2016 NBA Power Rankings: Who's on Top Heading into Playoffs?
The 2015-16 NBA season concluded with a fever-dream firefight as Kobe Bryant sauntered away, barrels smoking, and the Golden State Warriors lobbed nukes at the record books.
And now, in the wake of all that carnage, it's time to sort these 30 teams out for good.
Some squads survived; others flourished. Still more fell behind early and saw the rest of the league disappear over the horizon.
As has been the case all year, these rankings organize all 30 NBA teams into a hierarchy that reflects their current quality. In the past, recent performance was a key consideration, often trumping overall record and season-long advanced stats. But in this case, the recent sample size is far less instructive than usual; plenty of teams bagged their seasons early, tanking outright or calling it quits more subtly.
So while the final week of the campaign will still count big for some, it'll be a peripheral factor for others.
Here we are at the end. We made it, you guys!
30. Philadelphia 76ers
1 of 30
Last Week: 30
This isn't rocket science.
The Philadelphia 76ers were the 30th-ranked team for the vast majority of the regular season, and they've done nothing to lift themselves out of that spot lately. They went winless in the final week of the season to finish with a league-low 10 wins, which means they were almost as bad as the Golden State Warriors were good.
Nobody posted a lower offensive rating than Philly's 96.6, and only five were worse defensively. That second fact should be most troubling for Sixers fans, as Brett Brown and his boys concluded last season with the 12th-best defensive rating in the league.
The regression is worrisome, if only because it indicates (as so many things about this season did) that players were checking out, disillusioned with protracted periods of deliberate losing.
With Sam Hinkie gone and the Colangelo family running things now, don't expect the Sixers to keep bottoming out. Do, however, expect a few seasons on the mediocrity treadmill.
29. Los Angeles Lakers
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Last Week: 29
Here's something: The Los Angeles Lakers finished with a lower net rating than the Sixers, posting a minus-10.7 to Philadelphia's minus-10.0.
That's remarkable in light of the 76ers' seven fewer wins, and it probably indicates the Lakers weren't as good at purposely giving away close games to bolster their lottery odds. That's fine; the Sixers have been perfecting the tank for a lot longer than L.A.
No final ranking of the Lakers would be complete without acknowledging Kobe Bryant's pitch-perfect, on-brand farewell. He closed the book on his career with 60 points on 50 shots Wednesday, ending his post-game address with a "Mamba out" and a dignified mic drop.
Because of course he did.
Say what you want about Kobe, but that dude always understood how to seize a moment.
The Lakers move on now, and the future will have to be brighter than the recent past—even with the franchise's most luminous star dimmed for good.
28. Brooklyn Nets
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Last Week: 28
Things were smilier than you would have expected when the Brooklyn Nets gave their exit interviews Wednesday.
Brook Lopez told the team's official Twitter feed he and the Nets were "focused on planting the right seeds [and] taking advantage of the pieces we have. Build the right environment."
Shane Larkin averaged nine points and 6.9 assists, and he shot 40 percent from deep in 30.6 minutes per game in April; his comments were pretty hopeful, too.
"Want to improve. Have to keep working, that's the goal of anyone in the league. Use it as motivation."
These are good attitudes, though it's hard to know what seeds Brooklyn will plant with its first-rounder headed to the Boston Celtics. Still, Lopez is a fine cornerstone, and Thaddeus Young is a serviceable vet. If Larkin is a rotation guard, the Nets have something.
This is how you put a positive spin on a team that won 21 games.
27. New Orleans Pelicans
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Last Week: 27
So ends the most disappointing season in the league.
Much of the New Orleans Pelicans' disastrous campaign, once marked by thoughts of a top-four seed and at least 50 wins, was out of their control. Guys got hurt. A lot.
New Orleans lost a league-high 332 player games to injury, per ManGamesLost.com. The whole thing snowballed as the season wore on, and the man-games-missed tally climbed.
It's possible we all overrated Alvin Gentry, and maybe we never should have willingly bought in on a core that included Tyreke Evans, Eric Gordon, Jrue Holiday and Ryan Anderson—all of whom have holes in their games and/or injury histories worth worrying over.
But nobody foresaw this.
The Pels won 30 games, and they actually went 5-9 after Anthony Davis packed it in March 20. But they were fielding lineups composed of D-League castoffs and end-of-rotation talent, guys who were playing for their careers in many cases. That's a relatively pleasant ending, but we can't count on those same players sticking around...or that unique late-season motivation persisting in the future.
