Why the Golden State Warriors will win the NBA title
In our quest to find a path for all 16 playoff teams to win the title this year, we've come down to the four with the best chance to do it: the Raptors, the Cavaliers, the Spurs, and the Warriors. These are the elite teams. We're not just presenting the case why they could win the title, we're going to say why they will take Larry O'Brien home this summer.
The Warriors won 73 games in the regular season this year, but as the saying goes: it don't mean a thing if you ain't got the ring, so now the Dubs have to play at least 16 more games.
For many, the Warriors winning the title seems to be a foregone conclusion, and while those people are perhaps jumping the gun a bit, that presumption makes perfect sense — because, well, 73.
There are other excellent teams in these playoffs. The San Antonio Spurs won 67 games this year, the Toronto Raptors played the Warriors as well as anyone in the league this season, and the Cleveland Cavaliers have LeBron James, but the Warriors beat every one of those teams on their path to the single-season wins record.
And if they face any of the three again this spring, they'll be able to tally four wins against them. Here's why:
The Spurs were one of nine teams to beat the Warriors this season, having stymied Stephen Curry to 4-of-18 shooting (1-of-12 from distance) in an 87-79 win on March 19.
It took an inspired defensive effort combined with an off night from Curry for the Spurs to beat the Warriors, who only lost nine regular-season games. Do you think they could do it four times in a series?
It's doubtful. The Warriors, who — I'm not sure if you heard — won 73 regular-season games — adapted to the Spurs' tactics for the teams' two end-of-season contests, with Curry posting an offensive rating of 128 and averaging 32 points per game in two Warriors' wins.
The Spurs can't keep up with the Warriors' "death" lineup — the smallball look where Draymond Green plays center. The Warriors only used it twice against the Spurs — the five-man unit played nine of 192 minutes, but it posted a net rating of 50.8.
And don't think that was a pushing-the-pace thing, either. That lineup was playing with a pace in the 80s and it still had an offensive rating of 146 — 42 points higher than the Warriors' four-game average against San Antonio.
The "death" lineup won't be held back come the playoffs, and seeing as the Spurs have more-or-less shown the record-setting Warriors' their whole arsenal, that doesn't bode well for San Antonio stealing more than a game or two, much less an entire series.
Perhaps even more so than the Spurs, whose current iteration is one of the greatest teams ever assembled, the Raptors present a problem for the 73-win Warriors.
Kyle Lowry blitzed the Dubs in the teams' two contests this season, and while they weren't one of the nine teams that beat the Warriors this season, they did come awfully close — not a lot of teams can say that.
When you win 73 games, not every win is going to look good, but the Warriors seemed particularly perplexed by the Raptors, who don't give away possessions and steal more than their fair share with offensive boards.
The 3-pointer might have propelled the Warriors to heights previously unseen, and 3 is absolutely greater than 2, the Raptors can optimize possessions and neutralize, if not straight-up defeat, a Warriors' advantage that often goes overlooked — depth.
The Raptors might not have been able to slow down Curry, but they were able to come close to countering him with Lowry. But when those two were off the court, the Raptors tilted the tables. The mix-and-match three-man units of Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, Mo Speights, and Leandro Barbosa posted net ratings between minus-47 and minus-51 in each of their more than 10 minutes of action against the Raptors this season.
That said, the Warriors won both games, and the benches will be shorter in the playoffs. Usage of Barbosa and Speights will be strategic, not predestined, and coach Steve Kerr will be more willing to pull plug if a unit is getting rocked.
The Warriors didn't lose back-to-back games in the regular season. They didn't lose to an opponent twice, either. They showed they can take an opposing team's best punch, and even if it beats them once, bounce back with an even better counterpunch.
The Raptors gave the Warriors their best shot twice in the regular season, and while there was some controversy, neither knocked the Warriors down. We're yet to see the Warriors' best shot against the Raptors.
Here's the box score of the Warriors' 132-98 win over the Cavaliers in January — a contest Golden State led by 40 late in the final minute of the third quarter.
Here was the first play of that game, where with two screens and a cut, the Warriors showed just how poor the Cavs' defense is. Where's Kevin Love going? What's Kyrie Irving doing? Notice how Harrison Barnes had a wide-open 3-pointer if Curry wanted to pass up the easy alley-oop.
This wasn't a minor blip — it was a trend. The Cavs can't stop the Warriors' offense, and LeBron can only score so many points on the other end.
The beatdown forced the Cavs to make wholesale changes. Channing Frye is in as a stretch 4, but that doesn't solve the Cavaliers' biggest problems — the other two members of the "Big 3" being targeted and frequently exploited on the defensive end.
The Cavaliers can't keep up with the pace of the Warriors when the Dubs want to run — as evidenced in the January win. And if the Cavs want to druge the game, well, the Warriors were able to beat them in a Christmas Day slugfest.
There might be some shift in the paradigm if the Cavs wise up and play LeBron at the 4 in an effort to emulate and possibly mitigate the smallball tactics that the Warriors used to turn around last year's NBA Finals, but the Warriors can counteract that move with size this season. Festus Ezeli's emergence has given the Warriors two viable starting centers, with Speights and Green coming in as change-of-pace guys. Furthermore, the Warriors can rotate bodies on LeBron (Klay Thompson, Iguodala, Barnes, Green) to avoid individual foul trouble.
And if LeBron is at the 4 in a 4-shooter system, who is playing the 5? Love? Good luck with that. Tristan Thompson? That's good for pick-and-roll situations, but it's not exactly going to create the ball movement necessary to beat the Warriors. That system also takes Frye, the team's offensive linchpin, off the court.
It's hard to see the Cavs taking more than a game from this Warriors' team. In order to steal the Finals, the Cavs would need Love to be a plus player and for Irving to be a lockdown defender. Against the Warriors, the greatest regular-season team of all-time, that's not going to happen in two games, much less in four.
