Golden State Warriors: 10 Steps To Winning A Championship

With a victory in Game 6 last night, the Golden State Warriors emerged as the champions of the NBA’s 2014-15 season. After rolling to a 67-15 regular-season record, the Dubs finished their dominant campaign with a 16-5 playoff record to win the title.

Every NBA championship team is a team worth remembering, but for a franchise that hadn’t won a title in 40 years, this championship is something special. In fact, these Warriors might be one of the greatest teams in NBA history.

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There will be plenty of time to analyze and debate where this Golden State team belongs in that conversation, but for now, it’s time to take a look back on the 2014-15 season and relive the necessary steps the Dubs took to become NBA champions.

Here are the 10 reasons behind the Warriors’ dominant season that ultimately resulted in an NBA title and ended a four-decade drought.

Next: No. 10

10. Firing Mark Jackson

At the end of the 2013-14 season, the Warriors made the controversial decision to fire Mark Jackson as head coach. The Dubs had just lost in the first round of the playoffs, but it was against the third-seeded Los Angeles Clippers (a very good team) without home-court advantage in a seven-game series where the Dubs were playing without Andrew Bogut.

It seemed truly unfair to punish a coach that had turned around Golden State’s losing culture and connected with the younger star players. At the time, I was one of many harsh critics of the decision, even though everyone knew about the constant clash between Jackson and the front office.

As it turns out, this was just like when Michael Jordan‘s Chicago Bulls couldn’t get over the hump and decided to move on from Doug Collins to bring in Phil Jackson. The very next season, the Bulls won the title, just like these Warriors. Collins wasn’t a bad coach just like Jackson wasn’t a bad coach.

But taking that risk and finding a coach who could elevate a team to a championship caliber group made all the difference in the end.

Next: No. 9

9. Hiring Steve Kerr

Of course, the decision to fire Mark Jackson would’ve looked pretty foolish if Steve Kerr had turned out to be, you know, a run-of-the-mill rookie head coach. Just take a look at rookie head coach Derek Fisher with the New York Knicks — who pursued Kerr heavily last summer — if you’re wondering what a worst-case scenario would’ve looked like.

True enough, Fisher didn’t have a Golden State Warriors-caliber roster over in the Big Apple, but you get the picture: anyone but Steve Kerr, especially in the category of rookie head coaches, might have wasted another year of Stephen Curry‘s prime.

Instead, Kerr became the first rookie head coach to win an NBA title since Pat Riley did so in 1982.

Kerr kept Jackson’s elite defense intact, but he also elevated it to the league’s stingiest D. On the other end of the floor, Jackson’s rotations were a constant source of criticism, as was the fact that he couldn’t coax a top-10 offense out of an offensively gifted group.

Emphasizing ball movement and plenty of motion that highlighted his shooters’ strengths and played to the expanding pace-and-space era, Kerr also upgraded Golden State to the second-best offense in the NBA…in the process of joining the third most winningest team in NBA history:

You really can’t say enough about the job that Steve Kerr did this season. He knew his players had a connection with their previous head coach, but instead of ignoring it or trying to sweep it under the rug, he acknowledged the rocky situation and managed to get his players to buy into him and buy into their roles.

The Warriors added talent over the summer and they had plenty of it to begin with. But Kerr found a way to harness all that potential and turn it into a championship team in his very first season as a head coach. Firing Jackson was a dicey call, but hiring Kerr as his replacement ultimately made all the difference.

Next: No. 8

8. Rounding Out The Roster

The Warriors were a very good team last year, and obviously the upgrade at head coach made a huge difference this year. But last year’s Dubs were nowhere near as deep as this year’s rendition, and depth was a big difference all season long — especially in the NBA Finals against a shorthanded Cleveland Cavaliers team.

Some of Golden State’s depth came in free agency. The Warriors signed Shaun Livingston to be a pseudo backup point guard in July and added a seemingly washed up Leandro Barbosa in September (he was coming off a fractured hand that ended his 2013-14 season with the Phoenix Suns).

