The Golden State Warriors have the pieces to be one of the best teams ever, but that may not be the case right away.
Kevin Durant agreeing to a deal with the Golden State Warriors shook the NBA to its core. A team that won a championship just last year and nearly won another one in 2016 just added one of the top five players in the NBA and didn’t lose anything major in the process.
Fans of the Warriors are thrilled about this move, and rightfully so. One of the most offensively stacked teams of all time just added a perennial MVP candidate.
But often, teams with several All-Stars playing together doesn’t work as well as it should on paper.
Just because the Warriors starting lineup could probably compete with the starting five of next year’s Eastern Conference All-Stars doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly right out of the gate.
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Just look at the 2010-11
. Yes, they reached the Finals, but they struggled mightily early in the year before ultimately conceding the Larry O’Brien Trophy to the
after just six games.
The 2010-11 Heat were an assemblance of three of the best players in the NBA including the undisputed best in the world (since Stephen Curry hadn’t joined that conversation yet), LeBron James.
Some even pegged them to break the Chicago Bulls‘ 72-win record. But did they do that? Nope.
Instead, they started the season 9-8 through their first 17 games and had losing streaks of three, four and five at different points throughout the season. They ultimately finished the season with an impressive 58-24 record, but they were far from the world-beaters many expected them to be.
The 2010-11 Heat didn’t even go into the playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the East. That honor went to the Chicago Bulls, who compiled a 62-20 record while spearheaded by Derrick Rose‘s MVP season.
Of course, we all know what ended up happening with the Heat after that. They went on to win two championships in the James/Dwyane Wade/Chris Bosh era and were a dominant force all four years they were together. But they didn’t get there without their share of growing pains.
The Heat were Wade’s team up until 2010 and although he, James and Bosh were best friends, they still had to learn how to play together. Their early struggles indicated that took some time.
The Warriors with Durant will likely be no different. Obviously, adding a player as good as Durant is hard to perceive as anything but a good thing for Golden State, but things may not go perfectly from day one.
A lot of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson‘s game is predicated by being able to shoot threes and monopolize touches whenever they want and then giving the remainder of the touches to guys like Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala.
Durant is a much bigger mouth to feed than either of those guys.
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How will Curry and Thompson respond to having to sacrifice some of their touches in favor of KD? And what about Draymond, who will be relegated to the fourth offensive option rather than the third?
There are a lot of things that may need to be worked out before this Golden State juggernaut becomes the well-oiled machine people are expecting to see.
It’s highly unlikely that Durant going to the Warriors will screw up their chemistry entirely, but there’s a good chance they’ll have to work through some things early on.
Some are looking at this move in a very black and white manner, thinking that if the Warriors won 73 games last year, they should approach that again or possibly even surpass it now that Durant is around.
Considering how much Durant is going to change the offensive flow in Golden State, those people may want to pump the brakes a bit.
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The Warriors have everything it takes to be one of the best teams ever, and Durant will certainly find his niche in due time. As for the start of the 2016-17 season, fans and experts alike would be smart to lower their expectations.