Let's hope this is the last year of Anthony Davis' prime the Pelicans waste.
26. Phoenix Suns
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Last Week: 26
Things got real dark for the Phoenix Suns this year, but a half-decent flourish and the emergence of genuine young talent ended things on a lighter note.
Phoenix won three of its last four games, including a 124-115 victory over a desperate Houston Rockets team April 7, and Devin Booker emerged as a potential face of the franchise.
He digs that notion, per Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic: "I always dreamed at one point in my life that I’d be that guy. Never knew it’d be this soon. Here in Phoenix, I love it here, so it’s exactly what I want to be. It comes with a lot of pressure but it’s a good pressure to have. It’s something I always wanted."
The 19-year-old averaged 13.8 points per game (19.2 after the All-Star break) and hit the second-most threes among first-year players. With steady growth as a pick-and-roll ball-handler and a little more bulk to help on defense, Booker could join the league's upper tier of wings in a hurry.
His efficiency dipped in a bigger role during the second half, with his three-point percentage falling from 40.3 percent to 28.7. That's a concern, but with Booker's stroke, it's not a big one.
25. New York Knicks
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Last Week: 25
Any team seriously considering Kurt Rambis as anything more than an emergency stopgap head coach is eligible to be dead last in these rankings. That's one of the rules we set out early in the season (don't look that up; it's not true).
Seriously, though: Rambis ran veterans into the ground after taking over from Derek Fisher—to the point Carmelo Anthony had to ask for rest. And he seems to view Kristaps Porzingis as a bigger threat in the post than on the perimeter.
He wants to turn a unicorn into a pack mule.
Yet, for all that, team president Phil Jackson sees Rambis as a candidate to stay on in the big chair next year. "Only people I know will probably be involved in the interview process," Jackson told reporters, per Ian Begley of ESPN.com. Begley also reported Jackson named Rambis, specifically, as an option.
Hooray, familiarity with the triangle!
New York finishes 25th, and it won 15 more games than a year ago. But it's hard to get enthused when a guy with a career winning percentage of 28.4 and a library full of outdated philosophies might be in charge again next season.
24. Sacramento Kings
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Last Week: 24
George Karl made it through the season but was promptly fired the day after its conclusion.
"After evaluating the team's performance this season, I determined it was necessary to move forward with a new voice from the head coaching position," general manager Vlade Divac said in a team release.
This feels like a decision that was made months ago (and, actually, almost was), but got postponed so the Kings might at least get their money's worth in a meaningless stretch run. Why pay another coach to run the ship aground when you've already got Karl?
The Sacramento Kings played with no defensive fire all season, Karl appeared checked-out on the bench, and occasional locker-room blowups punctuated the whole doomed enterprise. Now, the Kings will try to find a successor—hopefully one who breaks the dysfunctional cycle that has surrounded the organization for nearly a decade.
With DeMarcus Cousins still around, a capricious front office and Rajon Rondo potentially in line for a fat new contract, the chances of a quick turnaround are mighty slim.
23. Denver Nuggets
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Last Week: 22
There's an optimism chasm (opti-chasm?) between the Kings and Denver Nuggets, as the latter closes out an identical 33-49 season with loads of young talent, a coach everyone seems to like (Mike Malone) and nothing but flexibility and growth potential in the future.
I wonder if the Kings could look into hiring Mike Malone away from the Nuggets. He sure does get his guys to play hard, and he really seems to connect with promising big men. Can you imagine if the Kings had someone like Malone under contract and let him go, or worse, fired him?
Man, that would have been stupid.
Anyhow, the Nuggets lost three of their last four games this season, but Nikola Jokic should finish third in Rookie of the Year voting, and Emmanuel Mudiay showed resiliency in surviving a brutal start. Those two are legitimate cornerstones.
22. Milwaukee Bucks
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Last Week: 23
The eight-win step down from last year feels like a disappointment for the Milwaukee Bucks, but because there was real growth in key areas, it's just as easy to be optimistic about the future as it was a season ago.
Specifically, Giannis Antetokounmpo—who mostly played point guard after the All-Star break and averaged 18.8 points, 8.6 rebounds and 7.2 assists during that stretch—took a giant Eurostep forward.
In fact, his potential as a position-blurring hybrid next year is probably more exciting than whatever people expected after last year's playoff berth: Sixteen teams make the postseason. There's only one guy in the league who could conceivably make the All-Star team as a 6'11" point guard.
