Be Afraid: Warriors Can Get Even Better After Historic Pre-All Star Run
OAKLAND, Calif. — As far as advantageous positioning goes, the Golden State Warriors reside in a realm all their own.
They have a forceful grip on the NBA's best record, which stands at 48-9 after an emphatic and animated 123-113 win over the Los Angeles Clippers at Oracle Arena on Thursday night. They have the best offense the NBA has seen in 25 years. Their No. 2 defensive rating (101.5 points allowed per 100 possessions) means they're more than stingy enough to make up for a scoring drought on almost any night.
And as the final third of the season gets underway, the Warriors are on the precipice of becoming the first team in the league to clinch a playoff spot. Thanks to the smoking a freshly depleted Sacramento Kings squad gave to the Denver Nuggets on Thursday, Golden State's magic number for securing its fifth straight trip to the postseason stands at one.
Oh, and the Warriors scored 50 points in the third quarter against the Clips—just the 38th time in NBA history a team has put up a 50-spot during any quarter.
So how do they get better?
This is the challenge facing head coach Steve Kerr and the rest of his squad as they look to not only complete another scintillating regular season but finish the playoffs with the title that eluded them last June.
To look plainly at their record is to think all is well and that there's little they can (or even should) tinker with as April fast approaches. But this is a team that still isn't playing to its fullest potential.
Just look at the Warriors' play broken down by quarter through 57 games:
| Offensive Rating | Defensive Rating | Net Rating | |
| 1st quarter | 115.1 | 99.0 | 16.2 |
| 2nd quarter | 114.4 | 104.3 | 10.1 |
| 3rd quarter | 121.9 | 98.1 | 23.8 |
| 4th quarter | 106.1 | 104.4 | 1.6 |
Part of that fourth-quarter drop-off is due to Golden State's racking up big leads and then emptying the bench as the game winds down.
But not all of it. The Warriors have shown a tendency to give up late-game advantages even when the starters are in, and they haven't shown much gumption in closing out tight games. Their 5.3 net rating in clutch situations ranks a pedestrian 11th in the league, and they've lost all three overtime games they've played.
"They get really, really complacent when they get a big lead—a 20-point lead can get to zero real quick," one Western Conference scout said. "I think it's a mental thing. They just f--k around too much when they get a lead."
That sounds like an eerily similar description of what plagued the Warriors late in the playoffs last year, especially during the NBA Finals against a hungry Cleveland Cavaliers team hunting for its first championship.
Doubly so in the waning moments of Game 7: They became too three-happy and conservative with their offense, and they paid the ultimate price against the Cleveland Cavaliers, as LeBron James walked out of Oracle Arena a champion.
Luckily, Kerr still has a weapon for such situations he has been reluctant to deploy: the high 1-3 pick-and-roll with Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.
This simple yet (when done right) devastating scheme renders opposing defenses helpless because of Durant's ability to take the outside shot on a pick-and-pop, pass back to Curry on his mismatch against a wing or attack the rim with controlled abandon.
The Warriors went to it Thursday night against the Clippers as part of their key third-quarter run that sealed the win. Durant may be a mediocre screener, but he does just enough here to create a wisp of separation. And that's all he needs to drive the lane for an easy slam.
Leaning hard on the pick-and-roll is not without its drawbacks. "It takes away from what they do best, which is ball movement," the Western Conference scout said.
But its efficiency in a pinch should work well in the playoffs. As the scout noted, "especially when you can get Durant isolated on the point guard. Steve will take those odds every time."
The Warriors could also expect to improve just by virtue of being fully healthy again, which they are now for the first time in more than a month. Both backup power forward David West (two blocks) and starting center Zaza Pachulia (a career-high four blocks) returned to their respective roles during Thursday's win while making an immediate defensive impact.
The best way to ensure healthy players stay healthy is to carefully manage minutes, which has been a hallmark of Kerr's since he arrived three years ago. Its maintenance is incumbent on assistant coach Mike Brown, who largely handles the in-game rotations.
So far, so good: Not a single Warrior ranks among the top 30 players in average minutes per game.
This next portion of the Warriors' schedule will put that commitment to the test. On Monday, they embark on a five-game road trip and then come home to face the Boston Celtics. After that, they head out again for a back-to-back in Minnesota and San Antonio.
"That may mean managing some rest," said Kerr, who (unlike his mentor, San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich) prefers to monitor and massage per-game minutes rather sit out players for entire contests.
