Golden State Warriors Experiencing A Polar Shift In Play and Mentality
The Golden State Warriors are currently the best team in the NBA.
Yes, you read that right. No, I’m not going crazy. And if you agree, then trust me when I say that you’re not going crazy either. But I understand why watching the Warriors over the course of this year has made you feel as if you’re going crazy — there’s just something about that team that doesn’t seem “right.”
Conventional knowledge has taught everyone that in the NBA, everything is cyclical: A team can go from a perennial playoff team to a strong title contender over the span of a few years, only to find themselves in the lottery the year after winning a ring. It’s natural.
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Core players get traded away. Cheap, overachieving bench players find better deals elsewhere. Organizations find themselves limited financially and refuse to give players a max contract extension. Their superstar suffers a serious injury. Anything can happen.
But those kinds of things happen with a championship level team. It’s expected. One minute, you’re at the top of the world, and the next minute, you’re in the gutter (e.g., the Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat). Some teams differ in that they remain a perennial playoff team for years and years without winning a ring (e.g., the Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City Thunder), but eventually organizations realize they need to make a significant change to put their team in a better position to win a championship.
And that’s why the Golden State Warriors are just…weird. In the NBA, everything is cyclical, but for the Warriors, that cycle has either spanned 40 years, 4.0 years or closer to 0.4 of a year, depending on how you look at it.
It was in 1975 when Golden State won their last title, their one and only title since moving to the West Coast. Since then, they’ve had some highlight years embodied in Sleepy Floyd, Run TMC, Chris Webber and Latrell Sprewell, then of course, the We Believe Era; however, for the most part, it’s just been a lot of bad trades, a lot of failed draft picks and a lot of injuries.
Then came a healthy season for Stephen Curry. The rise of Klay Thompson. The emergence of Draymond Green. The change in culture that was led by Mark Jackson, who also helped established a defensive foundation on which is still being built. There was hope again for the Warriors, for their fans.
While the fan base has been renowned for their loyal support through the years, it was only natural that fans were hesitant to believe the Warriors could be a title contender any time soon. The local Bay Area media was certainly cautious in considering Golden State as an elite NBA team, reminding people of all the struggles the organization has had to overcome to get to where they are now.
Now after being considered the underdog for the past couple years, the Warriors are seen as the favorite to win it all this season. .
But how? How is it that the Warriors have gone from being an underdog to a title favorite in just a year? It makes little to no sense how the Warriors have done what they’ve done over such a short span of time.
We can credit Joe Lacob and general manager Bob Myers, who have helped orchestrate the Warriors’ success little-by-little; even then, no one expected Curry, Thompson and Green to make such a coordinated leap in their path to realizing their full potential, let alone that all the other pieces would finally come together in 2015.
And health was certainly a factor, but even healthy, this team wasn’t considered the favorite going into the season: the team was sporting a rookie coach in Steve Kerr, their veterans like David Lee and Andre Iguodala were looking past their prime and the financial future of the team is hellbent on even the tiniest of team decisions. The list of problems that so many analysts had on why the Warriors wouldn’t achieve anything near a 67-win season seemed infinite.
Still, even after having individual players break numerous records throughout the season, even after the team posted league-high efficiency numbers that haven’t been seen since Michael Jordan and the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, people continue to have their reservations. The lack of individual season accolades the Warriors have received since their historical regular season came to a close is a clear testament to that.
Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
Oddly, that’s understandable: Some people are stuck in the past, believing the Warriors still don’t play defense or that jump shooting teams will never proposer in the NBA. Other people are hesitant to jump on the Warriors bandwagon because of all the years of bad decisions, bad injuries.
But while the rest of the world takes their time to catch up, the local support for Golden State has already prepared themselves to witness something that’s never been done before.
This is certainly a special year for the Warriors, which is exactly how Bay Area News Group sports columnist Marcus Thompson II would describe it. Talking to Warriors play-by-play radio announcer, Tim Roye, Thompson spoke about the team’s metamorphosis.
"Doesn’t it feel like we’re in somebody else’s world? It’s really kind of crazy when you think about it,” said Thompson. “I was thinking last night like, ‘I remember the Warriors used to be the ones who would play great for three quarters and then blow it in the fourth.'”“Even if they don’t win a title this year, you can tell things are dramatically different than how they used to be.”"
William Presa, Warriors season ticket holder and fanatic
Golden Gate Sports also took the opportunity to gauge the feelings of the fans, one of them being season ticket holder and Warriors fanatic, William Presa.
In addition to crediting Steve Kerr and his staff for building on the defensive structure and implementing more ball movement in the offense as opposed to Mark Jackson‘s tendency to call isolation plays, Presa spoke about how the difference between past playoff runs and this postseason.
"“Warriors being called as “the favorite” to win the championship is just crazy for me to hear,” Presa said. “After being an underdog and doubted for many years, everyone finally realizes our potential and what we are made of. It’s about time.“For this playoff run, I believe we have the perfect blend of playoff experience, team chemistry, intensity, veterans, young players, and a great coaching staff to win a title.”"
Jocelyn Zepeda with Ayesha Curry, wife to Steph Curry
In terms of a fan’s mentality, the Warriors fan base (rightly dubbed, “DubNation”) has gone from hoping and praying to get past the first round to cheering for a team that swept Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans to start the postseason.
Rather than dropping hundreds of dollars on a first round game, some fans have come to expect the Warriors to still be playing later in May and therefore are saving their money for later rounds.
Another Warriors fanatic, Jocelyn Zepeda, spoke to Golden Gate Sports on the matter and on why she’s still in “utter disbelief” of how well the Warriors have performed thus far in the season.
"“It’s clear the Warriors have gone from the low ranks to the best in the league in such a short amount of time,” said Zepeda. “Now, they just flip a switch as a team and decide whether they really want to win that game. When that happens, no team is safe.”“But with that ability and their rise to elite status comes higher expectations. It’s crazy that people now just wait and save their money for Finals tickets because now they expect the Warriors to be there. It’s even crazier knowing that [Oracle Arena] will still be going up regardless.”"
The Warriors have made the most unexpected, unprecedented shift from first-round fodder to title contender in just one season.
There’s several variables that factor into how they’ve done that, but in the end, it’s truly incredibly to see the jump they’ve made because it really can’t be explained in one solid, concrete statement.
Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
It’s mind-boggling when trying to fathom what they’ve done in just a few years. This is a special season for the Warriors considering how everything happened to come together this season doesn’t make any sense. It’s illogical.
Then again, the Warriors have a group of guys that include:
- a small point guard capable of dribbling through five opponents and hitting a fadeaway three
- a 6-foot-5-inch power forward able to defend and out-rebound 7-footers
- a rookie coach utilizing a new kind of fast-paced system
- a mix of youthful and veteran players that can start clicking with their leading stars at any given moment
When you have a team that can say that, you kind of just have to throw all logic all the window. And it doest seem like a mere coincidence. When you see how all the choices and struggles have led to this point, it’s as if this was fated to be. That’s incredibly difficult to come to terms with, but eventually you have to accept reality for what it is.
And the reality is this: the Golden State Warriors are currently the best team in the NBA. Believe that.