5 Things the Golden State Warriors Need to Do to Get Playoff-Ready

With 21 games left in the Golden State Warriors season, it's time for the team from the Bay to start getting playoff-ready.

Sure, Golden State is only a half-game out of the best record in the league, behind the Houston Rockets, who have rallied off 12 straight wins. The Warriors have the league's best net rating at 10.6. They're the most talented team in the league, and they remain the prohibitive favorites to win the championship for their third title in four years.

But that doesn't mean they're playing their best basketball.

"We have a really good record," Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams told Bleacher Report. "But I think anyone on the team who you talk to would probably tell you that we've coasted at times. That we haven't played with the consistency, nor the energy, especially on defense, that we're capable of playing with."

Given what this team has accomplished over the past four seasons, it's understandable that the Warriors might take it a little easy during the regular season. The final quarter of the season is time to kick it into high gear, so here are five things the Warriors need to do to get back to playing at their highest level.

Start Games Better

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The Warriors lead the league in net rating, but their slow starts this year are reflected in their 1.8 net rating during the first quarter. While teams like the Rockets pounce on opponents in the first quarter (18.1 net rating), the Warriors wait until the third quarter to turn on the jets, where they have an unbelievable 21.6 net rating. The Nuggets, second-closest, have a 9.6 net rating.

"Our start was great [against the Clippers on Feb. 22]," head coach Steve Kerr told reporters at Warriors shootaround. "To end the first quarter with an 11-point lead, it was the first time we've played with a lead in a long time.

"I thought our energy and our focus was great. We started the game out with eight assists and zero turnovers in the first five minutes. That helps your defense when you're not turning it over. The game got away from us in the second quarter when we started turning it over again, so we had some lapses.

"We need to be able to keep the pressure on and still maintain our discipline and our ball control."

Against lesser teams, the Warriors can come out sluggish. Against better teams, they can dig themselves into holes. Sometimes they can get out of it; sometimes they can't. The Warriors have all the firepower in the world, but they need to clean up their early-game execution.

Keep the Chef Cooking

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The Warriors are 15-1 when Stephen Curry scores 30 or more points. He has a 120.7 offensive rating, and the Warriors are 14.7 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court than off, which ranks in the 99th percentile.

It's almost as if the two-time MVP is really good at basketball.

He's at the center of Golden State's success. While the Warriors emphasize, prioritize and pride themselves on creating open shots via ball, player movement and unselfish basketball, it's critical that Curry plays his best basketball heading into the playoffs.

"It's very important. That's his role on this team, to be an astounding scorer," center JaVale McGee told B/R. "When he's doing his thing, especially that night he had 44 [against the Clippers], it's amazing. Especially being out there and watching him myself. Setting a screen for him and just watching him just throw it up there and it's all going in."

Flinging up 30-foot shots off the dribble every time down the court is not going to happen the way it did before Kevin Durant joined the team. But the fear of that will always bend the defense and create scoring opportunities for everyone else.

"Well, it's an important version," Ron Adams said. "Any time he's flowing and scoring, it's really important, but we're a balanced team, so we like involving a lot of people.

"He'll have his big nights, Kevin [Durant] will have his big nights, Klay [Thompson] will have his big scoring nights, but we've always had this balance in which someone is performing that night and everyone else is involved and a part of it. That's the kind of formula that we like to see."

Supernova Steph shouldn't come at the expense of the identity of the team, but he never has. Curry can at times look to make the extra pass or set up another player for an easy basket instead of finding his own shot. That's all well and good, but he might be the most potent offensive player in the league, and he needs to be that iteration of himself to put the Warriors over the top.

Take Care of the Basketball Without Sacrificing Pace

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It's easy to point to the Warriors' 15.8 turnovers per game (28th in the league) on a box score and say it's the team's Achilles' heel. But the Warriors play extremely fast, (second in pace, 102.55), and turnovers are a product of that.

By sacrificing speed, they might also sacrifice their ability to go off for eight-point runs in a matter of seconds to effectively end games in the third quarter.

"Everybody steps their game up in the playoffs, so we have to be playoff-ready," McGee said. "We have to lower our turnovers. Last game we lowered the turnovers—we didn't have any before the first timeout—so we definitely need to take care of the ball."

Finding that balance of playing fast, getting shots up early in the clock, but still being able to control the ball and eliminate turnovers is key.

"We're tying to speed up," he added. "We're trying not to play slow. We're trying not to linger and worry about calls. We just want to play our game, move around, play our random basketball that we play and win games."

That chaos is what's hardest to plan for and what makes the Warriors so deadly. Playing fast and turning the ball over often go hand in hand, so the Warriors will always be a turnover-prone team. The key is to find a balance between limiting turnovers and turning up the pace.

Start Clicking on Defense

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Defense is another area where the Warriors have seemed uninterested at times, but if you just looked at their 103.6 defensive rating, you might never know. In the same way the Warriors' talent has carried them on offense, the same can be said about their defense...maybe even to a higher degree.

"Well, on defense, you have fundamentals and you have your schemes," Coach Adams weighed in. "But the only reason all of that works is because you have really committed people who are connected and playing at a really high level. We have approached that at times and had good streaks, and we've had other series of games which we haven't approached that."

The Warriors have been a top-five defense in each of the last five seasons, and that hasn't changed. But with less to prove during the regular season, they've allowed themselves to rest up a little bit and save their energy for offense and the playoffs.

Even still, they'll be fine as long as they can reach the level of focus it takes to lock in when things become more important.

Mentally Locking In

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All of these things the Warriors can improve on fall under mentally locking in. There are only small schematic tweaks to make.

"We continue to win, but I think we all know that we have to approach that consistency to get to where we want to go this year," Adams said. "There's no secrets to that. You simply apply yourself."

The Warriors have earned the right to take things easy this season. But with the playoffs getting closer, it's time to start taking things more seriously.

All stats via NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass, unless otherwise noted.