But the other half of the equation had to do with players just getting healthy. For one, the newly signed Livingston had to rush to get healthy before the season started due to arthroscopic toe surgery that sidelined him for 6-8 weeks. Then there was Festus Ezeli, who missed the entire 2013-14 season because of a knee injury.

Ezeli only played 46 games this season, but he was healthy at the end of the season and provided the Dubs with a serviceable backup big who could put away easy looks at the basket, hold his own on the glass and provide a resistance in the paint by deterring or blocking opponents at the rim — especially in the Finals, when Andrew Bogut proved to be unplayable.

Between that group of useful reserves and former All-Stars like Andre Iguodala and David Lee coming off the bench, not to mention the way Kerr empowered Marreese Speights simply by believing in him, it’s no wonder the Dubs had such an advantage with their depth this year.

Next: No. 7

7. Keeping Klay Thompson

It’s amazing how easy it was to forget this, but there was a point in time where the Warriors were being laughed at around the league for their stubborn refusal to include Klay Thompson in trade talks that could’ve brought Kevin Love to the Bay Area.

Thompson became an All-Star and Third Team All-NBA player as his team won the championship; Love spent the season trying to fit in with the Cavaliers and had to watch the Warriors celebrate their title in a suit, being the unfortunate product of a shoulder injury in Game 4 of the first round of the playoffs that sidelined him for the rest of the postseason.

To be clear, Kevin Love is still a vastly underrated player. He spent the majority of the season with people unfairly questioning his statistical decline as Cleveland’s third option and if the Cavs don’t bring him back this summer, they’d be making a huge mistake. But from the Warriors’ perspective, putting their faith in the second Splash Brother paid off big time.

Thompson was a bit of a no-show in this Finals series, it’s true. He averaged a meager 15.8 points per game on 40 percent shooting for the series (30 percent from downtown) and his numbers for the entire postseason were similarly underwhelming after the first round.

But this is a guy who averaged 21.7 points per game on 43.9 percent shooting from downtown for the season, and the Warriors would not have been here without him. Even when his shots weren’t falling in the playoffs like they did during the regular season, he still managed to make some timely, backbreaking threes when his team needed him, and that’s without taking into account his incredible defensive impact.

Thompson was little more than a 3-and-D player last season. He was seen as one-dimensional and Love, coming off an incredibly impressive season as quite possibly the league’s best power forward, seemed like a tantalizing fit alongside Curry in pick-and-pop sets.

But at the end of the day, the Warriors put their trust in their young shooting guard, rewarding him with a max extension. In return, Klay Thompson rewarded his team by developing every area of his game and playing a huge part on a championship team.

Because of that, just a few months after everyone gave the Warriors hell for their decision to trust in Klay, nobody’s imagining what might have been with Kevin Love anymore.

Next: No. 6

6. Putting Andre Iguodala On The Bench

In his first 758 games in the NBA, Andre Iguodala was a starter. He had zero experience in a bench role outside of the Olympics and the Warriors had poached him from the Denver Nuggets heading into the 2013-14 season to try and take the next step forward.

But Kerr’s decision to have Iggy come off the bench — and getting Iggy to buy into that decision — was the big difference in helping the Warriors take the next step forward.

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In Iguodala’s first season in Oakland, Mark Jackson demoted Harrison Barnes to a sixth man role, ignoring the evidence from the playoffs the year before when the Warriors thrived in small-ball lineups with Barnes at the 4. The move to bench duty clearly affected Barnes’ confidence and his production suffered for it.

Heading into the 2014-15 season, Kerr made the ballsy, but ultimately correct, decision to start Barnes over Iggy. Doing so gave Barnes more confidence and allowed him to excel with the starters, but it also supplemented Golden State’s depth with a backup point forward who could control the tempo, run the offense and play tremendous defense off the bench.

Iguodala didn’t start a single game all season long until the NBA Finals, when Kerr made another gutsy decision to go with small-ball lineups mid-series, benching Andrew Bogut and moving Iggy into the starting rotation alongside Barnes and Draymond Green. The way he stepped up, and the result of that lineup change, was pretty baffling:

In that way, Kerr manufactured some of Golden State’s depth. We’ll get to the decision he made about relegating the injured David Lee to bench duty even after he returned, but having one the NBA’s best glue guys coming off the bench bolstered Golden State’s depth, versatility, and team-first mentality that ultimately set the tone for the season and led to a title.

