WARRIORS have a rough road
The Warriors were supposed to coast to a second straight NBA championship and their third title in four years this season.
Things haven’t gone exactly to plan.
Injury, disengagement and improved competition around the league resulted in the worst regular season in coach Steve Kerr’s four years in charge of Golden State, and for the first time since Kerr took over before the 201415 season, theWarriors will not enter the playoffs with the best record in the NBA. In fact, they won’t even have the best record in the Western Conference.
Only four teams have ever made the NBA Finals in four consecutive seasons — the Warriors are looking to be the fifth to do so and the first since the 1960 Boston Celtics to claim three titles in that four-year stretch. But with the postseason set to get under way Saturday, it’s clear that this will be the Warriors’ toughest run to the Finals — and the title — yet.
Last year the Warriors rolled into the playoffs healthy and on a streak where they won 15 of their last 16 games. This year, they enter the postseason having lost 10 of their last 17 games with a minorleague call-up as the team’s starting point guard.
And that has given the Warriors something they haven’t had going into the playoffs since Kerr’s first year: doubt.
“We didn’t picture it this way. We wanted to be healthy the last 20 games, win our last 10, and roll into the playoffs and let everybody know that we’re coming — it’s been the opposite of that.… We haven’t played particularly well, and yet here we are,” Kerr said Tuesday. “We have a chance to do something special, and we know how to do that. We’ve been in that situation now three years in a row. It’s not the ideal set of circumstances, but it could be a lot worse.”
Nothing has dampened the mood around the Warriors — nothing has sowed more doubt around this team heading into the postseason — than the injury to point guard and twotime league MVP Stephen Curry.
When Curry has been on the
court this season, the Warriors have averaged 13 more points than opponents per 100 possessions — a massive margin. When he’s off the court, that average is 1 point per 100 possession in the Warriors’ favor.
But the Warriors will be without Curry for the start of the playoffs after he sprained the MCL in his left knee three weeks ago. The injury could force him to miss the first-round series and perhaps some of the second, should the Warriors even advance that far.
There are no guarantees in this year’s postseason for the Warriors. Every team in theWestern Conference playoffs has beaten the Warriors at least once this season, and the team’s first-round opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, is one of the most stingy defensive teams in the NBA, and there’s the possiblity that Kawhi Leonard, one of the NBA’s best players, who has missed 73 games because of a quad injury, could return for the postseason. (Rosters need to be set by Friday and no one knows if Leonard will be on the team or not.) The Warriors have dominated San Antonio in recent years, but the Spurs beat Golden State 89-75 on March 19.
The Warriors have three All-Stars and a former NBA Finals MVP on their roster without Curry — a ton of talent — but Golden State’s end-of-season struggles, highlighted by the team’s embarrassing 119-79 loss to the Utah Jazz in the regular-season finale, raises questions.
And while the questions around this team — that doubt — could create anxiety for Warriors fans, it also creates intrigue heading into the playoffs. That’s something last year’s postseason sorely lacked and few expected to exist this season.
If you had put $120 down on the Warriors to win the NBA title before the season, you would have stood to make only $50 this June should they complete the task (the team with the best odds, the Cleveland Cavaliers, were paying 4-to-1 in the preseason), and 93 percent of surveyed NBA general managers picked theWarriors to win the title.
Now, for the first time since theWarriors’ first title run in 2015, Golden State is the co-favorite, tied with the Houston Rockets, who had an all-time great season, winning 65 games behind the stellar play of presump- tive MVP James Harden.
Still, when the Warriors are at their best, the Rockets — or any other team in the NBA — are no match.
But it has been so long since we have seen the Warriors at their best that it’s fair to wonder if that level of play is still accessible.
Can the Warriors’ offense, which has struggled over the last few weeks, keep up with a loaded Western Conference playoff field if Curry — whose longrange shooting stretches defenses and spaces the court in ways previously unseen — isn’t on the floor?
Can the Warriors’ defense, which has been inconsistent all season — a byproduct of aloofness — play the engaged, consistent, championship-caliber defense now that the “real season” is starting?
Can the Warriors “flip the switch”? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We might begin to find out Saturday.