Head coach Jason Kidd knows a few things about playing the point, and even he can't relate to Antetokounmpo's potential, per Ian Thomsen of NBA.com:
"His window, his line of sight is different from mine. I've got to get on a chair to figure out the things that he can see. There's very few people who can make a pass from this corner all the way to that corner and not be a lollipop—he could throw a fastball and the guy could catch and shoot. His line of sight is something that I've got to make the adjustment with, as he's running the break. He's seeing things differently. If I can help him by understanding what he's seeing, hopefully I don't screw him up.
"
21. Orlando Magic
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Last Week: 21
"Everyone likes sunshine, 70 degrees [and] no state tax," Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan told reporters Thursday.
He'd better hope so, as the Magic plan to be players in free agency this summer, and the on-court product may not be all that enticing on its own.
Two wins in the season's final week pushed Orlando's record up to 35-47, the best it's been since 2011-12 and the fourth straight year of win-loss improvement. But the young core hasn't developed quite as fast as many hoped, and now the Magic will flash their cap room in hopes of adding established help.
Al Horford and Mike Conley are two of the biggest names available, and Orlando could fling max cash at either one.
Aaron Gordon enjoyed a breakout year, and the Magic were 19-13 at the end of December. So there are sources of optimism beyond the slow year-over-year progress and cap room.
20. Minnesota Timberwolves
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Last Week: 20
You've got to consider the context, but the 144 points the Minnesota Timberwolves scored in their season finale offered a sweet taste of what might be ahead.
And now that Sam Mitchell and his antiquated disregard for three-point shooting are gone, there's even more reason to get excited about the offensive potential of the Wolves going forward. Under Mitchell, Minnesota posted the No. 11 offensive rating in the league, despite shooting the second-fewest triples.
Just imagine how the next coach, whoever it is, might take the lid off this attack simply by catching up to the trey-heavy times.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Ricky Rubio give Minnesota a potential star and an established stud on defense, and if Andrew Wiggins ever gets consistently serious on that end, the Wolves could easily get stops at a league-average rate. And if Tom Thibodeau or Dave Joerger comes aboard, well...let's just pencil in a playoff berth.
We've been spouting a lot of optimism over the last few slides, but it's tough to find a team more deserving than the Timberwolves.
19. Memphis Grizzlies
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Last Week: 16
Aaaaaaaand here's where the optimism well runs dry.
The Memphis Grizzlies backed into the playoffs with an 11-18 record and a minus-6.7 net rating after the break, and it's difficult to imagine a scenario where they win a game in their first-round matchup with the San Antonio Spurs.
ESPN.com's Kevin Pelton has them as the least likely first-round team to advance.
At full strength, Memphis would have a shot at taking San Antonio to six. But the Grizzlies have been playing a skeleton crew for weeks, and it's a lot to ask of Matt Barnes, Vince Carter and Zach Randolph to carry a cast of newbies against the 67-win Spurs.
The Grizz are in for a rough spring and a complicated summer. After inevitably getting bounced, they'll have to figure out what to do about Conley's free agency and the team's overall direction. Marc Gasol is on a max contract that'll run through the decade, but his age and foot injury mean nothing's guaranteed.
Grit and grind is almost gone.
18. Chicago Bulls
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Last Week: 19
Finishing two games over .500 would be fine for some teams, but it represents a profound failure for the Chicago Bulls.
This was a club with legitimate championship aspirations, and it actually got a season from Derrick Rose that met (and probably exceeded) all but the most wildly positive expectations. Unfortunately, Fred Hoiberg didn't magically transform the offense, Joakim Noah got hurt and the rest of the roster never found any consistency.
So now, outside the playoff picture, the Bulls have a longer offseason than they expected to re-evaluate their next moves.
Decision-makers like vice president John Paxson are already dispensing hard truths, per Nick Friedell of ESPN.com: "I do think that anybody who watched us play this year saw a team that didn't have the collective fight or toughness that's needed to battle through adversity. And to me, that's the biggest disappointment in all of this."
It feels like change is coming.
17. Washington Wizards
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Last Week: 18
Change already arrived in Washington, where the Wizards fired head coach Randy Wittman after a disappointing season wrapped up with 41 wins and no playoff berth, per Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post. For a team that won a postseason series in each of the last two years, a step back like that meant heads were sure to roll.
The Wizards finish ahead of the Bulls mainly because their problems appear more easily remedied. In removing Wittman, in fact, the fix may already be finished.
