The Warriors have played 43 games. They've won 26 of them. The season is more than half-way through and the Warriors are winning at a .605 clip, putting them on a pace to win 50 games. These are facts. This is actually happening.
And they're not just doing it against the league's worst. They're 13-7 against winning teams. They're 12-11 on the road. They've beaten one title contender, the Clippers, 3 times. They are the only team in the entire league who have beaten the Clippers, Heat, and Thunder, after handing OKC its first loss of the season when leading after 3 quarters. They just finished a stretch of 15 games, 12 of which were against playoff teams (if the season ended today), and 2 against would-be just-miss teams. They went 8-7 over that stretch, keeping them afloat in the upper echelon of the Western Conference, and they now look ahead to a favorable schedule that includes 16 of their final 22 at home.
Jump on this bandwagon now. The Bay Area will be going bananas for this team come playoff time.
Even more reason to be excited: they've done all of this without their starting center, Andrew Bogut. You may recall he's the guy they got last year when the Warriors traded their best player at the time in Monta Ellis. I love Monta, and he's having a fine season with the Bucks, but it sure doesn't look great for his stock now that the W's are doing so well without him, especially when they are without the player he was traded for. It's a bigger case of addition-by-subtraction than when the Giants finally traded Bengie Molina to make room for Buster Posey. Even if Bogut is a lost cause, did the Warriors still win that trade? Monta Ellis shareholders can't be happy that that's even a question.
They say Bogut is inching towards a return, although I remain cautiously pessimistic. It seems to me that these giants simply do not fully heal. Their bodies are just too big, and create too much stress to play basketball. Greg Oden, Yao Ming, even Andrew Bynum. I would not be surprised if Bogut ended up in the same group. But if you believe the Warriors press, his return is a matter of weeks away. And that likely would make this good team even better. Right now Festus Ezeli is the starting center, and he's pretty much a zero on the offensive end. About once a game he shows off his stone hands by fumbling a Curry dish-off-a-drive. Bogut will give them another dimension offensively, without sacrificing rebounds and defense. The one potential negative to his return has to do with chemistry, as there is an argument to be made centered around not fixing it if it ain't broke. After all, the Warriors crunch-time line-up of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Jarret Jack, David Lee, and Carl Landry has been very effective. Maybe you don't want to mess with that.
So in the absence of a reliable center, how have the Warriors been doing it? Well, Lee and Curry have been playing at an elite level. I made the case for their All-Star selections a few days ago. Unfortunately, the coaches must not have read what I said about Curry, since only Lee was rewarded with a spot. Indeed a shame, since Curry is the team's MVP, although you could even make a (flimsy) case for Jack as an MVP, given how many times he's bailed out the team down the stretch. He and Landry are both candidates for 6th man of the year (how many teams have ever had two?).
But the most credit should probably go to Mark Jackson. In just his second year coaching, he's transformed this team from one in which defending was an afterthought, to one that grinds out wins with stingy defense and solid rebounding. The Warriors are the 6th best team in the NBA in terms of opponent FG%. Two years ago they were 21st and last year, 20th. Even after struggling on the boards the past couple games, the Warriors are 8th in the league in rebound differential. They had been dead last for the previous FOUR seasons. They are doing things that Warrior fans like myself just didn't even know were possible.
The Warriors haven't just gotten better. They've fundamentally altered their style to a winning formula. Jackson has instituted a culture change that one would expect would take a half-decade to produce results. For that, he'll no doubt get a lot of votes for Coach of the Year, and rightfully so. Back when Don Nelson was running the team, I always wanted the Warriors to be good, but I didn't want them to change, fearing that abandoning the high-paced, offense-only style would produce a team that wasn't any fun to watch. I'm happy to be dead wrong.
If you're not watching this team on the regular, you're missing a lot of excitement. Like I said, you're late, but there's still room on the bandwagon.
No comments:
Post a Comment