Can't Deny It: Golden State Warriors Are Undisputed 2015 NBA Title Front-Runners
The Golden State Warriors are NBA title favorites and it's not even kind-of-sort-of close.
This is not a jumps-off-the-page-and-beats-you-senseless stance. The Warriors won 67 regular-season tilts, have thoroughly dominated the championship conversation and seldom showed signs of slowing or disinterest, even as the gap between them and every other team widened.
A first-round sweep of the New Orleans Pelicans only reinforced their standing atop the Association's pecking order. Even though Anthony Davis and crew landed a couple punches, the Warriors navigated blown leads and double-digit deficits without dropping a game, the lone surprise being that they were tested earlier than expected.
Following that series and a 101-86 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 1 of Round 2, the Warriors are sitting pretty as undisputed title favorites, head and shoulders above any doubt to which they once could have been subject.
The Field
One of the Warriors' biggest postseason victories to date didn't even directly involve them.
When the Los Angeles Clippers edged past the San Antonio Spurs in Game 7, they removed Golden State's biggest threat from contention. There is nothing overly calculated or complex about this viewpoint. The Spurs are the reigning champs and are forever dangerous during the playoffs.
If there was ever a recurring knock on the Warriors, it's that they weren't the Spurs. San Antonio dismantled them on Easter Sunday and long ago mastered the brand of selfless, motion-merry basketball the Warriors play.
Under the circumstances, knowing what the Spurs have accomplished and how brutally built the Western Conference remains, the Warriors could not have asked for a better path to the NBA Finals.
The series with the Grizzlies is already over. The Warriors are only up 1-0, and Mike Conley could return to action on a whim, but it's over.
Game 1 will end up serving as a microcosm for this entire series. The Warriors led by as many as 20, outscored the Grizzlies 39-9 from beyond the arc and formed a blockade in front of the restricted area, inviting Memphis to shoot from where it's least comfortable.
There's isn't a plausible scenario in which the Grizzlies successfully emerge from this matchup. They have neither the firepower nor the offensive consistency to hang with the Warriors, a team that kills you with floor spacing, pace and a stingy defensive identity specific to the personnel on hand.
A matchup between Golden State and either the Houston Rockets or L.A. Clippers is now inevitable—the same Rockets the Warriors beat four times during the regular season by an average of 15.3 points, and the same Clippers who just finished an exhaustive, seven-game set with the Spurs and must now plow on with a banged-up Chris Paul, per the Los Angeles Times' Ben Bolch:
Both of those teams could pose viable threats to the Warriors' throne. Both could also be dispatched in four or five games.
It's not a matter of belittling their bodies of work. The Rockets and Clippers are, by seeding, the West's third- and fourth-best teams.
But there isn't even a puncher's chance one of them enters the Western Conference Finals as a favorite. They combined for one win against the Warriors during the regular season, and neither wields the same two-way balance to combat a team that ranked in the top two of offensive and defensive efficiency.
Making it out of the Western Conference is only part of the Warriors' journey, though. They still need to take care of business in the NBA Finals.
Then again, reaching the NBA Finals only guarantees the Warriors a date with yet another inferior opponent.
Not one of the Eastern Conference's four remaining squads adequately stacks up against them. The Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards are still fringe contenders—the former thanks to maddeningly inconsistent efforts on both ends of the floor (see their series against the Milwaukee Bucks), the latter for spending 60 percent of 2014-15 playing sub-.500 basketball (24-27 after starting 22-9).
At one point, it looked like the Atlanta Hawks could push the Warriors to the brink. But then the playoffs began and they crumbled, turning their first-round matchup against the eighth-place Brooklyn Nets into a six-game coin flip.
The Hawks allowed the Nets to hang around for most of the series. They shot under 42 percent on open shots through Game 4, according to NBA.com's player tracking box score database, an issue they only began ironing out in the latter two matchups.
