After Smooth Summer, Warriors Remain on Fast Track Toward All-Time Greatness

Absent of other pressing updates and push notifications, here's all you need to know about how swimmingly this offseason has gone for the Golden State Warriors.

As various league superpowers were embroiled in their own kinds of melodrama—and, well, Melo drama—the Warriors put a bow on all their business with a single, understated press release Tuesday announcing Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, Zaza Pachulia and David West had all agreed to new contracts.

No terms disclosed, no breathless testimonials from upper management as to their intrinsic and incalculable value. Just a roundup of moves, no big deal, move along with your summer plans.

In one confident move, this was the Warriors demonstrating the purest crystallization of acting like they've been there before. Regardless of what happens over the next three calendar months, they will enter the 2017-18 season with the same core that propelled them to 67 regular-season wins and a record-setting 16-1 postseason mark.

In other words, they will be massive favorites to repeat as champions and extend this budding dynasty.

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Who was their biggest personnel loss since knocking off Cleveland in five relatively stress-free Finals games? Dan Martinez, their No. 2 man in the media-relations department, left the club after 17 years to join new Atlanta Hawks general manager (and former longtime Dubs executive) Travis Schlenk.

Somehow, the Warriors have thus far proven immune to the pitfalls that so often dictate the decline of most reigning champs. They avoided similar issues two years ago when they won a title and were fortunate enough that most of their players were already under contract for at least one more season.

No backchannel machinations or salary-cap wizardry needed. The result: a historic 73-9 campaign that may never be equaled.

This time around, the Warriors were at least expected to lose Iguodala or Livingston. Durant was going to price them out of a free agent or two. They'd miss Ian Clark's second-unit scoring. Maybe West, after finally winning a title following 14 seasons in the league, would retire and deprive head coach Steve Kerr of yet another veteran big. Even Bay Area folk hero JaVale McGee—JaVale McGee!—appeared to have priced his way out of Oakland with a surprisingly productive comeback season.

Throw in a privately financed $1 billion arena currently under construction in San Francisco, and the Warriors were finally going to start feeling the financial crunch of their swift ascendance into the NBA's highest echelon.

About that.

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Durant gave up nearly $10 million in salary, which supplied the financial wiggle room general manager Bob Myers needed to bring back Livingston and Iguodala at fair-market deals. Curry was offered a then-record $201 million supermax deal, which he accepted minutes after free agency opened. West and Pachulia are back at bargain-bin prices.

They even scooped up Omri Casspi and Nick Young on the open market as valuable bench pieces to replace free agents like Clark and James Michael McAdoo. And the $3.5 million they paid Chicago to pick Oregon power forward Jordan Bell in the second round looks like (after a few Summer League games) the steal of the 2017 draft.

So the rich got richer. The Warriors, despite attaining a recent level of sustained success unseen in the NBA since the heyday of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal some 15 years ago, appear as though their rise has not yet reached its stratospheric apex.

What does that mean for next season? Think of it this way: The Warriors, both individually and as a team, have recorded some astounding milestones, some of which may never be eclipsed:

• On the back of the 73-9 campaign of 2015-16, they've averaged 69 wins over the past three seasons.

• In knocking off Oklahoma City in the 2016 Western Conference Finals, the Warriors became only the 10th team ever to come back from a 3-1 series deficit in the playoffs. (Who was the 11th? Never mind that.)

• Curry swished a record 286 threes in 2014-15 and won the Most Valuable Player, then swished 402 threes and became the first unanimous MVP in league history, then followed that up with a single-game record 13 threes en route to 324 in all.

• Klay Thompson scored 37 points in one quarter in the 2014-15 season. The next year, he set a single-game playoff record with 11 threes. This past season, he scored 60 points in one game despite playing fewer than 30 minutes.

• Draymond Green not only became the first Warrior to win Defensive Player of the Year this past season. He also became the first player in NBA history to record a triple-double while scoring fewer than 10 points.

• Despite a stacked Western Conference this past year, Golden State became the eighth team in NBA history to boast four All-Stars in the same season.

• They then steamrolled through their four playoff opponents with 16 wins in 17 games, setting a new postseason record for win percentage.

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Golden State has won two championships over the past three seasons and seems poised for at least one (and probably) more in the next few years. That's largely a testament to the culture that's been instituted in the seven short years since Joe Lacob and Peter Guber rescued the team from under the stingy, dysfunctional rule of Chris Cohan. Not all that long ago, the Warriors were a perennial joke around the NBA. Now, they're the ones who are laughing loudest.

But what does all this assumed success portend? What will it ultimately resemble? That's the truly fascinating aspect about the Warriors, since they've already accomplished so much over the past three years in particular. What bars remain to be cleared?

They're (probably) not going to win 74 games in a season. They're (almost assuredly) not going to go 16-0 in a single postseason. Another unanimous MVP? Unlikely, especially with so much talent spread around the starting lineup.

Curry may go supernova and sink 14 threes in one night, which would beat the entire 1979-80 Atlanta Hawks. Thompson may score 82 points to move past Bryant for second place behind Wilt Chamberlain's unbreakable 100. Perhaps Durant will go for 50 points or more on 15 or fewer shots. (That's never been done.)

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Individual records are still within grasp, but the team—and the franchise as a whole—will only be judged forthwith on how many more titles it can ultimately wring out of what may be the most impressive assemblage of talent ever condensed into one NBA roster.

A championship is the goal for every team each season, but the Warriors can zero in on that result without hesitation or abandon. They've both had the experience of succeeding on that level and have no other mountains to scale. So many other teams face all sorts of external pressures, but the Warriors have been to heaven and hell and back over the past three years. No expectation can arise that will derail what their talent level dictates should be theirs.

Something else could derail them, most notably a non-basketball development. Perhaps a personality conflict sours the balanced locker room chemistry. A traumatic injury at the wrong time may have the last word one of these years. Eventually, someone will get traded away or walk in free agency, putting an end to this core. Regardless, Golden State figures to remain playoff-level competitive for the next decade.

There will be an inexplicable outcome or two along the way—the Warriors would be hard-pressed to top what transpired in 2016, but you never know in today's NBA—and not everything will be as easy as the Warriors make it look when they're at their free-flowing best in the half court.

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The NBA is a league that cries out to be surprised in whatever way the basketball gods may scheme. The Warriors may keep winning, setting records and proving the talent gap between them and the rest of the league is always further away than we realize, but the true fun of it all rests in whether they can keep their style and successes as fresh and mesmerizing as they've been for three years and counting.

In the end, we may hold up this era of Warriors basketball as the best the NBA has ever produced. We'd do well not only to recognize that potential reality here and now, while it's fully in our midst, but be ready for what the rest of this run may produce. 

The basketball world may never see its equal again. But how it all ends? That's still anyone's guess.

Erik Malinowski covers the Warriors for B/R. His book, Betaball: How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History, will be published in October. Follow him on Twitter: @erikmal.