The Golden State Warriors have won their first 13 games of their title defense, the longest winning streak for an NBA team coming off a championship since since the 1997 Bulls the 1958 Celtics. Only the 1994 Rockets (15-0), 1949 Washington Capitols (15-0), 2003 Mavericks (14-0) and aforementioned Celtics (14-0) have started with more season-opening wins. But when discussing these historically dominant Warriors, it’s the ’96 Bulls who are drawing all the comparisons, because that squad has the all-time record with 72 wins in a single season.
Right as this season started, Klay Thompson was asked about making a run at, if not the 72-win record, then at least the 70-win plateau, and didn’t dismiss it out of hand. And now, with just a hair over a seventh of the way into the season and without a single blemish to their name, the mark seems even less crazy now. Kevin Cottrell over at NBA.com ran a bunch of historical comparisons between the Dubs’ start and that of the ’96 Bulls, and they’re all worth a look, mostly because the Warriors win every one of them.
The simplest difference is that the Bulls had already dropped two games at this point. Going deeper, the Warriors have better point differentials, a higher scoring rate out of their star (Curry’s 33.7 points to Michael Jordan’s 29.3 points) and they shoot better overall.
(Ed. Note: This piece was composed before Golden State’s comeback against the Clippers Thursday night pushed them to 13-0, so all stats are from their first 12 wins.)
But comparing these Warriors to those Bulls is like comparing Citizen Kane to Pulp Fiction — they’re from completely different eras and were constructed using a completely different set of rules, not to mention that the existence of the first informed the second. Instead of comparing apples and oranges, let’s simply try to figure out if the Warriors can make it to 70 wins, full stop.
With 12 games out of the way, only 70 remain. To finish with 70 wins, the Warriors will have to at least go 58-12, for an .829 winning percentage. Last year, their 67-15 record was good enough for an .817 winning percentage. That means that even if the Warriors regress to last year’s levels, that still wouldn’t be good enough to make it to 70 wins, let alone 72. So, just how much better are this year’s Warriors than last year’s (with the necessary small sample size caveat)?
Last year, the Warriors finished with a net rating of 11.4, the best in the NBA. Unsurprisingly, they’re easily beating that so far with an astronomical rating of 15.6 this season. These kinds of stats tend to be crazy when you’re undefeated. Many other stats, like assist-to-turnover ratio and true shooting percentage, are pretty close to where they were last year for the Dubs. The fact that they’re not unsustainably hot from the field might be the second-best indicator that they can remain on pace for 70.
The best indicator? Stephen Curry’s evolution. Last year, he put up 16.9 shots a game at a 63.8 True Shooting percentage. This year, he’s attempting 21.6 shots per game at a 68.9 TS percentage. Even if that comes down a little bit, he’s still easily the most efficient perimeter shooter on the team (right now, Andrew Bogut has a TS percentage over 70, which is bound to come down — last year it was around 56). It’s not rocket science, but when your best shooter shoots even more attempts without a drop in efficiency, your whole offense will be better.
Defensively, 12 games is simply too small of a sample size to parse anything out from statistics. They’re largely the same unit, they don’t seem to have lost any focus, so there’s not enough evidence to say that they’re better or worse — the fair assumption is that they’re still really, really good defensively.
But there’s one obvious indicator that the Warriors can’t crack 70 wins: health. The Warriors were one of the healthiest teams in the NBA last season, and their one major injury (David Lee) unlocked the starting five that has steamrolled the league since. Fortune is rarely in one team’s favor to that extent two season in a row. If, say, Draymond Green misses two weeks, the Warriors might still be very good. But it’s asking a ton to think that they’ll play better than .800 ball.
So someone of the betting persuasion would still probably take the Warriors to fall under the 70-win barrier, if only because the Warriors have been very lucky to this point (and no, we’re not talking about avoiding the Clippers and Spurs in the playoffs). But they’re certainly on the right track to a historic season. And until they lose, you know, one game, we’re not here to doubt them.
(Via NBA.com)
