‘Strength in Numbers’ and the myth of the Golden State Warriors’ dominance
The Golden State Warriors have so much talent that they have made winning the expectation. That standard persists in the minds of many, even when they are without the talent that created it.
On Wednesday, Jan. 10, I got blocked on Twitter for the first time. It only lasted about five minutes, but that was five minutes longer than I ever expected for a seemingly innocuous comment.
It all started when a prominent NBA Twitter presence stated their surprise at the Los Angeles Clippers’ beatdown of the Golden State Warriors at Oracle Arena. I replied with a statement of fact, or at the very least, an opinion so uncontroversial that the distinction is irrelevant: The absence of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson helped that happen.
The responses were swift and vicious: “Typical Warriors fan making excuses.” “So you expected Lou Williams to drop 50? Sure guy.” “They still had KD and Draymond…”
While the first was inaccurate (I write about Golden State, but do not approach my work from a fan perspective) and the second ironic (no, I did not expect it, but Steve Kerr did), it was that third response that showed the most fundamental misunderstanding.
Of course, the Warriors still had Kevin Durant and Draymond Green. And of course, that is mind-bogglingly incredible. To be without a top-three NBA player in Curry and a top-15 player in Thompson, and to still have a top-three and top-15 player on the court is an unprecedented luxury in basketball history.
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That does not mean that a Durant and Green-led team is still “The Warriors.” It is a 50-win team, give or take a few either way. It is a better team than Milwaukee is with Giannis Antetokounmpo and no other stars, but a worse team than Cleveland is with LeBron James, Kevin Love, Isaiah Thomas and terrific depth. It’s worse than Oklahoma City was in the years when Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka were all healthy (59-60 wins), but better than that team was the year all three missed significant time (45 wins).
That’s how basketball works. The more great players a team has, the better it is. There are certainly other variables (fit, depth, coaching), but it is all secondary to the power of superstars.
The Warriors are what they are because they have an unbelievable collection of talent. They are also what they are because they can still be a very team without some of that talent, but they cannot still be “The Warriors.” Certainly not without Curry.
Remember how they got here. After missing the playoffs in each of Curry’s first three seasons, the point guard became a star 2012-13. Thompson and he became the NBA’s undisputed best backcourt in 2013-14, and Green’s breakout the following year — along with Curry’s MVP ascent — made the Warriors champions.
In 2015-16, Curry became the best player on the planet. He won the league’s first-ever unanimous MVP, and the Warriors won a record 73 games. That didn’t make them invincible, though.
After their Finals loss that June, those that discussed the role of Curry’s knee injury and Green’s Game 5 suspension were accused of making excuses for the team’s historic collapse.
Without a doubt, many were. That was mostly on the fringes, though. The deafening roar of passionate fandom can overshadow more nuanced analysis when we rely on timeline-based media to gauge critical response.
For most basketball thinkers, however, discussing Curry’s injury and Green’s suspension was not an excuse, but quite the opposite. It was an acknowledgement of the ultra-thin barrier between NBA success and failure.
As great as the Warriors were in 2015-16, they were not magical. “Strength in Numbers” was the team’s external mantra, but it echoed when tapped. One game without Green led to the disintegration of the league’s best defense, monster nights for LeBron James and Kyrie Irving and multiple injuries to over-burdened, aging players in Andrew Bogut and Andre Iguodala.
As full of heroics as Curry’s regular season was, and as impressive as his hobbled postseason encore had been, he was left unable to conjure up anything close to the performance the Warriors needed to save them.
Two weeks later they signed Durant, to the chagrin of many. “They don’t need him.”
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In a competitive balance sense, this was true. They didn’t. They were the league’s best team the previous two years, and would have been odds-on title favorites with or without Durant.
But they did need him. One game without Green and one injury to Curry exposed an aging, flawed roster. How could they expect the declining Bogut and Iguodala to be central figures the following season? How could they rely on Harrison Barnes, coming off a complete Finals meltdown? After Curry’s semi-serious knee injury and major ego hit, was he ever going to be the same?
Luck went their way in 2014-15, and didn’t in 2015-16. Heads said it would flip back in 2016-17, but tails said the opposite. Why take that chance?
So they added Durant, who took them to another level of dominance. Almost immediately after the signing, people began to forget what that dominance was based on.
All of a sudden, the Warriors were simply unfair. Curry was no longer an MVP candidate, nor was Durant. Neither was the reason for Golden State’s success, simply because the other was, and because they had Thompson and Green backing them.
They went 16-1 en route to last year’s championship, but no one was all that impressed. That’s what they were supposed to do.
That much was true. They were supposed to. But what is ignored in that is the reason they were supposed to: Because we expected Curry to be utterly dominant. We expected something similarly transcendent from Durant. We expected legendary defense from Green, and we expected Thompson to guard the perimeter and space the floor at an all-time level.
Yes, the Warriors merely met expectations. But doing so meant turning in some of the greatest performances in the history of basketball. That they were predictable does not make them less impressive.
The Warriors should have beaten the Clippers at Oracle. Durant and Green as a duo are miles better than Lou Williams and DeAndre Jordan. Iguodala, David West and Shaun Livingston are far greater support pieces than Tyrone Wallace, Montrezl Harrell and Jawun Evans. That Golden State lost handily was an upset.
That’s the thing about 50-win teams: They get upset. You never expect it, but it is also never noteworthy. That the Clippers win was seen as any different shows that the Warriors are seen as something they are not.
Williams is new to the Clippers, but they’ve had explosive scoring guards for years in Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford. However, every time they came to Oracle since the first game of Thompson’s career, those guards have been contained. Not by “The Warriors,” but by Thompson.
There has always been a guard going off in those games, but he played for Golden State: Curry. “The Warriors” do not always run the Clippers out of Oracle, Curry does.
With both Curry and Thompson out, L.A. had its best chance to win in Oakland of the Doc Rivers era. It does not matter that Paul is gone, or that Blake Griffin, Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Beverley, Austin Rivers and Milos Teodosic are all hurt. The Warriors—the team that has four superstars who fit together harmoniously—can throttle anyone. The team that L.A. faced—the one on which Green and Iguodala were the second and third scoring options—can lose to anyone.
Golden State still played terribly against L.A. It should have won handily, but no one stepped up to help Durant, or to shut down Williams once he got going.
But what makes the Warriors so special is that, even on nights when eight or nine guys play terribly, they almost always win. The guy that steps up to help Durant is almost always Curry, and the guy that shuts down a hot opponent is almost always Thompson. That’s the amazing thing about superstars: They are dominant almost every night, and when a team has several dominant players in a game, it almost always wins.
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The Warriors are not the Spurs. They are well-coached and deep, but “Strength in Numbers” is not real. Without their best players, they are normal. What makes them so abnormal is not that they win no matter who plays—it is that the guys who usually play are disgustingly great players.