The All-Star party is over. As the hosts pick up the askew red solo cups and tidy up what turned out to be a nice showcase of the Bay Area, they’re about to get down to business.
The Warriors, equipped with Jimmy Butler, are gunning for the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference playoff race. The All-Star intermission sets up a third-act sprint to the finish.
“It’s the playoffs for us coming out of the break,” Draymond Green said. “It’s a 27-game playoff, then a grind to win 16.”
Green already proclaimed on national television that the Warriors (28-27) are going to win the championship. The team went 3-1 in the first four games with Butler as the former Heat star plays himself back into shape.
Butler, Green said, is Golden State’s “life support.” He gives them a second scoring option next to Steph Curry, to be sure, but really he gives them a sense of belief. A swagger. A higher ceiling.
Accelerating from the 10th seed into the true playoff picture will require an increased sense of urgency. It’ll take the type of extended stretch of intense play Golden State’s new big three relishes.
“I love expectations and having something to play for,” said Curry, who turns 37 in mid-March.
An 18-9 close to the season would match the Warriors’ win total from last year (46) and would likely be enough to secure a playoff berth. According to Basketball Reference, the Warriors have just a 4.3% chance of capturing the sixth seed and are most likely to enter the postseason as either a ninth or 10th seed, where one play-in loss would end their season.
The Warriors start their final sprint with a rivalry game in Sacramento before coming back to Chase Center for a pair of anticipated home games. Klay Thompson and the Mavericks return to the Bay on Sunday in what will also serve as Andre Iguodala’s jersey retirement game. Two nights later, the Warriors are celebrating the 2015 championship team — the dawn of their dynasty — against the Hornets.
The Kings and Mavericks games in particular carry extra weight because each team is directly above Golden State in the tightly packed Western Conference standings.
Jonathan Kuminga, who has missed the past six weeks with a severely sprained right ankle, is on the verge of returning.
The Warriors are 3.5 games back of the Clippers for the sixth seed, but they remain in a cluster of win-now teams in play-in status. The Suns, Warriors, Kings, Mavericks, Timberwolves and Clippers each have between 26 and 31 wins.
Golden State has an easier remaining strength of schedule than all of them but Minnesota. Phoenix and Sacramento have the two hardest paths left.
The Warriors project to be in the mix even after their uneven first half. They started 12-3 before playing at a lottery level for two months. Since that blazing start, the Warriors have yet to win three straight games. They wanted to build their identity around defense, but Green has been in and out of the lineup and opponents loading up on Curry with double teams and top-locks have forced Steve Kerr to skew his lineup decisions more toward scoring.
Golden State ranks 15th in net rating (ninth in defense and 17th in offense), fitting for a team Curry called “mid.”
Butler changes the calculus. In his four games as a Warrior, he averaged 21.3 points and seven rebounds per game. As Curry’s stylistic foil, he brings rim pressure and foul-drawing skills to a team that couldn’t make layups and never got to the foul line.
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The Warriors beat the Bulls, Bucks and Rockets with Butler, but also choked on a winnable one against a severely depleted Mavericks team. Over the last four games, the Warriors rank fourth league-wide in defensive rating and seventh in net rating.
“It definitely changed everything,” Green said of acquiring Butler. “Soon as the change happened, Steve said, ‘All right, we can compete now. This is big. This gives us a chance.’ And everybody believed that. … But the most important thing is when you walk into an arena and you believe you can win, that’s half the battle. We were walking into arenas knowing we couldn’t win some games.”
Butler has admitted that he’s still working himself into game shape after being away from the court due to his team suspension in Miami. Even in a diminished state, he has provided enough of a lift to revive a season that was going nowhere. It’s still wildly ambitious for Green to be talking about a championship while hovering around .500, but it would’ve been patently absurd before the Butler trade.
Now, achieving relevancy — one of Curry’s favorite words — is well within reach. It’ll take a 27-game push to reach it.
“All we want is just to get into a playoff series and have a fighting chance to be a tough out against anybody in the West,” Curry said. “We have a good opportunity in front of us to do that. I’m looking forward to the challenge. It’s basically a playoff game every single night, and that usually brings the best out of you.”
