Now that the Warriors have made it to All-Star Weekend, it's time to put their success in perspective.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.
Felt good, right? For the first time in a long time, we finally have a chance to catch our breaths as the season has reached its unofficial “halfway” point on the brink of NBA All-Star Weekend. Despite the fact that the Warriors are actually more than 62 percent of the way through the regular season, this is as good of a chance as we’ll get to reflect on the season that has been, and look ahead to the remainder yet to come. The Dubs enter the All-Star break with the league’s best record, having led the Western Conference for basically the entirety of the year thus far. Steve Kerr, in his first season as a head coach, has helped transform the Warriors into a team that dominates on both sides of the court, and has put them in an advantageous position to possibly clinch home-court advantage for the duration of the playoffs. On the outset of the season, it was easy to predict the Warriors would be good. But this good? Not even the most optimistic prognostications saw this kind of prolonged dominance coming.
There have been so many superlatives achieved already, it almost seems they don’t get the attention they deserve because they drown one another out. At 42-9, the Warriors are the 19th team in NBA history to win 42 of its first 51 games. Including this season, there have been a total of 1,393 teams in the history of the NBA, meaning that up to this point, the Warriors have been better than 98.6 percent of all the other teams in league history. That’s literally an A-plus performance. In terms of Golden State franchise history, the Dubs’ 42 wins are already more than they accrued in 17 of the previous 20 seasons, and they’re on pace to set the franchise record for most wins in a season before the end of March. They currently lead the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency, a feat accomplished by only the ’95-’96 NBA Champion Chicago Bulls (72-10) over the course of a full season, and that Bulls team is also the only team since the ABA-NBA merger to boast a higher average point differential than the Warriors’ current plus-10.9 points per game. Yet, those stats alone gloss over just how historically impressive they’ve been on both ends of the court. On offense, not only are the Dubs the most efficient team per possession, they also play at the highest pace in the entire league, churning out 106.2 possessions per 48 minutes. You don’t have to be John Nash to figure out that if you’re the best team per possession, and you get the most possessions, you’re going to be more than halfway decent. But let’s not stop there. Even more impressive is that the Dubs are able to sustain that frenetic pace while maintaining the league’s most suffocating defense. Historically, that’s been a tradeoff – you can either be one or the other, but not both – but these Warriors stand alone in a class of their own. Speaking of that staunch defense, the difference between their league-best defensive ranking (97.3 points allowed per 100 possessions) and the second-ranked Milwaukee Bucks (99.3) is wider than the gap between the Bucks’ ranking and that of the 10th-ranked Thunder (101.0).
You still with me? Perhaps another breath is in order.
The Warriors have maintained this stellar play for so long that any inevitable brief lull in performance temporarily makes them look like a dysfunctional lottery team, when in fact, they’re still actually quite good. Think of it this way: the Warriors have probably looked as ragged as they have all season over the course of the last 10 games, and yet, they still went 7-3 over that span, which included a loss in Atlanta to the East-leading Hawks. That defeat was sandwiched by two three-game winning streaks, during which they allowed more than 96 points only once, and that was in a 14-point victory over the potent Mavericks. They may have sputtered to the finish line, but they still did so in winning fashion, displaying the grit of a team with significantly greater aspirations that lie in the not-too-distant future.
With a resume like the one I’ve laid out above, any criticism feels like nitpicking, but perhaps that’s the greatest endorsement of all: as good as the Warriors have been up to this point, they can definitely be better. That’s a thought that has to keep opposing coaches up at night, because it’s not like they’ve found the Dubs’ kryptonite as of yet. What might terrify them even more is knowing that the main areas in which the Warriors can improve are entirely dependent on themselves to achieve, and one of their deficiencies in particular is actually a product of their own success. Largely correlated to their league-leading point differential is the fact that the Warriors just haven’t been in many close games this year, and when they have, they’ve seemed a little out of sorts. Only four of their games all season have been decided by fewer than five points, and despite the fact that they’re 3-1 in those contests, the victories haven’t come without a little added anxiety. It’s ironic because, last season, the Warriors played in a whopping 26 games (13-13) decided by fewer than five points, meaning they should be well-versed in late-game pressure situations. Inevitably though, when the starters have often been resting for the majority of fourth quarters, they’re going to be a little out of practice on the rare occasions in which the game isn’t already in hand. As the Warriors know by now, the games are going to get much tougher and tighter come playoff time, so the final 31 games of the regular season offer a chance to simulate those late-game situations and smooth out any kinks before it’s too late. One of the common trends of those waning-moment struggles has been carelessness with the ball, which has led to ill-timed turnovers. The Dubs currently rank 22nd in the league in total turnovers per game (14.9), and second-worst among all Western Conference playoff teams. While a considerable portion of the turnovers are products of the Warriors’ fast-paced offense, there’s still room to cut down on the ones that could and should be prevented.
Like I said, nitpicking. But at the same time, it’s important the Warriors address these issues before a failure to do so puts their stellar season in jeopardy. The Dubs are built for the long run, and the numerous superlatives back it up, but there’s still a long way to go and still many twists and turns that lie on the road ahead. For now though, it’s time to reflect, applaud, and most of all…breathe.
51 games in, 31 to go. Rest up people. You’ll need it.