"We have the most insane schedule I've ever seen—in all my years in the NBA—coming up. ... I've got to be very, very careful about our players' welfare and make sure they're fresh and not too fatigued because we know that can lead to injury."
Kerr and Brown kept each of the core four from playing more than 34 minutes against the Clippers, a somewhat remarkable feat given the 12-point halftime deficit. And now, with just 25 games left, Kerr will almost assuredly rest players more often for entire games. (The ends of the two back-to-backs in March seem like prime spots for some needed recovery.)
Sure, the Warriors' "issues" encompass the kinds of concerns other teams would kill for, but they are areas that could nonetheless derail what looks like another long playoff run.
Health? Discipline? Late-game poise? At one time or another during the playoffs, these bubbles popped in the Warriors' collective faces last year.
Their goal for the remainder of this regular season, with just 25 games left, is to prepare and make sure no such derailments occur again.
With some foresight and a little more focus, the Warriors believe history (and infamy) won't repeat itself.
Warriors Insider's Notebook
In Da Club with 50
Thursday's 50-point third quarter came out of nowhere and was spectacular in the moment. The fact there have been fewer than 40 of them in NBA history speaks to how hard it is to be that prolific during one 12-minute period.
According to Dunc'd On Basketball host Nate Duncan, the Warriors scored those 50 points on just 25 possessions, meaning they averaged two points every single time down the floor against the Clippers.
"That's a lot of points. Is that the most we've had all season?" Klay Thompson said. "If we could do that again a few more times this year...but I think being down 12 [at halftime] was good for us because it really pushed our focus to be better. Our focus was great and our physicality."
"I've been playing on this team for five years now, so I'm sure we’ve had 50 at some point," Draymond Green said before being corrected.
"...It was pretty crazy. KD got it going, and then Steph picked right up. It was pretty spectacular. It was good to watch. You watched it too. It was amazing. I had fun watching it."
The only other three times in franchise history the Warriors hit 50 in one quarter? All came during one three-week stretch in March 1989, a season before Tim Hardaway was drafted and Run TMC was born.
Steve Kerr hadn't been drafted to the NBA yet, and Steph Curry was barely a year old.
The Pelicans (Brief)
Much was made of the trade that sent DeMarcus Cousins from California's Central Valley to the bayou of Louisiana, at least insofar as the idea that New Orleans could leap into the eighth and final playoff spot. The thinking is the bigs—Cousins and recent All-Star Game MVP Anthony Davis—can anchor a dynamic two-big frontcourt that could give the Warriors problems down low.
No so fast, according to one Western Conference scout who has seen both teams in person.
"They're not going to give Golden State a problem," the scout said. "There's no shot for the Pelicans. There's just not enough shooting. They just don't have the firepower from beyond the three-point line to keep up."
The Pelicans are, at best, a mediocre team from long range, and the thinking goes that the Warriors would be more than happy to let Cousins and Davis have theirs but make sure no one else from that lineup beats them.
See how the Pelicans, despite a combined 56 points and 23 rebounds from the duo, lost by 30 to the Houston Rockets on Thursday night at New Orleans' Smoothie King Center.
"I mean, we don't care, at the end of the day," Shaun Livingston said earlier this week when asked about a potential matchup come mid-April. "But who wants to see a team with DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis on the same team? Right, nobody? But at the same time, we're not dodging anybody."
Nothing But a Number
Thursday's win over the Clippers puts the Warriors on a pace not all that dissimilar to last year's record-setting squad that won 73 regular-season games.
En route to running away with the top seed in the Western Conference, Golden State clinched a playoff berth last February 27, just an hour before Stephen Curry dropped 46 points in Oklahoma City during a thrilling overtime win in prime time.
This year, the Warriors are still ahead of the pack relative to their conference foes, but the pressure of last season's uncertain sprint toward history is tangibly absent. Both publicly and privately, players and team officials acknowledge their eyes last spring were focused not just on securing that No. 1 seed but also on the mythical 73-win mark.
"It's a different process," Livingston said earlier this week. "Last year, we were still trying to get better, but obviously, we were doing something historic in the sense of trying to chase the record. We might not have said it publicly, but, as competitors, we wanted it. And then now this year, that's not really the main focus. The main focus is the championship.
"It was like that last year, but it was just different—it was staggered—so now we can really lock in on what we need to do to accomplish our ultimate goal."
Erik Malinowski is the Golden State Warriors lead writer for B/R. Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. You can follow him on Twitter at @erikmal. All stats via NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
