NBA: 10 burning questions for the 2019-20 season
By Phil Watson
5. How far back to the Warriors slide?
The Golden State Warriors have been the gold standard in the NBA over the last five seasons, going 322-88 over that span and reaching five consecutive NBA Finals, winning three of them.
But Kevin Durant is with the Brooklyn Nets, DeMarcus Cousins had a cameo before leaving for the Los Angeles Lakers and longtime bench stalwarts Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston are gone as well.
Additionally, Klay Thompson is out for a significant chunk of 2019-20 after tearing his left ACL during Game 6 of the NBA Finals in June. And when Thompson comes back, he’ll likely be going through a position change, as it seems coach Steve Kerr wants to start Thompson and Stephen Curry with newcomer D’Angelo Russell, per NBA.com.
That would make it appear Thompson is ticketed to a move to the 3 spot.
The Warriors added free-agent center Willie Cauley-Stein, a bit of an enigma in his four seasons with the Sacramento Kings, but certainly a player who will be more durable than was Cousins, who was coming off an Achilles tear and then tore a thigh muscle during the playoffs.
OddsShark has the Warriors with an over/under of 47½ wins this season, which would be their lowest total since going 47-35 in 2012-13, the first of their current streak of seven consecutive playoff appearances.
The odds-making site has Golden State at a plus-1400 to win the NBA championship, the seventh-best odds in the NBA. So they will still be good … just not dominate-the-NBA good.
The win projection would have the Warriors as the fifth seed in the West, quite a tumble for a team that has had home-court advantage in all but two playoff series (the 2018 Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets and last year’s NBA Finals against the Toronto Raptors) over the last five seasons.
The victory projections have the LA Clippers, the Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz whizzing by the Warriors in the standings. Golden State will have a lot of adjustments to make, particularly defensively, where Russell is no Thompson as a perimeter defender.