With a playoff berth now secured, the Warriors remain focused on their top regular season priority.
For the week of Monday, Feb. 27 – Sunday, Mar. 5
Record: 2-0
It wasn’t too long ago that the Warriors' franchise had earned one playoff berth in a span of 18 seasons. The Dubs have made the postseason in each of the four years since, however, and with their victory over the Nets on Saturday, Golden State is guaranteed to make the playoffs for a fifth-consecutive season.
It’s the second-straight year in which the Dubs have clinched a postseason berth before their 60th game of the season, and this Warriors squad became the first team to clinch a playoff berth as early as February 25th since the 1985-86 Boston Celtics.
Times sure have changed.
The All-Star break has come and gone, and with the playoffs in sight, the rest of the regular season will largely be about one thing for Golden State: securing the best possible seed heading into the postseason. Steve Kerr has conveyed on several occasions that the team’s top regular season goal was to earn the top seed in the conference, and becoming the first team in the league to clinch a playoff berth is certainly a step in the right direction.
“I don’t care, honestly, how many wins we get,” Kerr said at the end of November. “I’d like to get the one seed in the West. I think that’s important.”
Approximately 30 percent of the regular season still remains ahead of them, but with each additional victory the Warriors earn, they’ll inch ever closer to that main objective.
They’re still the most potent offensive team in the league, but in their three games since returning from the All-Star break, they’ve cranked it up a notch defensively. In those games – all victories – Golden State has allowed an average of 90.4 points against per 100 possessions. That’s a defensive rating that easily qualifies as the best in the league over that span and would compare quite favorably to the Spurs’ NBA-leading rating of 101.0 points against per 100 possessions on the season to-date (the Warriors rank second at 101.3).
When a team possesses the offensive talents that the Warriors do, it’s to their advantage to play at a fast pace. The faster the pace, the more possessions in the game, which would theoretically tend to favor the side that is capable of playing up to four All-Stars simultaneously. Offensively, the Warriors have played to this strength, operating at the second-fastest pace in the league this season, but they haven’t sacrificed their defense in order to do so.
Golden State is the only team in the NBA to take fewer than 10 percent of their shot attempts in the final six seconds on the shot clock, meaning that – relative to the rest of the league – they’re taking more shots earlier in the shot clock. It’s one thing to chuck up three-pointers as soon as you cross half-court, but given that the Dubs are far and away the top assisting team in the league, that would indicate that the shots that they are taking are generally of decent caliber, in terms of efficiency and opportunity.
Defensively, however, it’s an entirely different story. The Warriors are forcing their opponents to do the opposite of their own successful strategy. Of all the teams in the league, only Oklahoma City, Memphis and Milwaukee force their opponents to take a greater percentage of their shots in the final six seconds of the shot clock than Golden State.
So, while on one end, the Warriors are taking shots early and often, they’re playing quality defense deep into the shot clock on the other, and the result has been what would qualify as the second-best net rating (difference between points for and against per 100 possessions) in NBA history if maintained for the rest of the season.
Standout Spotlight: Stephen Curry
Perhaps it’s only fitting that on the one-year anniversary of this memorable moment, Stephen Curry has put himself in the Spotlight yet again.
If the two games last week are any indication, the reigning two-time MVP may be heating up just in time for what will be a demanding schedule over the next couple weeks. In the victories over the Clippers and Nets, Curry posted averages of 31.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 3.5 steals per game, and led all NBA players in plus-minus last week (plus-43). He shot 51.4 percent from the field, notched his 18th career 20-point quarter, converted four-point plays in back-to-back games, and drained 11 of his 20 three-point attempts. Amazingly, he now needs only seven more treys to surpass both Kobe Bryant and Chauncey Billups to move into 10th place all-time in made three-pointers.
Whether or not he’s the greatest shooter of all-time may always be up for debate, but with each passing milestone, the argument against loses more and more traction.
The Week Ahead:
It turns out that February 27th has been a fortuitous day in Curry’s career. Not only is today the anniversary of his dramatic game-winning shot in overtime against the Thunder last season, it’s also the four-year anniversary of the day in which he scored a career-high 54 points against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. The Warriors will be hoping Curry has something similar in store later this evening when they take on the Philadelphia 76ers to begin a five-game road trip. Following their visit to the City of Brotherly Love, Golden State will round out the week with three more road games against Eastern Conference opponents. They’ll play the back end of a back-to-back in Washington on Tuesday before facing the Bulls and Knicks on Thursday and Sunday, respectively. At the conclusion of the week, Golden State will have only eight more road games remaining in the regular season. It’s a demanding travel schedule, but once they get through it, they’ll have put a significant chunk of their remaining road slate behind them.