Think about this: as much as guys like Bogut and Lee prized winning above all else, would they really have been so comfortable with reduced roles if Kerr hadn’t established that team-first mindset from the get-go with Iggy?

The winning obviously made it easier, but the decision to move Iggy into a sixth man role — and then rewarding him for his hard work in the Finals when a change was needed — perfectly exemplifies why this TEAM won a championship.

Next: No. 5

5. David Lee’s Injury

Like Andre Iguodala, David Lee was a former All-Star who was relegated to bench duty. Unlike Andre Iguodala, that wasn’t the plan with David Lee from the beginning of Steve Kerr’s tenure with Golden State. Fortunately for the Dubs, fate intervened.

No one should be glad that an injury happened, but when David Lee missed 24 of the first 25 games of the season with a strained left hamstring, Draymond Green made the most of his chance to show his defensive impact as a versatile, Swiss Army knife-type player. It wasn’t by chance that the Warriors rattled off a 22-3 record during that span.

During the regular season, it was sad to see a former double-double machine like David Lee confined to garbage time. His defense had always been a problem, but he was a great interior scorer, rebounder and passer whose skills would have him starting for quite a few other teams in this league.

But like Iguodala, Lee accepted his role and prioritized winning over everything else. In the process, Green blossomed as a First Team All-Defensive Player (who probably should’ve won Defensive Player of the Year as well) and the Warriors’ defense became the stingiest unit in the league.

Green’s improvement on the offensive end deserves credit, since his ability to spread the floor with a respectable three-point shot and his playmaking ability as the roll man in pick-and-roll sets with Curry made him a threat on offense as well. But his ability to guard four different positions helped the Warriors switch pick and rolls and made them that much tougher defensively, even during the brief periods of the season when Andrew Bogut was injured.

Even better, Lee was ultimately rewarded for his patience. When Kerr turned to him midway through the NBA Finals, he could’ve wilted under the pressure of the moment after being rarely utilized for so long. Instead, he came out on a mission near the end of Game 3, finishing with 11 points in 13 minutes.

The Warriors lost that game, but Lee’s minutes were an epiphany to Kerr, who went with a small-ball lineup for the rest of the series. From that point on, the Dubs were 3-0 to close Cleveland out and win the title.

Lee’s future with the Warriors is uncertain given the size of his contract, but it was fitting to see him rewarded with a championship for his acceptance of a lesser role that just so happened to lead to the emergence of a max player in Draymond Green.

Next: No. 4

4. Sustaining Leads

When you’re talking about a 67-win team, obviously you’re talking about a group that does a lot of things right.

The Warriors were the league’s top-ranked defense and its second-best offense. They had the league MVP and didn’t lose three consecutive games all season long. They were an elite three-point shooting team and led the NBA in so many statistical categories it’s hard to pinpoint one main ingredient to their success.

But one mark of a great team is their ability to beat lesser teams and close out games after building leads. During the 2014-15 campaign, nobody was better at doing that than the Golden State Warriors.

For starters, you could point to the Dubs’ league-leading +10.1 point differential in the regular season. You could point to their playoff-leading +7.8 point differential as well. But the one season-defining stat when it comes to how the Golden State Warriors dominated their opponents deals with how they were able to build double-digit leads and keep them to win so many games.

Of the 103 games the Warriors won this season, they built a lead of at least 15 points in 59 of those games (57.3 percent of their games). In those 59 games, they were a perfect 59-0. Not only were the Warriors regularly pouncing on their opponents and building sizable 15-point leads in nearly 60 percent of their games, but when they did so, they won 100 percent of the time.

That is almost literally the embodiment of, “60 percent of the time, it works every time.”

In the postseason, the Warriors didn’t get off to many hot starts, especially at home. But when they led or were tied with their opponent at the half, they went a perfect 14-0. In games where they trailed at the break during the playoffs, they were only 2-5.

