Warriors future looking Golden
CLEVELAND — The Warriors didn’t break the system. They perfected basketball. Sure, the Kevin Durant signing seemed like overkill and it’s the main reason Golden State sits on the precipice of history, just one win away from becoming the first undefeated team ever in the postseason.
But let’s not forget that many of these same players — namely Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — didn’t get out of the first round before Steve Kerr’s arrival in 2014. Now they have the rest of the NBA on notice that it’s not safe to build a winner for another five years, lest a team goes all out for the chance to fall to the Warriors.
“Our core is young. We’ve got guys who are hungry and built a winning culture that people want to be a part of. So I guess that’s something you can’t ignore,” Thompson said. “I think we’re set up to do great things for a long time.”
The Warriors aren’t the product of getting lucky in the draft lottery, or disrespecting the principles of fair competition as some have suggested. There is no secret to their success: They have the soundest management and the best culture in the NBA. Everybody in the organization falls in line. Period.
Based on overall one-on-one talent, the Warriors shouldn’t be this good. You could make the argument Durant had two better individual talents his last time in the Finals with Russell Westbrook and James Harden at OKC. But they didn’t work nearly as well together, mostly because Westbrook and Harden always need the ball in their hands.
“Basketball’s like a rhythm game,” Durant said. “It’s a freeflowing game, and you just want to be a part of it. That’s what makes it just even more and more fun.
“Guys are moving. You are working together. You’re communicating out there on both ends. I saw it playing against (the Warriors), and I saw it on TV. And then it’s a different feel when you’re around it every single day.”
Curry was taken seventh overall in 2009, two years before the Warriors drafted Thompson 11th and three years prior to taking Green 35th. Hardly unfair. Cleveland, on the other hand, starts two players they drafted No. 1 overall (LeBron James and Kyrie Irving), and a player they acquired for another of their No. 1 picks (Andrew Wiggins for Kevin Love).
What the Warriors built, even before Durant, was a culture that breeds winning and a selfless style of basketball that keeps everybody happy. There is no one-onone basketball with Golden State. It’s all cutting and motion and creating wide open shots.
This season, they became just the fourth team in history to average over 30 assists per game, and the first since the Showtime Lakers in 1983-84. Against the Knicks in December, they literally played a game within the game to try to get an assist on every field goal.
They accomplished it 41 times out of 45 against the Knicks. Amazing.
“From Day 1 Kerr showed up, that was something that he wanted to implement,” Curry said. “Understanding whether it was first quarter, second quarter or crunch time, down the stretch, that that would be the best way for us to create great shots consistently. Use all the different playmakers that we had.
“When he took over, he knew how many good passers that we had on our team and guys that really understood that part of the game and how important that was, and just we needed the parameters to kind of work through in that sense. … So he talked about it all the time, and it became kind of second nature that that was going to be an important.”
On Friday, the Warriors will go for history with an undefeated postseason. Beyond that, they’ll be working towards dynasty status with plans to lock in Durant and Curry to new contracts this summer. Some say it’s unfair, but the Warriors got to this point by doing everything better than everybody else.
“One thing about the NBA, there’s this thing called the salary cap that only allows to do so much. And it allowed us to sign Kevin Durant,” Green said. “In that case, it got to be fair. You can’t do things that’s unfair with the salary cap. So we abide by the same rules that everybody else abides by. Warriors 113, Cavaliers 91 Warriors 132, Cavaliers 113 Warriors 118, Cavaliers 113 Friday at Cavs, 9 p.m. Mon., at Warriors, 9 p.m. June 15 at Cavs, 9 p.m. June 18 at Warriors, 8 p.m.