The focus now is on free agency and the infinitesimally small chance of luring Kevin Durant away from the Oklahoma City Thunder. If they connect on that long shot and find a half-decent coach (whom Durant would theoretically hand-pick), the Wizards would head into next year as one of the league's five best teams.
More realistically, Washington must settle on a style that fits personnel. It messed around with uptempo, undersized lineups this season with underwhelming results. Even if the Marcin Gortat-Nene pairing feels a little old-school, the Wizards probably should have gone that direction more often.
John Wall sat out much of the Wizards' stretch run to rest a sore knee, and his rehabilitation this summer will be vital to a Washington resurgence next year.
16. Utah Jazz
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Last Week: 13
If ranking the Utah Jazz somewhere around 12th or 13th didn’t seem so ridiculous in light of their finish outside the playoff picture, I’d probably do it. This team posted a higher average margin of victory than four teams that finished ahead in the standings, and that’s just in the West. Two other clubs from the East had lower margins than Utah, too.
You build in the terrible injury luck that cost both Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert a quarter of the season, took out Dante Exum for the year and sidelined Alec Burks for a huge chunk, and it’s truly remarkable the Jazz’s peripherals wound up so high.
But, we live in a results-oriented world. So the best I can do is make Utah something of an honorary playoff team and slot it in at No. 16.
We can at least agree the Jazz belong ahead of the playoff-bound Grizzlies, right?
OK, great. And if you want to buy stock in a young team that might break through next season, this is the one. Check back this fall when the first edition of the 2016-17 power rankings has Utah in the top 10.
15. Houston Rockets
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Last Week: 17
The Houston Rockets won three straight games to end the season and salvage the West's No. 8 seed. Somehow, after reaching the conference finals last year, that modest achievement feels impressive.
That’s because the Rockets started slowly, got Kevin McHale fired and never committed on the defensive end in a campaign that seemed irretrievably lost for weeks at a time. When abject failure appears inevitable, modest success suddenly looks pretty good.
Whatever positive vibes Houston might feel now will soon dissipate, as the Warriors loom in the first round. It wasn’t much of a series when these teams met last year, and nothing indicates a different outcome this time around.
The Rockets' late run into the playoffs may have only postponed disappointment by a week or so.
14. Indiana Pacers
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Last Week: 14
The Indiana Pacers’ 45 wins didn’t come via the small-ball offensive overhaul we heard so much about during the preseason. Instead, Indy’s success arrived for the same reason it always has: The Pacers defended.
With just 100.2 points allowed per 100 possessions, Indiana trailed only the Spurs and Atlanta Hawks in defensive rating this season. And if not for consistent problems with late-game offensive execution, these Pacers might have pushed their win total up toward 50.
Those scoring issues mean they’re not much of a threat to the Toronto Raptors in the first round, but you can probably count on high-effort, low-scoring performances for as long as Indiana hangs in against the No. 2 seed.
Then again, if Solomon Hill’s career-high seven made three-pointers in the Pacers’ season finale is a sign of things to come, maybe we’ll see a little more scoring after all.
13. Dallas Mavericks
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Last Week: 15
After stringing together six straight wins and 7-of-9 overall, the Dallas Mavericks hit the playoffs as the West’s No. 6 seed. And in a brutal matchup against the quasi-powerhouse Oklahoma City Thunder, the Mavs’ smallest player may be the key.
J.J. Barea was huge in Dallas’ closing stretch, but he injured his groin at the end of the run. If he’s healthy and productive, he’ll give the Mavs a chance (albeit an appropriately tiny one, considering this is Barea we’re talking about).
Per B/R Insights, the Mavericks are 7-4 when Barea plays at least 30 minutes and 5-0 when he scores at least 25 points.
Three of those five 25-plus-point nights came in the last two weeks of the regular season—when Dallas improbably saved a campaign that had been spiraling out of control.
If you’re OKC, you’re not particularly worried. But you’re also aware Dallas’ experience, savvy and secret weapon (Barea) can’t be totally overlooked.
12. Detroit Pistons
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Last Week: 12
The Pistons finish two spots ahead of the Pacers, despite winding up a game behind them in the standings. And Indiana’s average margin of victory was more than a point larger than Detroit’s.
So what gives?
Mostly, this is about faith in Stan Van Gundy’s coaching chops.
