Golden State Warriors: 2017-18 NBA season preview
Storyline 3: Can they do what the 2013-14 Heat could not?
Based on NBA history, reaching four straight Finals is harder than winning three out of four. Doing both is harder yet, and the Warriors will attempt to become the first team to do so since Bill Russell‘s Celtics.
There are reasons this is so rare. Energy and hunger dwindle with each Finals trip. Age increases, rosters become more expensive to keep together, and bad luck catches up. Meanwhile, other teams become fixated on beating these dynasties, and improve their personnel and strategy accordingly.
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There are also reasons this Warriors team seems primed to be history’s second exception. It is young, and won last year’s title the same number of games it normally takes to lose in the conference finals. It is locked in contractually due to well-timed and well-anticipated cap spikes, as well as rare financial unselfishness among its players.
Perhaps its best trait is its structural efficiency. It is not only the most talented team in the league by far, but each player’s talents fit a very specific role, and they do so perfectly.
Even more than age or ego, this is where they most differ from the league’s last back-to-back-to-back-to-back conference champions, the James-Era Miami Heat. That Heat team was still the league’s most talented as it entered the 2014 NBA Finals, but the Spurs used a better system to be the effectively better basketball team.
With these Warriors, that approach is almost impossible. The gap cannot be narrowed strategically, because the Warriors already employ Spurs-ian strategy. For this team to be denied a fourth straight Finals appearance and second straight title, one of the other dynasty pitfalls will have to come into play.