In their first year with Kevin Durant, GSW has the 2nd highest NetRtg (Ortg-Drtg) in the history of the league. For those that don't know, NetRtg is the number of points a team outscores their opponents per 100 possessions (I think). Of course, the season is not over, but... 16-17 Warriors: 13.18 (again, so far) 95-96 Bulls: 13.49 (72 wins, NBA champion that year) No other team since 85-86 (the first year that basketball-reference.com has NetRtg calculated) is at 12.0 or higher. For those interested: http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1996_ratings.html button available at top of page to go forward or backward one year at a time. Issues: 1) This is a special time in the history of the NBA to have a team so good. Competing for a championship is basically moot. 2) This is year 1 with Kevin Durant, and they had a shaky start. Look for more consistency in the future. However.... 3) Ultimately, the they'll have to do it without Klay. You can't have 4 max contract guys. Right now such a thing is made possible by the steeply increasing salary cap, and Curry's extremely low salary. That will change soon, look for Curry to sign a $200 type deal. So, someone will have to go, and I'm sticking to my prediction that Klay will be sold off for the highest draft pick they can get. In this escalating economy, draft picks are by far the best value. For those thinking they'll get rid of Draymon, forget it. The Jordan Bulls figured out, painfully I might add, that no matter how good your pretty boys running around shooting the ball and dunking are, you will lose without rebounding and defense. Draymon, for all his faults, holds the team together. p.s. Denny, can't we have a thread title option of "Stats" or something similar? Numerous times I've wanted this. Looking at some stats and having a lively discussion of what they mean represents some of the most compelling conversations on the boards.
I don't think this is necessarily true. At least, I don't think anything forbids it. They'll just have to go deeply into the luxury tax, which means they may have to outlay double what everyone else is spending. It'll also limit their ability to fill out the depth with some restrictions, but not having those restrictions will likely not be worth losing one of their stars. Curry's low salary just made it possible for them to carve out max cap space for Durant, last off-season and this coming off-season, in conjunction with the huge cap spike. Going forward (after this coming off-season), they won't need cap space to sign any of these guys. I think, if the Warriors' ownership is willing to spend a gigantic amount of money, they can keep all four players together. I don't know how crazily they want to spend, though.
Well, yeah, that goes to how crazily are the Warriors willing to spend. The Nets owner, at one point, was willing to spend any amount to get an edge. He gave up paying the harsh repeater tax, but he also had a mediocre team for that. If the Warriors can keep this group together, it could be a dynasty. That may or may not be worth paying a ridiculous amount for.
It depends entirely on Thompson. Some other team is going to offer him a shit-ton of money and the chance to be James Harden. I actually think Golden State can afford to let him go. He's a great shooter and a solid defender but he's the most expendable of all their good players. He's their Horace Grant.
How is this stat control for them playing against one of the weakest iterations of the Western Conference in recent memory? Had the Jordan/Pippen Bulls, or the Kobe/Shaq Lakers, or the Bird Celtics, or the Bad Boy Pistons played against this year's WC I think there's a very good chance their Net Ratings would exceed those of the 94/95 Bulls?
The Bulls' Eastern Conference was pretty weak too. The Magic were the only high level competitor, and I think this year's Spurs are better or, at worst, equivalent. The West would be tougher if the Clippers weren't dealing with all the injuries but, to be fair, the Warriors haven't had any problem beating them healthy or not. I also don't think much of the West that the Kobe/Shaq teams navigated. They had a top competitor for one year in the Sheed/Pippen Blazers (before that team fell apart) and then they had solid but hardly great Kings and Spurs teams. It's rare that any great team has a lot of other great teams to deal with in the conference. The Warriors have actually been the exception, as the last two years had historically strong conferences (at the top last year, and with depth two seasons ago).
I don't care enough to look into it, but I seem to recall that it was unheard of for WC Playoff teams to have fewer than 50 wins until just a few years ago, and that it wasn't just one or two good teams, with a bunch of filler. I've also never really paid attention to the EC, but it seemed liked DET, NYK, IND were quite good during the Jordan years - don't know about that one particular year with the highest Net Rating. But yes, I do recall that, aside from sometimes having the best team, the East rarely had more than a couple good teams...hence calling them the Leastern Conference.
Detroit, New York and Indiana were all decent teams, but hardly great teams. The current Western Conference has decent teams, too. The Pistons were the Grant Hill edition--Hill was tremendous, but the team overall was never a big deal. The Knicks and Indiana were perpetually in the solid-but-not-great mold in the middle- to late-90s. At least, that's my recollection. I also haven't done any research. I don't think the Warriors are dominating a great conference, but I think that tends to be true of all the legendary regular seasons--it's usually a juggernaut blowing their way through a mediocre conference. Last year's Warriors were relatively impressive to me because they actually had incredible competition at the top--the Spurs were also having one of the great seasons ever and the Thunder and Clippers were both very strong teams. If the Warriors hadn't blown the Finals, that probably would have been the best season ever.
