Today, just three games short of the mid-way point of the 2014-15 NBA season, the Warriors have the NBA’s best record at 33-6 — a .846 winning percentage. Before Saturday’s game between the Warriors and Rockets, they still had the league’s best record, but in the pre-game tunnel James Harden told his Rockets teammates “They beat us already twice. They ain’t that good man.” A 25-point loss to the Warriors followed.
Harden’s pre-game proclamation about the Warriors came in the tunnel before the game where it was captured by their social media team for Instagram. The blasé attitude towards the Warriors isn’t that big a deal when you consider they’re about to go out and face the Dubs behemoth, and he wanted his teammates thinking they could actually win.
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In Saturday’s aforementioned Rockets-Warriors game, one that featured the two top MVP candidates — Harden and Stephen Curry — the Rockets off-guard shot 4-of-15 from the floor for 13 points, four assist, four rebounds and three turnovers. Curry, on the other hand, shot 9-of-18 from the field for a game-high 27 points along with 11 dimes — including this filthy no-look bounce pass to Harrison Barnes for the dunk.
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Harden was wrong, and is wrong, obviously. The Warriors are very good, perhaps the best team in the NBA, and if it weren’t for the Hawks and their pesky 13-game winning streak, it would be be more definitive.
They’re also third in points per possession (offensive rating) and allow the fewest points per possession (defensive rating). For comparison’s sake, the Hawks — again, one of the better teams in the league playing some beautiful basketball at this point in the season — are ranked at No. 6 and No. 5 in offensive and defensive rating, respectively. The Hawks and Dubs are the only two teams ranked in the top 10 for both.
The Rockets are No. 14 in offensive rating and No. 2 — behind the Warriors — in defensive rating. Right now, we’ve got Curry as our favorite for MVP and Harden as the runner up.
The Warriors might not be that good, at least in Harden’s eyes, but they’re better than anyone else in the Association, which is all that matters.
(H/T Warriors World)
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