Despite having so many young players, and despite not having a single player on the roster with NBA Finals experience, the Dubs were ultimately able to conquer the basketball world because of their poise, their ability to execute and their penchant for sustaining and defending leads.

Next: No. 3

3. Taking Care Of Home-Court

The Golden State Warriors have had some of the best fans in the NBA for quite some time now. Before the Mark Jackson era, this franchise hadn’t fielded a winning team since the “We Believe!” Warriors, but that didn’t stop the fans from continuing to turn out in droves to support their team with one of the loudest home crowds in the league.

Ever since the Warriors started making the playoffs again under Jackson, the NBA world has been pleasantly reminded about how great the fans of Oracle Arena can be. This season, that home-court advantage exploded to unprecedented levels.

During the regular season, the Dubs were an outstanding 39-2 at home — with the one loss coming against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and the other against the Chicago Bulls in a two-point overtime defeat. They posted a league-best point differential of +14.6 in regular season games at home.

In the playoffs, the Warriors were 9-2 at Oracle, with a point differential of +7.5 (second-best among playoff teams). When you look at the total picture, the Dubs were an unbelievable 48-4 at home this season with an NBA-best point differential of +13.1.

That’s an elite home-court advantage, and by securing the top seed in the Western Conference, no one was able to take the Warriors to a decisive Game 7, not only because the Dubs were good enough to win on the road, but also because it was virtually impossible to steal games on the road.

Next: No. 2

2. Stephen Curry’s Evolution

We can talk about how Kerr was the right hire after the surprising decision to ax Jax. We can talk about the major steps that Thompson, Green and Barnes took this season and we can talk about Golden State’s impressive depth. From home-court advantage to ball movement to everyone knowing their role, the Dubs had all the makings of a fundamentally sound team.

But without league MVP Stephen Curry, none of it would’ve mattered.

We all knew Curry was good heading into the 2014-15 season. We knew he was an All-Star, a fantastic shooter and one of the best point guards in the league. What we didn’t realize was that Curry was some freakily unfair reincarnation of Steve Nash, Pete Maravich and Ray Allen all in one.

Curry will go down as the greatest shooter in NBA history (if he’s somehow not already there) and his emergence as an MVP-caliber player was fundamental in elevating the Golden State Warriors to greatness.

His potency was evident on a nightly basis for the league’s best team. In fact, he and the rest of Golden State’s starting five were so dominant that Curry’s already impressive numbers (23.8 PPG, 7.7 APG, 4.3 RPG, 2.0 SPG, .487/.443/.914 shooting, 28.0 PER) actually suffered for it, since the Warriors often got to rest their starters in the fourth quarter because they were sitting on a double-digit lead.

But in addition to the strides he made defensively, Curry was the league’s most unguardable player. The Warriors outscored their opponents by 920 points with Curry on the floor this season (163 in the playoffs), and the attention defenses had to pay him opened things up for the rest of Golden State’s roster.

Curry’s unbelievable handle and having the NBA’s quickest shot release allowed him to break any defender down off the dribble and make the kinds of shots you only dream about during your hottest heat check. In pick and roll situations, double-teaming him didn’t work because he’d find the roll man, who would be more than capable of working the ensuing 4-on-3 for a quality look.

Even off the ball, Curry was a flurry of movement who could run his man through a hellacious series of screens to free himself up for catch-and-shoot looks, which essentially always amounted to three points or a pump fake leading to an easy layup.

Curry was not only capable of scoring himself, but he was the league’s most devastating offensive player because of how much offensive he created even when he wasn’t directly involved.

He may not have won the NBA Finals MVP Award because of his slow start to the series, but he still averaged 26 points, 6.3 assists and 5.2 rebounds per game on 38.5 percent three-point shooting in the Finals. For the entire playoffs, he stepped up his production to 28.3 points, 6.4 assists, 5.0 rebounds and 1.9 steals per game on .456/.422/.835 shooting splits…against some brutal competition:

He broke defenses’ backs and opponents’ wills with a number of devastating threes, he shattered the NBA record for most made three-pointers in a single postseason (98) and when his team needed him most in Games 4-6 of the NBA Finals, he responded 22 points, 37 points and 25 points to close out the series.

