Welcome to Hoop Dreams, a season preview unlike any other you’ll read before the 2016-17 season tips off. The premise is simple. We’ll be providing 30 of these fictional forays because it simply stinks that only one team can win the title each year. The list of contending teams seems to shrink with each campaign, and we wanted to provide something to those fans who only get to dream of Larry O’Brien during the offseason. Before October, every team can win the NBA title. Don’t believe us? Then keep reading. – Ed
Every NBA team plays 82 games. Exactly what should happen happens. The Playoffs occur. Exactly what should happen happens. The Warriors win the Finals because they’re more talented than everyone.
Okay! Phew. Got a lot of hard work in today, but I think that answers the question “How could the Warriors win the title?” Lemme just make sure I hit the word count…
*sees I’m about 700 words short of where I need to be*
Well, crap.
Alright, so, let’s talk about the Warriors. Let’s talk about how we have never seen a collection of talent like this on the same basketball team outside of All-Star Games and the Olympics. This is a team that has been built around a bunch of dudes who got so, so close to the Finals last year and are hungry and motivated by that.
Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, etc., all those guys got there each of the last two years. They experienced triumph once and agony once. They know exactly what it feels like to get to the top of the mountain with one another and they know exactly what it feels like to implode in historic fashion.
This makes the team dangerous. The only thing scarier than a group of talented dudes is a group of talented and motivated dudes. Last year, the Warriors had the motivation of “let’s defend our title.” This year, it’s “we got embarrassed last year, let’s never let that happen again.” You can say that A is the more powerful motivating tool. I will disagree with you. Whatever. We both agree that the core of last year’s Dubs team is back and hungry to put the ghosts of last year behind them. This is not a surprise.
What is a surprise is they have a second motivating factor on their roster: they have a few dudes who want to win their first rings because they’ve never done that before. Dudes like Zaza Pachulia and JaVale McGee and Anderson Varejao have never been on title-winning teams before. They will buy into anything Steve Kerr is selling because, well, what other choice do they have? We’ve seen this bring out the best in guys in the past – Eddie House and James Posey for the 2008 Boston Celtics, Shane Battier on the 2011-12 and 2012-13 Miami Heat, guys like that.
And then there’s Kevin Durant.
I won’t sit here and try to write any flowy nonsense, I’ll get straight to the point instead: this is the biggest move in free agency ever, save for maybe LeBron James going to the Heat. One of the three-best players on earth joined a team that won 73 games last year and was one win away from winning a championship. This is huge. Even if Durant wasn’t on the Warriors, Golden State would be the favorite to win it all.
Instead, he joined forces with them and created a version of Basketball Voltron the likes of which we’ve never seen. They are the clear favorites to win the title and while we’re going to do these previews for every other team, no squad has a more defined path to a championship than Golden State.
For how talented this team is, it will probably have some growing pains. That’s fine. There’s one basketball, two dudes who average 30 a game (Curry and Durant), one dude who averages 22 a game (Thompson), and one dude who can put up a triple-double on any given night (Green).
This would be a problem for most teams, but the Warriors seem to have figured out the whole “here’s how we keep everyone happy” thing, plus it’s probably safe to assume that Durant knew what he was getting into when he signed with the Dubs and is more than willing to sacrifice his own numbers to win a title. If not, oh well, Kevin Durant is going to hoist up a bunch of shots. Worse things have happened.
But once this team completely jells, we’re talking about the best collection of talent ever assembled on one NBA team. Sure, there’s a good chance we’re not seeing a 73-9 season (or better) again, but that’s because this team learned the most basic fact of basketball last year: the regular season doesn’t mean anything if you can’t get a ring.
So yeah, there will be a 2016-17 season in the NBA. The Warriors will, in all likelihood, be more Heatles and less Kobe/Dwight/Nash Lakers and mow through everyone. Then the postseason will come, they will take care of every single team they go up against, and when we get Dubs-Cavs III in June, the fact that Cleveland has LeBron will be negated by the fact that the Warriors will have their team from last year, just with less Andrew Bogut/Harrison Barnes and more Kevin Freaking Durant.
Really, if the core question is “How could the Warriors win a title?” We shouldn’t need hundreds of words to answer it. We just need nine: the season plays out exactly the way it should.
