Facts. It was last year when I asked myself "Why the hell do I even hate the Warriors and Curry?" And since then, my hate bubble popped and I was liking Steph more and more. Although I was only passively keeping up with the season, I knew that it was he and Jokic who were the top 2 in the MVP race and I was legit rooting for Steph. Remove him from the team and the Warriors would not have still been in playoff contention as they had when facing Memphis at the end.
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Was also watching Holey Moley which was adding to my likeness for Steph lmao. If the GS wins the chip this year and Curry finally gets an FMVP, I think you can make a serious argument that he's the greatest PG ever.
Would you guys say that with Klay and Wiseman returning, this team could be the best Warriors team we've seen? Even better than 73-9?
I definitely think the Warriors will be contenders this season (Semifinals up to the NBA Finals) especially since they barely missed the playoffs after losing both play-ins last season from a few costly plays. Compared to the 2015-16 season (which they should have won if not for Harrison Barnes' massive 4 game brickfest even with Draymond Green's suspension in the Finals), they're definitely a bit worse in terms of depth since they still at the end of the day rely on Curry as the engine of the team and struggle when he can't get it going. They're probably on a 55-60 win pace at this point but they can exceed even that expectation if Wiggins continues to play hard on both ends of the floor.
If and when Klay Thompson and James Wiseman return (probably will be playing off the bench for 20 MPG), there still needs to be a lot of figuring out in terms of minutes/touches distribution by Steve Kerr since guys like Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins will have to sacrifice shots for Klay Thompson to be a integral part of their offense which will definitely take a few months for everyone on the team (even Curry) to adjust.
While the vision, rebounding and defense is still there, Draymond back in 2015-16 was actually a decent shooter from 3PT (38.8%) but has fallen off massively at this point in time to the point that teams will force him to shoot at the end of regulation and struggles to hit any sort of shot reliably (as seen in his failed floater attempt to potentially clinch a playoff berth -
)
but as long as he's alongside Curry and Thompson, this shouldn't be a massive issue anymore.
And if they had made it last season over the Grizzlies, they definitely would have given the 1 Seed Jazz a lot of trouble perhaps to 6 or 7 games, especially since the Jazz despite winning 4 - 1 struggled to guard Ja Morant all series long who put up 30+ PPG in his first ever playoff appearance with Memphis in 5 games (which they only really lost since they didn't have the firepower to outscore Utah for 48 minutes); Curry in place of Morant that season would have easily averaged 40+ PPG against them since the Jazz's man to man defense was really bad the entire playoffs (despite being on paper a good defensive team in terms of team defense centered around Rudy Gobert). And realistically they could have easily eliminated Utah and play the Clippers in the SemiFinals and perhaps win that since Curry would have went into the playoffs guns blazing
also I never hated the Warriors and rooted for them during the Finals above anyone else in the West besides San Antonio in 2012-13 and 2013-14 (especially against LeBron and the Cavs, or any LeBron led team really) since they built their team organically and didn't try to force a superteam (at least until the 2016-17 season) after a rebuilding transition following the years of the We Believe Warriors back in 2006-07. Hopefully they can make a serious run this season after missing the playoffs the last 2 seasons and change
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sheeeeesh
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/qyo8y1