Frank Vogel is a proven winner in his own right, but SVG took Orlando teams that looked and played a lot like this one on some deep playoff runs, culminating in a Finals appearance in 2008-09. With Andre Drummond in the middle and Reggie Jackson capable of winning a game or two by himself, the Pistons just feel more dangerous than the Pacers right now.
Plus, if all we based these final rankings on was team record, there’d be no point.
11. Portland Trail Blazers
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Last Week: 11
The Portland Trail Blazers’ season was a rousing success, and it doesn’t matter what happens to them in the playoffs.
Nothing could overshadow a team supposedly entering Phase One of a rebuild finishing fifth in the West with a crew of role players and a two-guard attack that should have been defensively unsustainable. The Blazers are playing with house money from now on.
How that impacts their playoff success is tricky. Either they’ll succumb to the dangerous “just happy to be here” mindset and get rolled by the Los Angeles Clippers in short order, or the total lack of expectations will propel them to some liberated new level.
The stops will be hard to come by, but the Blazers shouldn’t have trouble scoring against the Clips after ranking fourth in the league with a 56.6 true shooting percentage since the All-Star break.
10. Miami Heat
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Last Week: 9
We’re firmly in hair-splitting territory now.
Eighty-two regular-season games couldn’t separate the Miami Heat, Charlotte Hornets, Boston Celtics and Atlanta Hawks, all of whom finished with 48-34 records, and all of whom were seeded in the East based on tiebreakers.
And though Miami earned the No. 3 seed over the trio of teams with identical records, it checks in last among them here.
The reasoning: Chris Bosh is still out, Dwyane Wade’s body gets closer to breaking down with every day that passes, the Heat’s per-game differential was only the seventh-best in the East, and ESPN.com’s Kevin Pelton has them pegged as the team most likely to suffer a first-round upset.
The Heat are good. It’s just not clear, even after a full season, they’re any better than the next three Eastern Conference teams in these rankings.
9. Charlotte Hornets
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Last Week: 10
All bets are off if Nicolas Batum’s sore ankle, which bothered him in the season’s final week, is still an issue in the first round.
But if Charlotte has all hands on deck, shoots the ball from long range like it did all year and gets a game-sealing fourth quarter or two from crunch-time maestro Kemba Walker, the chances of an upset against Miami (insofar as one 48-34 team can truly “upset” another) are pretty darn good.
The Hornets were 21-8 after the break, better than Miami’s 19-10 mark. Only the Warriors and Spurs outscored opponents by larger average margins in that period.
Home-court advantage gives the Heat a potential edge in the head-to-head series, but it’s still fair to say Charlotte has established itself as the better team lately.
8. Boston Celtics
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Last Week: 8
If you’re looking for criteria to separate the Celtics from the Hawks, whom they’ll face in the first round and whom (spoiler) they rank just one spot behind, start with Isaiah Thomas.
Boston’s offense has been a hit-or-miss operation, and it tends to miss when Thomas isn’t taking over. Per B/R Insights, the Celtics are just 3-4 when Thomas scores fewer than 15 points.
One of those four losses, a 24-point rout, came against Atlanta Nov. 24.
That was a long time ago, but the Celts lost three out of four to the Hawks this year. So the margin and the possible reason behind it remain instructive.
7. Atlanta Hawks
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Last Week: 6
The Hawks put a bow on their season with a 1-2 week and a minus-5.0 net rating, which effectively cost them the No. 3 seed they'd been holding throughout April. So if you're a believer in the concept of playoff momentum, maybe temper your expectations for Al Horford, Paul Millsap and Co.
If you're more into large, meaningful samples, consider this tweet from Jay King of MassLive.com: "Since All-Star break, the Hawks pretty comfortably had the best defense. 96.8 rating, per NBA.com. Next: Spurs at 99.3."
It's strange to think of a Hawks team that defined itself by terrific ball-movement and three-point shooting last season as a defense-first operation just a year later, but that's where we are.
And, arguably, the ability to hunker down and prevent points might serve the Hawks just as well as their offense did a year ago. Remember, when opponents used switches to force Atlanta into isolation scoring situations last postseason, its scoring stalled.
There's no similarly simple adjustment to neutralize the Hawks' sturdy defense.
6. Toronto Raptors
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Last Week: 7
The Raps started their season-ending four-game winning streak with a 111-98 victory April 8 against the Pacers, whom they'll meet in the first round.
