For as much sheer talent that is on the Golden State Warriors’ roster, and considering the basketball intelligentsia is predicting nothing short of a title, there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding this team.
How much effort will they put into the regular season? How much will head coach Steve Kerr limit his stars’ minutes as the wins pile up? Will they avenge their historic NBA Finals collapse?
And most importantly, will Patrick McCaw sing “Candy Rain” again before the season is over?
We can only assume so much, but there are educated guesses, fact-based analyses and wildly irresponsible assumptions we can make about how it’ll all play out.
So let’s do all of the above with the Warriors' 2016-17 season.
Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry will both finish top-three in scoring
Between the minutes he plays and the effect new head coach Mike D’Antoni will have on Houston’s output, James Harden should once again lead the league in points, but the scoring title is awarded based on points per game. Curry and Durant will get a game off here and there—especially toward the end of the season—but based on the sheer number of threes the Warriors will shoot, plus an expected uptick in efficiency over last season, don’t be surprised to see either Curry or Durant sneak to the top of the PPG leaderboard.
Durant will make the NBA’s All-Defensive Team
Oklahoma City Thunder opponents scored 3.2 more points per 100 possessions last season with Durant off the floor, so his defensive impact is clearly considerable. And yet, despite his mammoth 7’5” wingspan, Durant has never made the All-Defensive first or second team in his nine seasons.
Now that he’s reunited with defensive guru Ron Adams, who coached Durant during his formative second and third seasons in the league, expect to see him more focused and energized on that underrated part of his game.
JaVale McGee will play in more than 41 games
McGee has been a welcome presence in training camp and has more than a good shot to make the roster. McGee, who doesn’t turn 29 until January, can be a legit rim-protecting backup center in Kerr’s system. He hasn’t played more than half a season since 2012-13, when he and the 57-win Denver Nuggets were upset by (yep) the Warriors in the first round, but Golden State is giving McGee every chance to make the team.
If healthy, he could make a real defensive impact during the regular season. What Marreese Speights was to the Warriors last season, that’s McGee’s ceiling this time around.
Draymond Green will serve a multigame suspension for…something
He’s the emotional firebrand that keeps this team focused and energized. Sometimes, that fervor goes a smidge too far, and there will likely be a time this season where that comes to pass in a public way. (Paul Pierce, you might be up first.)
Kevon Looney will play more than 750 minutes
Steve Kerr lost a lot of second-unit depth. It’s going to be a challenge figuring out how to best fill the void left by the bygone Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli.
Looney is finally healthy after playing only 21 minutes across five games last season, and he doesn’t turn 21 until February. The Warriors need as much size as they can muster, and Looney (across swaths of this preseason) has played larger than his listed 6’9” and 220 pounds.
Klay Thompson will average more than 22 points per game but fewer than three rebounds and three assists
Thompson has been scoring in bunches and not compiling a whole lot of other counting stats this preseason. He’s publicly stated that he wants to average five boards a game, which would be a career high, but if Thompson simply maintained last season’s scoring average and then saw a dip in rebounds—he averaged 3.8 last season—he'd join a select group that hasn’t added a member since Houston’s Kevin Martin in 2010-11.
Patrick McCaw will finish top-five in Rookie of the Year voting
Do you know where Curry finished in ROY voting after his first season? Second to Tyreke Evans, who scored more points. My point is the Rookie of the Year Award can be dumb, but McCaw figures to play enough minutes to garner some deserved recognition come mid-May.
(Who finished fifth in voting last season? Jahlil Okafor, so, yeah, this is doable.)
Curry will rest more than 20 fourth quarters during the regular season
Curry sat out 17 fourth quarters in 2014-15. That went up to 19 last season. After seeing what happened during the playoffs with back-to-back seven-game series in May and June, if 19 is the over/under this season, give me the over. For Kerr, all that matters is the West's No. 1 seed and a healthy Curry come the playoffs.
The Warriors will lead the league in dunks
Golden State was fourth last season with 402, behind Houston (442), the Milwaukee Bucks (446) and Oklahoma City (447). Since then, the Rockets have lost Dwight Howard and Durant decamped for the Warriors. Good enough for me.
The restocked 'death lineup' will be even deadlier
The supersized version of the small-ball lineup Kerr employs as his not-so-secret weapon—Curry, Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes and Green—finished with a net rating of 44.4 last season across 172 minutes of regular-season play. According to Bleacher Report's Dan Favale, that's the best of any five-man set since at least 2000-01. It was also Kerr’s third-most used lineup, which now sees Durant slotted into Barnes’ spot.
If Golden State is winning with ease, this quintet will likely see fewer minutes than last season’s iteration, but you can expect the differential to shoot up from ridiculous levels to something more ludicrous. A net rating of 48 or 49 across 150 minutes? Dare to dream.
The Warriors will finish bottom-five in offensive rebounding
There’s a physicality that Golden State lost when Andrew Bogut, Festus Ezeli and other bigs left this past offseason. The Dubs also figure to shoot more efficiently with Durant spacing the floor; that should all translate to far fewer O-rebounds as time goes on. They finished 21st in the NBA last season. Let’s see how low they can go.
