The Golden State Warriors just had their fourth best player score 60 points in 29 minutes and, while incredible, it wasn’t entirely out of character.
This is what life has settled into for the Warriors, perhaps the most talented offensive team in NBA history, and a team that is now weaponising that talent efficiently. The Golden State reality is petrifying for opponents and playful for those inflicting the pain. The Warriors are plain clowning dudes out on the court.
Stephen Curry passes up open threes because he knows he can leverage that opening into a cutting Kevin Durant dunk two seconds later. Andre Igoudala leaves corner threes on the table because he knows that his drive to the rim is going to be undisturbed, such is the gravity that his teammates command, a gravity we’ve never seen before.
The Warriors trump card, their ‘Fast and the Furious’ burst of nitrous oxide, is selflessness. Super teams have been assembled before but undermined by ego. Never has a super team been such a clean fit as in Golden State, both geometrically on the floor, and conceptually off it.
The Warriors have their title, Steph Curry has his MVPs, Andre Igoudala has his Finals MVP, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green have their All-Star appearances. Durant has his individual accolades too – the only thing that can elevate his standing in the league is the ultimate team success. There are few conceivable avenues to selfishness derailing this squad – Draymond Green working his butt off on defence to chase Defensive Player of the Year doesn’t exactly qualify.
So, after a slightly off start, the Warriors are exactly who we expected them to be: the offensive meteorite that kills NBA Earth, and an elite defence that will inevitably have an extra, disruptive gear in the playoffs. They’ll have their off nights, like they did against the Lakers and Memphis, because a team that plays as fast and loose as they do will inevitably have games where their looseness outpaces all else. But when they’re locked in they’re unstoppable.
Whether Cleveland can topple them again (and, if the series began tomorrow, I think they would) remains to be seen, but the Warriors have established themselves as the clear number one team out West. That’s not surprising – but the other seven spots already being etched in something approaching stone is.
The Spurs and Clippers were always destined to lead the pack for the right to avoid Golden State until Round 3, and, aside from a fleeting brush with transcendence in L.A. to start the season, both teams have lived up to their expectations of being formidable but flawed.
San Antonio is brilliant, but also in an odd way manageable. They have the league’s sixth best offence and seventh best defence. That combination ensures you’re a lock for a mid-to-high 50s win total, but it also leaves the Spurs without a real blueprint to beat the Warriors – aside from Jonathon Simmons and his out of body experiences.
The Spurs are even more stereotypically rock solid than usual, but rocks don’t hold up against rocket launchers.
The Clippers are more fragile than San Antonio, and probably less reliable over seven games in May, but their higher ceiling gives them a better chance of beating Golden State. If their defence, ranked third at present, is real, then they’ve got a shot. But there’s defending against the rest of the NBA, and then there’s defending against Curry, Durant, Thompson and Green. One mistake and you’re dead, and the Clippers haven’t shown the ability to do what Cleveland did last June and avoid those mistakes against Golden State.
The beauty of the Houston Rockets is that they don’t seem to care in the slightest about making such mistakes. They’re like the guy who gets rejected by seven girls in a row on the dance-floor, and then goes up to the eighth with the same huge, goofy, confident smile. That guy usually goes home with someone.
Houston’s rocket launcher isn’t Golden State’s, but it might be the league’s next most powerful. The fact that the defence has only been ‘atrocious’ and not ‘cataclysmic’ has meant that they have the NBA’s sixth best net rating. If any team outside of the Clippers or Spurs is going to give the Warriors a scare in the playoffs, it’s probably Houston and their high night-to-night variance. However, that ‘scare’ would top out at losing Game 6 by 37 points.
The Jazz can’t be labelled a sleeper anymore. They are very much awake. When healthy they’re a monster – close to the equal of San Antonio and the Clippers. They’re freakishly long and freakishly deep. Also, George Hill is really, really good, which everyone outside of Indiana already knew. If they ever get healthy, they’ll be a force, perhaps even a surprise Western Conference Finals entrant. But hoping for Utah to get healthy is beginning to feel like hoping for Tyreke Evans to get healthy.
And even if they do, they’re unlikely to truly threaten Golden State because of their lack of a transcendent individual talent, which basketball so often comes down to. ‘LeBron James topples the NBA’s greatest ever assembly of talent’ works as a sentence. ‘Gordon Hayward topples the NBA’s greatest ever assembly of talent’ does not.
Russell Westbrook sort of does work in that sentence. It might be absurd, but logic burns in Westbrook’s dragon flames on a nightly basis. The problem is that he doesn’t have any help. The Thunder burn in similar flames when Westbrook hits the bench, and when Team A’s third and fourth best players are Draymond Green and Klay Thompson and Team B’s are Victor Oladipo and Enes Kanter, Team B is the JV.
The Grizzlies are the season’s most ridiculous story, a team with a barely positive net rating that flaunts a 17-8 record, bare chest and all. Marc Gasol doesn’t have that, but he’s got everything else, and his past week has been the size of Iberia. Memphis are 12-0 in games within three points in the final minute. That’s stupid.
They’ve banked enough crazy wins and have just enough competence on the roster (or Troy Daniels’ flirtations with it) that they should be able keep their heads above water in Mike Conley’s absence.
Outside of Minnesota, the Blazers might be the most disappointing team in the league so far. Unlike Dallas and New Orleans they can’t lay the blame on injuries – they’ve just been bad. Eighteenth in net rating with the league’s worst defence, the Blazers have been brutal.
They have so much offensive talent, though, (or so much Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum talent) that they’ve been able to drag themselves to a game below .500. The Blazers will surely improve, if only because the defence literally can’t fall lower in the rankings, and should comfortably slot into the playoffs.
Who, really, looks likely to catch them or any of the teams above them?
The Nuggets can’t win close games, the Pelicans are still hurting – in personnel and the standings (four games out), and the Kings are the Kings. The Lakers, one of the league’s best stories, are playing way above their heads, and their record will eventually fall more in line with their net ranking of 26th in the league.
The Timberwolves are inexplicably bad, and at 6-18 are probably too far back for an explanation to matter for the playoffs now. Dallas and Phoenix are write offs.
Barring a serious injury to Lillard, Westbrook, Harden or Marc Gasol, the playoff picture appears to be set in the West. And so, you’d expect, is its resolution.
In other words: for the sake of suspense, please stay healthy, LeBron, Kyrie, Kevin and Tristan.
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