A Golden State once more
After two down years, Curry and company are atop the NBA standings
SAN FRANCISCO It takes a while to catch your breath after the stunning half-decade run through the NBA that the Golden State Warriors put together — five straight trips to the NBA Finals, and three NBA titles — but the Warriors have most certainly caught theirs.
There was a two-season hiatus from the upper echelon of the league. Some of it was pandemic induced, a fair bit of it was injury related, all of it was understandable given the grind they had put themselves through, and it has allowed the Warriors to attack the NBA fresh and restocked.
They face the Raptors here Sunday evening, like they faced them so many times before in the late-2010s: as a juggernaut, a team to be wildly respected, a team that plays fast and shoots tremendously and is stacked with talent.
Just like the olden days.
In some ways, this version of the Warriors mirrors the first team in that stunning run of contention. They weren’t highly regarded when the season began but they are off to a blistering start, 13-2 heading into Friday’s game in Detroit. They might not win the championship like that 2014-15 team but no one would be too surprised if they did.
“I think the comparison is appropriate,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told Sports Illustrated this week. “From an exceeding expectations standpoint, the similarities are there.”
Few knew what the Warriors would be like when the season started. They were coming off two non-playoff years, Klay Thompson was (and still is) rehabilitating a torn Achilles tendon, Stephen Curry was 33 years old five years removed from his MVP seasons, and the supporting cast was full of question marks.
Today, Curry is averaging just under 30 points a game and shooting his usual 40 per cent from threepoint range, relative unknowns like Jordan Poole and Gary Payton Jr. are more than adequately filling in for Thompson, and Andrew Wiggins, who remains one of the top on-the-ball defenders in the league, seems fully engaged and consistently productive.
The Warriors have depth and shooting and play at one of the fastest paces in the league. Curry is on pace to shatter the record for threepoint attempts per game (he’s averaging about 13 a night) and the ball zings around like the Golden State heyday. Just under 70 per cent of their baskets are assisted; no team has had a higher percentage than the 70.5 per cent of the 2016-17 Warriors.
“We obviously have a lot of shooting now, and even on a night where we don’t really shoot the ball particularly well as a team, we create great shots,” Curry told reporters this week when the Warriors routed the Nets in Brooklyn. “And that wears on the (defence), too. You see a guy wide open, it’s kind of demoralizing to see it in the air because you probably expect it to go in.
“Even if it doesn’t, that carries momentum into the next position, and the next possession.”
None of this should probably be any surprise, given what Golden State has been for years and what the Warriors did for 2014-15 to 201819 was nothing short of miraculous given the realities of the NBA in this era:
The best single-season record in history with a 73-win 2015-16 season;
Two other seasons of 67 wins, plus seasons of 58 and 57 victories;
A combined 322-88 regular-season record in that five-year stretch, plus a 77-28 mark in the playoffs;
And, of course, those three titles in five trips to the Finals.
Incredible, really. In these times, when teams restock year to year — the NBA has crowned seven different champions in the last 11 seasons — what the Warriors accomplished was awe-inspiring.
It’s unlikely they’ll get on a run like that again, it’s unlikely any team will.
But when this group gets Thompson back in a few weeks and when former first overall pick James Wiseman returns from injury, and when Curry and Thompson reprise the Slash Brothers act that made them the best backcourt in the league, if not in basketball history, the Warriors are going to be a handful.
It will more than make up for two down seasons, when they were able to gather their breath and their wits and get a much-needed break from playing about 100 games a year.
It will be the Warriors being the Warriors.