The Warriors will average more than 116 points per game
This might seem like a safe call when you consider Golden State scored 114.9 points per game last season and have added Durant. But history is against them: No NBA team has reached that mark over a full season since the 1991-92 Warriors, who had just broken up Run-TMC by trading Mitch Richmond to Sacramento and then proceeded to score a whopping 118.7 points per game.
The Warriors will win 69 games in the regular season
No team has ever won 67 or more games in three straight seasons, which means Golden State would be the first. It’s tempting to bump this up a tick and say the Warriors will have back-to-back 70-win seasons, but that’s just silliness. [Whispers] right?
Curry will win the Most Valuable Player Award for a third straight season
James Harden and Russell Westbrook will put up incredible stats, but their teams will fight just to make the playoffs. LeBron James will also put up incredible stats, but between age (he turns 32 in December) and the premium the Cavs put on regular-season rest, he may play fewer than 70 games. And I find this idea that Curry and Durant are going to split the vote too comfortable of a narrative.
Curry is the point guard, the undisputed leader of this team and the one who makes it all go. If the Warriors win a lot of games and Curry's numbers are even close to what they were last season—say, 25 points, eight or nine assists, two steals per night, plus 300 threes to boot—then Curry rocks the vote.
The Warriors will defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games (First Round)
Just missing out on a potential first-round revenge tour? Harrison Barnes, Andrew Bogut and the Dallas Mavericks. They’ll get the No. 9 seed.
And just as Anthony Davis was dominant despite the Warriors’ first-round sweep of New Orleans in 2015, so too will Karl-Anthony Towns exert his will on Golden State in this, his first taste of playoff ball.
Then they’ll beat the Portland Trail Blazers in five games (Western Semis)
Just like last season, except this time with lots more Curry.
Then they'll topple the Los Angeles Clippers in five games (Western Finals)
It's crazy to think that the Clippers still have not advanced to a Western Conference Finals in their history. This year will be the first. Unfortunately, it’ll be a shortened time as the Warriors avenge their 2014 first-round exit at the hands of the Clips.
The Warriors will once again face the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals
No two teams have ever met in three straight Finals, but this is a history-making season! Gotta make with the history.
The Warriors will win the title in five games
Last season, every Golden State playoff series ended at Oracle Arena. That last one? It didn’t go as well as the previous three.
Not this time. There'll be no 3-1 Finals lead blown in historic fashion. Stephen Curry will have his revenge on Cleveland.
Draymond Green will win Finals MVP
Because the media just loves a good redemption narrative.
Loose Balls
Survey Says
NBA.com’s annual survey of all 30 NBA general managers shows the Warriors as the overwhelming favorite to win the title, with 69 percent responding in the affirmative and 31 percent picking the Cleveland Cavaliers to repeat. For Golden State, that’s a marked improvement over the 17.9 percent they garnered last fall to repeat.
(To the GMs’ credit, 53.6 percent picked the Cavs then to win it all. Only 3.8 percent picked them two seasons ago when the Warriors won the championship.)
Curry was also voted best point guard, with 63.3 percent of the vote, while Kevin Durant was voted second-best small forward (to LeBron James, natch). Draymond Green was voted third-best power forward and sixth-best center. The selection of Patrick McCaw with the 38th pick was also voted the third-best steal of the 2016 draft.
And when asked who they would want taking the last shot of a game, Curry was the easy pick (75.9 percent). LeBron James was second with 10.3 percent.
Shockin’ McCaw
The Patrick McCaw hype train is making a beeline for the regular season with no signs of slowing down. He nailed a late three to tie the Nuggets at the end of regulation and then flicked in a buzzer-beating floater during overtime to secure the win. McCaw finished with 18 points and six boards. He followed that against the Los Angeles Lakers with 13 points, four boards and five assists in a game-high 34 minutes.
Kerr has been playing McCaw alongside fellow 2-guard Ian Clark for significant portions of the preseason. A second-unit lineup with McCaw, Clark, Iguodala, Durant and either David West or Looney would be a dynamic minutes-eater.
Looney’s Tune
It was a frustrating rookie season for Looney in 2015-16, but given his first stretch of extended rotation minutes this preseason, he’s been more than Kerr could’ve hoped for.
Looney had 11 points and nine boards in 13 minutes off the bench in Denver. Starting against the Lakers the next night, he played just over 23 minutes (second-most on the team) and pumped in seven points, nine boards and four assists. He committed just one turnover across both games. And against the Lakers in San Diego, Looney chipped in another 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting in 15 minutes.
There’s been a lot of talk during training camp surrounding West and McGee, but Looney will see serious court time this season as a backup big. For a player with two hip surgeries in the past 14 months and hasn't yet turned 21, that would be a welcome development.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com.
Erik Malinowski is the Golden State Warriors lead writer for B/R. You can follow him on Twitter at @erikmal.