Why Does Everyone Keep Hating On The Revolutionary Golden State Warriors?

Addressing The Criticism

First, we need to address all these recent claims for the poppycock opinions that they are, which the Warriors happily dismissed in typical fashion.

While you could easily make an argument for the 1995-96 Bulls beating these Warriors in a seven-game series, Harper’s assertion that they’d sweep the Dubs is ridiculous considering it took them five games to beat a New York Knicks team that never won a title and six games to defeat the Seattle SuperSonics in the Finals.

In any case, we’ll NEVER get closure on a hypothetical series like this because it will never happen. Harper’s entitled to his opinion on said hypothetical series, but declaring it would be a sweep came from a place of concern/annoyance over what the Dubs are doing now, not actual basketball analysis.

Jackson’s comparison of the last two great Warriors nuclei makes for a fun exercise, but let’s all put down whatever he’s smoking and recall that that 2007 Golden State team had to win 16 of its last 21 games just to make the playoffs. That upset of the Mavs in the first round was the stuff of legends, but they were promptly dismissed by the Utah Jazz in five games in the next round.

That’s not the kind of team that can beat these Warriors.

As for the Big O, we should recall that he played back in the 60s and 70s when, as Steve Kerr points out, players weren’t as quick or athletic, that Robertson was routinely hard on his teammates and that defenses do try to pressure Curry out on the perimeter. But then Curry is able to use his handles and speed to blow right by them to the basket (where he shoots 62.5 percent) or find impossible ways to pull up and do this:

Curry is the greatest shooter the league has ever seen. Period. While he undoubtedly plays in an era where three-point shooting is encouraged more than ever before, and while that may put other historically great three-point shooters like Larry Bird, Reggie Miller or even Ray Allen at a disadvantage, none of them were as lethal shooting threes off the dribble as they are spotting up like Curry.

I mean, the guy takes an absurd amount of three-pointers per game (10.9, to be exact), which would be ill-advised for almost anyone else in NBA history, yet we’re going to ignore the fact that he’s converting 46.1 percent of them and fault him for playing in the current era?

Stop overthinking this. No one has done what Curry is doing, and even if they had been given the opportunity, I sincerely doubt any of them would have stacked up to Curry in this regard anyway.

Ceballos’ assertion about the 1993-94 Suns is completely out of left field. How is a member of a team that couldn’t get past the 1993-94 Houston Rockets going to sit there and talk about beating a Warriors team that is of the greatest of all time by every available metric? Those Rockets were NBA champions, so they weren’t slouches by any means, but come on, Cedric.

Finally, Thomas’ ridiculous comments can be dismissed with a simple look at Golden State’s fourth ranked defense. Curry is also holding opponents to 3.8 percent worse shooting than they’d normally shoot, and Klay Thompson’s holding them to 0.5 percent worse shooting while defending opponents’ better backcourt players.

It’s easy to get caught up in how quickly the Warriors’ backcourt can outshoot you, but ignoring the work Curry puts in on the defensive end — let alone calling his defense the “worst perimeter defense I’ve ever seen” — is downright blasphemous.

Next: Haters Gonna Hate