Without Curry taking that MVP step this season, none of this happens. It’s been rare throughout the course of NBA history that a team can win it all without a franchise superstar. We knew Curry was a franchise superstar, but he proved that not only can you win a championship with an undersized point guard as your best player, but that you can do it with Stephen Curry being that guy too.

Next: No. 1

1. Prizing And Utilizing Versatility

When the Golden State Warriors assembled their roster for the 2014-15 season, they knew they had two dynamic three-point shooters in place. They knew they had a defensive anchor in Andrew Bogut, provided he could stay healthy for the playoffs. But most importantly, they realized that bolstering the depth of this team was incredibly important.

Whether that depth going hand-in-hand with versatility was planned is irrelevant; all that matters is when you look at the number of guard-forward hybrids on this team, it’s hard to ignore that so many of Golden State’s defensive lineups became amoebic in nature.

Klay Thompson was capable of playing the 2 or the 3. Barnes could play the 2, 3 or 4. Draymond Green could play the 2, 3, 4 OR 5. Shaun Livingston and Andre Iguodala logged time at positions 1-4. Even Leandro Barbosa was capable of playing multiple positions depending on the lineup.

With so many lengthy, defensively oriented combo players, the Warriors were capable of adjusting to any lineup on one end, push the tempo in between and create a ton of mismatches on the other end with penetration, perimeter shooting and speed.

What we saw all season long indicated that the Golden State Warriors were a team capable of changing the course and culture of the NBA, but the fact that the turning point of this championship series was Steve Kerr going to the small-ball lineup speaks volumes about the direction this league is heading in the pace-and-space era.

In short, the Golden State Warriors are the culmination of the Seven Seconds Or Less Phoenix Suns. They are vindication for Mike D’Antoni‘s revolutionary style of play. They are living proof that you can win a championship by emphasizing an up-tempo pace and three-point shooting.

Two-way versatility is at an all-time premium now. Teams will be looking for the next Draymond Green who can defend multiple positions while spreading the floor with a respectable three-point shot. Teams will be looking for the next Stephen Curry who can create off the bounce and shoot the lights out from downtown. And teams will be looking for the next Andrew Iguodala who can defend and become a glue guy/point forward that can do it all.

Before this series, analytics and old school purists were at odds about what it takes to win a title. Analysts like Charles Barkley have clung to the notion that teams need an interior scoring threat to win a championship, and even though the league has been heading in a different direction for quite some time, basketball and stat junkies haven’t been able to point to any team as an example that indicate otherwise.

Jump shooting teams can’t win a championship. You need a game-changing presence down low. Live by the three, die by the three. We’ve heard all the tropes before, so even though the Warriors weren’t completely a jump-shooting team, Golden State was able to finally establish that all those cliches are outdated.

The NBA is heading in a new direction. LeBron James had to resort to iso-ball to carry his shorthanded Cavaliers, and for a while, it looked like this out-of-character playing style would actually win the day and allow Barkley free reign to continue bashing analytics and the value of three-point shooting.

Blue Man Hoop

But in the end, it was completely fitting that the Warriors used their small-ball lineups and three-point shooting barrage to beat out hero ball. Yes, LeBron James had nowhere near enough help and yes, this series would’ve been different with a healthy Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.

However, with Love and Irving, the Cavaliers had a heavy three-point shooting attack as well, and their high scoring offense was never based on hero ball until Cleveland had to resort to that playing style with both All-Stars were injured. In fact, Cleveland’s offense was predicated on pace-and-space as well.

But at the end of the day, the Golden State Warriors are the 2015 NBA champions and what’s frightening is Curry (27), Thompson (25), Barnes (23), Green (25) and Ezeli (25) are still incredibly young.

This could be the beginning of a Western Conference dynasty, but even if it’s not, this elite Warriors team will go down as one of the greatest championship teams in league history — one that other teams will be trying to model themselves after, and one that could influence the ever-changing landscape of the NBA.

Next: 2015 NBA Finals: Game 6 Recap

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