The Warriors Continue To Improve In The Playoffs
In the 2021-2022 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors finished with the 3rd seed in the West before entering the playoffs. This was, in part, due to a lack of parity in the conference: Several teams were missing players for significant parts of the year, which led the Dubs’ regular season coasting tendencies to a top-3 seed.
This year, it’s much of the same coasting, but it’s been plenty more costly.
The Warriors are not much of a regular season team nowadays. They emptied the chamber in the 2015-2016 season to set an NBA record for wins in a season, at 73, before losing in the NBA Finals due to a myriad of injuries and an entirely undeserved suspension. The rhetoric since then has shown the team is far more interested in the final stretch, and their play reflects that.
One thing that was apparent in last year’s playoffs was how the Warriors got better game-to-game. They made adjustments each series, taking advantage of the fact they’d be playing the same team in a best-of-7 and “figuring it out” as they go along. Ultimately, they beat one of the top defenses of all time, and the greatest trio in hoops history of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson remained undefeated in terms of series won when all three of them play every game.
This season, the focus hasn’t been there much for the regular season. Some of the team’s bad habits even appeared in Games 1 and 2 in Sacramento. But once they locked in and figured it out? The contest against the Kings has been plenty different.
The Warriors have now rattled off three straight wins, two at home and one at Golden 1 Center, and look to close out the series tonight on their ground. There’s a saying that a playoff series doesn’t really start until one team gets a win on the road, and that’s going to be true for the rest of this Warriors run: A team that’s been abysmal on the road all season while being one of the best home teams in the league, they don’t have home court advantage in virtually any scenario save a second-round meeting with the Lakers.
That’s not unfamiliar territory, however. While they’ve held homecourt for most of their prior playoff bouts, their Game 5 win marked another record for the vets in Golden State: Playoff series where they’ve won at least one road game. While this team has looked wildly unserious when visiting their opponents, they have a proven track record that they can win when they’re at the other team’s arena. They proved again that they can win in a hostile playoff environment, with playoff newcomers in the Kings having a fanbase foaming at the mouth to hype their squad up, and per usual, we expect them to just keep getting better.
There’s a parallel between this year’s team and last year’s. Both have had their struggles, primarily related to injuries and a lack of cohesion because guys just haven’t gotten the time to play together. As they get older, the regular season becomes less and less important when the experience is there: The Warriors dynasty has proven that.
Before the playoffs last year, the biggest issue was that the Steph-Dray-Klay tandem played one game together during the regular season, something they hadn’t done for two years prior because of Thompson and Curry’s injuries.
This year, it was Andrew Wiggins who was missing significant time fresh off of being arguably the second-best player on the team in the playoffs, and there was a whole lot of rest opportunities for the core three: Thompson was sitting the second half of back-to-backs, Green had some injury concerns with his back given the big-man workload he was taking on, and Curry had to deal with leg and shoulder injuries which forced him to miss time as well.
For one reason or another, the Warriors’ tendency to level up in the playoffs once again has put them in position to look like they can compete with anyone in the conference. A lot of the regular season losses were games thrown away seemingly due to a lack of care, young teams who looked like they just wanted it more. And in the regular season, they honestly probably do want it more.
But when it comes to the postseason, there are few who have the desire to win as much as the Warriors do. Curry, Thompson, and Green have to the mountaintop before; Kevon Looney, Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins, and Gary Payton II were there just a year ago with those same guys; Donte DiVincenzo, Jonathan Kuminga, and Moses Moody have stepped up to help them get back once again. There’s a lot of fight left in this team, and that fight will not only help them to continue to rapidly improve as the playoffs continue, but it could very well lead them to yet another championship.
(Photo credit: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)