melissa Rohlin. "The Spurs are playing their best basketball, like they normally tend to do."
Nothing has ever been more true. It was a late-season surge that put the Spurs in contention for a top-two playoff slot in the first place. They have the league's second-best record since the beginning of March (19-4), during which time they're outscoring opponents by 14.1 points per 100 possessions.
Not even the world-warping Warriors come close to sniffing that mark.
Superior minutes management and midseason injuries leave the Spurs well-rested, and the offense they run is in flawless form. They're fast but calculated. They'll whip the ball around the perimeter and elbow, running a series of on- and off-ball screens, for a full 24 seconds if they need to. They don't care.
They're the Spurs. And, in the most basic sense, that's why they're among the most dangerous postseason participants, even as a lower seed.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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