Golden State Warriors: Top 5 toughest matchups for the 2019-2020 season
With the NBA season just six weeks away, the Golden State Warriors will need to be prepared for a rejuvenated Western Conference that’s had a busy offense. But which teams serve as the toughest challenge?
Beneath all the pomp and circumstance of the cross-bay move of the Golden State Warriors to the sparkling new Chase Center, there is an undeniable recasting of a team that has dominated the NBA over the course of the last decade.
Many of these moves haven’t fully settled into the minds of fans just yet. There will be no Kevin Durant next season. There will be no Andre Iguodala. There will be no Shaun Livingston.
For the majority of the season, the Warriors will even be without Klay Thompson.
The front office has put together an impressive cast of characters who are poised to flourish under the leadership of both Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, who have been thrust into the role of “veterans” for this coming season.
It will undoubtedly look different.
What many fans around the NBA — and outside of the Bay Area bubble — may not entirely realize, however, is that this is still a more than capable roster. One way or another, almost every player on the roster has been underrated to some degree.
The addition of D’Angelo Russell has been the biggest talk of the offseason additions, but under-the-radar signings of guys like Omari Spellman and Willie Cauley-Stein could be low-risk and high-reward. The drafting, at least to this point, has continued being excellent.
The Warriors are still projected to win 47.5 wins this upcoming season.
There will be growing pains. There will be times where it won’t be as smooth sailing as it’s been in past seasons. But this is a team that should be able to make the playoffs on an upswing that welcomes back Klay Thompson at just the right time.
The adversity that the Golden State Warriors face this upcoming season will be more real than ever before. It will not be a case of the Warriors battling themselves. The team will not have enough time to flip any switches or save something for the playoffs.
Order has been restored in the NBA thanks to a power-shift that has swung talk of “big threes” or “core fours” to dynamic duos.
Teams in the west, specifically, have pushed their chips to the center of the table at the mere thought that the Warriors might not be as dominant as they’ve been in years past.
As a result, the Western Conference is more open than it’s been in years. There’s more talent within the conference than ever before, and teams will be gunning at the throats of a Golden State Warriors team that’s represented excellence for the better part of the last decade.
Coach Steve Kerr and his staff surely have certain dates on the calendar circled; they know the biggest games where fans will be tuning in to see if this new version of the Warriors can still compete.
As we approach the 2019-2020 season, we rank the top five toughest matchups for the Golden State Warriors within a loaded Western Conference.