The Warriors might be the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference—the last spot in the real playoffs—but their position there is anything but guaranteed.
Minnesota, Sacramento, and the Clippers are on their heels, waiting for any slip that would push Golden State back into the play-in tournament.
Reality can be a real bummer sometimes.
But ignore that reality. With the way the Warriors are playing as of late — they’ve won nine of the 10 games Jimmy Butler has played in blue and yellow — it’s impossible not to think of what glory could come for the Dubs in the postseason.
The sixth seed? Right now, that seems like the least of what the Warriors can accomplish.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it’s more than fair to talk about the Warriors — yes, the Bay’s team — winning a title this season. The Dubs have halved their title odds from the start of the season and now sit as sixth-favorite in the league at 14-to-1.
A longshot? Sure. But we’re still talking about a title! My, how things have changed in a month.
Tuesday night’s win against the Knicks perfectly encapsulates why it is OK to explore lofty possibilities with the Dubs. On the road, playing the second end of a back-to-back, the Warriors were awful in the first half at Madison Square Garden.
Sure, they were creating open shots, something they have done consistently since Butler arrived, but they were clanking them every which way on national television.
Butler, in particular, was missing anything from distance, making only one of five jump shots in the first two quarters.
But in the second half, the Dubs’ shots started falling. Steph Curry made four of the Warriors’ eight 3-pointers after halftime.
More importantly, the Dubs put the clamps on New York, forcing nine turnovers, with six steals and three blocks. New York shot 39 percent from the floor, as Butler and Draymond Green combined to put on a defensive masterclass. In 15 second-half minutes together, the Warriors posted a net rating of plus-24.5 (points per 100 possessions). Butler didn’t allow a made 3-pointer in the game, as he contested nearly everything that went up, including shots from the corner.
Play like that, and who can’t the Warriors beat?
No, seriously, who?
I don’t see anyone insurmountable in the Western Conference.
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Speaking of New York, the NBA’s league office has to be giddy with the possibility of a Warriors-Lakers playoff series. The later, the better for the league, but any time will do.
That battle of California could come as early as the first round, given that the Lakers are jostling between Nos. 2 and 3 seeds.
But while the Lakers are the better regular-season team, there’s not much reason to think the Dubs wouldn’t be able to handle them in a seven-game series.
Don’t get me wrong: it’d be a good showdown now that Luka Dončić is a Laker, but we’ve seen how Steve Kerr handles the Slovenian James Harden. Is LeBron James still inexplicably great at age 40? You bet. Can he average 30-plus a night for seven games? The Dubs would be keen to see.
Without Anthony Davis, the Warriors’ biggest (literally) bugaboo wouldn’t be a factor. A big man who can dominate the game on both ends of the court is kryptonite to the lilliputian Dubs, but the Lakers only have one center of note, Jaxson Hayes, and he’s hardly notable, as he averages only three defensive rebounds a game.
It doesn’t take a suspension of disbelief to imagine the Dubs beating the Lakers head-to-head.
A bit more effort would need to go into making the argument for the Warriors beating the Nuggets, but let me give it a try:
The Nuggets are a shallow team. While impressive at the top end with the best player on the planet—Nikola Jokić — and a resurgent Jamal Murray, the Nuggets are not even close to the squad that won the title two years ago.
Furthermore, the Lakers showed in a recent matchup that size isn’t necessarily needed to slow down Jokić (you’ll never fully stop him). By fronting him in the post all game, Jokić wasn’t given easy entry passes from which he could operate the Nuggets’ offense. Double and triple teams forced the ball out of his hands. Jokić had a triple-double in that game two weeks back, but he only made two shots from the field and had six turnovers.
Would that defensive tactic — one I’m certain the Dubs would implement – hold up in a seven-game series? Probably not. The playoffs are all about counters.
But if the Nuggets can’t find a counter and Jokić, like Dončić, can be taken out of a game with double teams, it leaves players like Christian Braun, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr. to beat you. (Oh, and Russell Westbrook, too. Yes, we’re still doing that.)
Porter is shooting 40 percent from beyond the arc this season. Perhaps he will beat whoever dares leave him open.
Or perhaps someone who only shoots 75 percent from the free-throw line has been defying expectation from beyond the arc all season and the postseason is where regression hits.
I, for one, would love to find out what’s what.
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For now, I will ignore the Rockets (can’t score) and Grizzlies (questionable defense, as of late), though I retain the right to bring the Grizzlies back up before April. I love their offense.
This leaves us with the Thunder, the top seed in the West and the rightful favorites to win the conference.
If OKC plays its best ball in the playoffs, it will coast to the NBA Finals. It might even win the whole thing. My goodness, they are good.
But they’re also children. At an average age of 24, the Thunder are the second-youngest team in the NBA this season.
Their success this season cannot be denied, but the value of experience in the playoffs cannot be denied, either.
Do I like a matchup with the Thunder in a seven-game series for the Warriors? No sir. Oklahoma City is better offensively and defensively, and those young legs would be a massive problem for the Dubs in the open court.
But there is no guarantee that any of that will carry over into the playoffs. It’s a different sport than regular-season basketball, and no one knows that better than Green, Curry, and the man known as Playoff Jimmy.
Plus, the Warriors won two of three with the Thunder this season before Butler’s arrival. These old heads aren’t keen to give the youngins even a bit of quarter. A series between the two teams could be a bloodbath, or it could prove to be a kind of high drama reminiscent of a past era of rivalry.
All this to say that while the Dubs might be flawed and their status as a true playoff team is precarious, but everything is on the table for this team come the postseason. They’ve shown enough that there are reasons to believe that this season could go from nothing to more than just a little something.
The Dubs have a month remaining to confirm or deny such allegations.
But either way, I know this: We’ll be eagerly watching.
And isn’t that a wild change from just a few weeks ago?