That recent win and the possible stylistic edge Toronto's free-throw-drawing skills provide could prove meaningful, per Yahoo Sports' Kelly Dwyer:
"By frustrating the heck out of Indiana’s top three defense by earning calls and getting to the free throw line endlessly. The Raptors were the league’s second-best in terms of earning the darn things this season, and if Norman Powell can shoot 19 in a single regular season game against Indiana, think of what [DeMar] DeRozan and [Kyle] Lowry can do on national TV.
"
Lowry's late-season shooting slump (39.5 percent from the field in April), tied to a sore elbow, is worrisome. The Raptors will go only as far as Lowry can take them, so there's some serious vulnerability there. And if Toronto falls behind early in another series, all those horrible memories of past playoff collapses could come rushing back.
Still, for now, the Raps remain the second-best team in the East.
5. Los Angeles Clippers
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Last Week: 5
The Clips finished the season with a 53-29 record, winners of eight out of their last 10 games. And they mailed in that April 13 loss to the Suns, so that one hardly counts.
Point being: L.A. is in a good place these days.
Blake Griffin eased himself back into the swing of things with five games in April, and he hit double figures during each of the last three he played. It's hard to expect him to be in perfect shape for the postseason, but he's got value even if he's limited. And the longer the Clippers last, the better Griffin's rhythm should be.
Barring a wild triumph of youth over experience, Los Angeles shouldn't have trouble with the Blazers in the first round. Per Joe Freeman of the Oregonian, the Clippers have a combined 554 games of playoff seasoning. Portland has 92.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers
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Last Week: 4
Credit the Cleveland Cavaliers for pushing through a season under a microscope in which every tweet, postgame comment and sideways glance was scrutinized for signs of locker-room unrest. Oddly, the singular focus of the postseason should ease some of that pressure.
It may also dredge up some familiar basketball issues, per Brett Koremenos of RealGM.com: "Kevin Love’s defensive limitations could be severely exposed by a team that starts two combo forwards and employs one of the league’s most dynamic pick-and-roll attacks."
The preferred excuse for last season's Finals loss was the absence of Love and Kyrie Irving. Now, with a matchup that could test both of their defensive weaknesses right away, we're going to get some valuable information.
And if we see Irving or Love pushed into smaller roles, maybe things really boil over.
Or...maybe the Cavs cruise through the East without incident like we all expect and get run over by whoever they see in the Finals.
Come to think of it, that second thing seems most likely.
3. Oklahoma City Thunder
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Last Week: 3
This is where the numbers get pushed aside in favor of gut feeling.
The Thunder won two fewer games than the Cavs this year, and they posted a startlingly meager 15-13 record after the All-Star break. Toss in a 5-5 finish to the season, and it's hard to see how OKC deserves to rate higher than Cleveland.
That’s not to say all the numbers favor the Cavaliers. Oklahoma City beat opponents by a larger average margin on the season, and Basketball Reference pegged the Cavs’ schedule as the easiest in the league.
Mainly, the Thunder maintain No. 3 because they have two of the best five players in the league, fewer easily exploitable weaknesses than Cleveland and (it feels like) less potential for unrest and/or collapse.
Maybe all that seems crazy, especially with the Cavs winning both head-to-head meetings against OKC. I guess if you’re among the Cavs fans really upset by this, you can take solace in the satiny-smooth path to the Finals ahead.
2. San Antonio Spurs
29 of 30
Last Week: 2
The seventh-best scoring margin in NBA history would normally be enough to rank first on any list like this. But the Warriors made this season decidedly abnormal, so San Antonio is stuck in the same place it’s been for almost the entire year: second.
The Dubs’ April 7 win over the Spurs made it three out of four, and it also added an air of finality to the postseason ahead.
If San Antonio can’t push the Warriors, nobody can.
The defense remains phenomenal, but the Spurs proved they couldn’t consistently score against the Warriors. And we know Golden State only needs to catch fire for a few minutes to win any game.
Anything’s possible, but the Western Conference Finals appear to be the Spurs’ final destination.
1. Golden State Warriors
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Last Week: 1
Seventy-three wins.
Seven. Three.
Are we good? We’re good, right?
Seriously, what else needs to be said? No collection of shooters had ever hit more than 1,000 threes in a year until the Warriors buried 1,077. No MVP had ever taken such a leap after winning the award a first time until Curry torched the path between great and historically transcendent.
No 6’7” (he’s not even 6’6”, and we all know it) forward had ever been the best center in the league until Draymond Green did it.
No team has ever had a season as successful as the Warriors.
And given the obscene amounts of luck and skill it took to do it, no team ever will.
