Golden State Warriors Damn Good, Not Unstoppable

There has been talk about the Golden State Warriors not being great, now that they added Kevin Durant. That talk should stop, or at least switch focus.

The Golden State Warriors have dropped four consecutive games to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Predictably, after Kyrie Irving dramatically vanquished the Warriors on Christmas Day, NBA narratives about both the Warriors and Cavaliers heated up.

The very next day, a radio personality was saying something about how the Warriors were worse for signing Kevin Durant and jettisoning Andrew Bogut. Said radio personality must not be watching these games or looking at any sort of statistics.

The Warriors would’ve likely lost that game by 10 if not for Durant. Stephen Curry was off all game and made just two of his seven threes. Durant made two of eight threes, but he scored 36 points on a heavy dose of made two-pointers and free throws.

Curry scored just 15 points and he’s been at the center of lots of debate himself. He’s still the only player in the NBA who is making at least 39 percent of nine or more attempted threes per game, but he’s not been the dominant flamethrower he was last season.

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That’s starting to be a concern. The Warriors have played more than 30 games now–the sample sizes aren’t so small anymore. Pinning Curry’s shortcomings on Durant seems misguided though, especially considering Curry was playing around this level in the postseason too.

It’s possible that Curry was just on an unbelievable run for basically the entire 2015-16 season.

Curry added .318 wins per 48 minutes that year–if that number doesn’t mean anything to you, this list of players to do it probably will: Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Curry are the only players ever.

Kareem did it three times, LeBron and MJ did it twice, while Wilt and Curry both managed one season adding that much to their teams. Even the all-time greats don’t maintain such a high level of play for their entire careers.

Curry certainly should be playing better than he is right now, but it’s not as though he’s been awful. Durant has been historically good. Neither of them are the problem in Golden State right now.

Zaza Pachulia and Andre Iguodala have been much more worrisome. Iguodala was horrible in the Cavaliers game–he choked multiple fast breaks late, probably due to flashbacks of the incredible block LeBron James had on him in the NBA Finals last year.

Pachulia’s numbers seem good thanks to the boosts he gets from playing with the Warriors, but he’s offered little defensively this season. Opponents shoot 63.4 percent within six feet against Pachulia, 2.4 percent better than they do on average.

His offense hasn’t been fantastic either. Pachulia is hardly used, as just about everybody expected when he signed with Golden State, but sometimes it seems as though the other Warriors are moving too fast for Zaza.

Although swapping Bogut for Durant is a move any team would make ten times out of ten, protecting the rim is certainly his strong suit. Last year with the Dubs, Bogut held opponents to 56.1 percent in that six-foot area, 4.7 percent lower than they shot otherwise.

Draymond Green posts a better percentage than either of those players this season, but he can’t play at center for 48 minutes a night, if only because he’d foul out of/get ejected from every single game.

The Warriors are still fantastic. That much is not in question–no team with Curry and Durant is going to struggle all that hard. Depth is important though, even in the playoffs when rotations shrink.

All that means is the seven or eight players that do play have increased roles and responsibilities. Curry, Durant, Green and Klay Thompson is the best core of four in the NBA, but who else will step up?

Can Iguodala pull it together by then? Shaun Livingston has been clutch in the past, but the Warriors will need more unproven players like JaVale McGee, Ian Clark and maybe even Kevon Looney and/or Patrick McCaw to play real minutes, unless they pull off a trade.

That’s possible, of course, but Golden State doesn’t have many assets left they’d even consider moving. Nobody outside of that core four is going to have tons of value, and the Warriors already owe their 2017 first-rounder to the Utah Jazz.

That means the earliest they can offer an unprotected pick is 2019, because nobody wants to swap firsts with the expected champions. Those factors severely limit the kind of player the Dubs can bring in at this point.

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Again, none of the depth issues will likely matter until the latter stages of the playoffs. Curry, Durant and company are more than enough to put away most teams in the regular season, and coach Steve Kerr will give literally everybody on the roster a chance to prove themselves in the meantime.

The new-look Lineup of Death with Curry, Thompson, Durant, Iguodala and Green is blowing teams away. That group has outscored opponents by 26.5 points per 100 possessions thus far, even with Iguodala scoring just 5.5 points per game.

There are real concerns here though, especially if Curry doesn’t return to his destroyer of worlds form. Even one injury to anybody that mattered would be a killer to this already-thin team, even if it wasn’t to one of the big four.

Counting out the San Antonio Spurs is never smart, and although the Warriors have a clear talent advantage the Spurs are still the Spurs. The Houston Rockets offense is running on all cylinders even with James Harden sitting down, and Russell Westbrook is some sort of basketball cyborg.

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The Warriors are still the favorites to win the West and the Finals, for good reason, but they shouldn’t be penciled in as champs just yet. There are real challengers and real questions facing Golden State.