It was one that followed them into their Game 1 loss against Washington, per Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal:
That leaves the Cleveland Cavaliers. They have a healthy LeBron James, so they are relevant. Scary, too.
They just aren't to the Warriors.
Kevin Love is done for the season after having surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder. The Cavaliers' most-used postseason lineup that doesn't include him consists of Kyrie Irving, Iman Shumpert, James Jones, Tristan Thompson and James. The group logged just 11 minutes together against the Boston Celtics, during which time it was outscored by 60.6 points per 100 possessions.
Searching for a bigger sample size doesn't exactly help the Cavaliers' case. Their most-used Love-less lineup during the regular season was composed of J.R. Smith, Timofey Mozgov, Thompson, Irving and James. Together they saw 75 minutes of court time and were a minus-8.8, a net rating worse than that of the 21-win Los Angeles Lakers.
Credit should be given where credit is due. On paper, most of these teams—from the Clippers and Rockets, to the Cavaliers and Hawks—look dangerous.
They're just not nearly as dangerous as the Warriors.
The Warriors Themselves
The Warriors' status as title favorites is not the byproduct of a forgiving playoff path.
For one, the road ahead isn't mindlessly easy. It favors the Warriors, in part, because of factors beyond their control, but mostly because they're so darn good.
No other team enjoys the same roster-wide versatility. The Warriors are blessed with a vast array of two-way players, the ability to switch on everything when playing defense and a defensive psychopath in Draymond Green who can guard all five positions, sometimes on the same possession.
If there's a way to stifle their offensive attack, the league's 29 other outfits have yet to find it. The Pelicans came close at times, electing to chase the Warriors away from the three-point line and into the paint, where Davis lurked menacingly.
Even that approach is detrimentally flawed. At least four players must be devoted to pushing the Warriors off the rainbow, leaving one poor soul to protect the rim and grab defensive rebounds. Not even Davis was suited to play that role.
Running Golden State off of the arc also doesn't guarantee anything. Even the staunchest defenses must commit at least three total bodies to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Their releases are swift, and they don't need space to fire away. They just need a hoop in front of them.
It's unequivocally unfair how they operate beside each other, a dynamic that is still in full, inviolable swing, as Zach Harper explained for CBS Sports following Golden State's Game 1 win over Memphis:
"The Warriors' greatest strength is obviously Stephen Curry. I don't think we're reinventing the analysis game by stating the obvious here. He changes everything in a way we've rarely seen, just because teams are panicked to get a body in front of him by the time he hits half court. With the Grizzlies having Tony Allen at their disposal but not Conley (who is a fantastic defender), it's so much tougher to dedicate the necessary defensive attention to Curry without leaving Klay Thompson and the other supporting players free to do damage.
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Pairing Curry and Thompson with Andrew Bogut, Harrison Barnes and Green to start games allows the Warriors to set a peerless tone. The five are an ideal blend of spacing, passing, speed and defense, and they've outscored opponents by 30.1 points per 100 possessions through 73 minutes of postseason action together.
Home-court advantage factors in heavily here, too. The Warriors have dropped just two games at Oracle Arena all season, the most recent of which came on Jan. 27—21 home victories ago.
To be even less technical, Golden State has the 2014-15 league MVP in Curry. The other seven remaining playoff teams don't.
"He reminds me of two different people," Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters of Curry's MVP campaign. "One is Tim Duncan, and two is Steve Nash."
Well, then. It seems like employing Curry might be an advantage or something.
A Title for the Taking
Almost nothing and no one can stop the Warriors now.
As RealGM's Nate Duncan observes, only one legitimate obstacle really stands out:
Injuries. Freak accidents.
The mothership calling Stephen Curry home.
When those are a team's biggest concerns, said team is in good shape. And the Warriors are in great shape. They are title favorites to the umpteenth degree.
Sure, there are reasons NBA postseason participants actually play the games. But in this case, at this moment, given all that's still happening, they're only playing the games so the Warriors can continue winning them.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless otherwise cited.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @danfavale.
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