NBA back! To prepare for a new season, we’re breaking down one team per day, each day, until tipoff of the 2017-18 season.
Team: Golden State Warriors
Coach: Steve Kerr (fourth year)
Last Season: 67-15 (first in the Western Conference)
Notable Additions: Nick Young (free agency), Jordan Bell (draft-night trade; eff these guys)
Notable Subtractions: Any hint of doubt that the team will stomp the league into tomato paste on the way to its third title in four years
Vegas Over/Under: 67.5
Best-Case Scenario: The Warriors do what they were built to do: win it all.
Let’s get realer than real—the Warriors are going to win the title. I can’t see the future, but I’m just saying. The team lost a grand total of 39 regular-season games over the past three seasons. Eighteen teams lost 40 or more games just last season. The Warriors are historically dominant, relatively young, and not going anywhere anytime soon.
They have three of the best 10 players on earth—Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green, all under 30 years old—plus Klay Thompson, prophet of Klaytheism. Steve Kerr is the best non-Popovich coach in the league (not that it matters; he sat out most of the 2015-16 season and numerous 2016-17 playoff games, including several during the Finals, and the Warriors never missed a beat). Last season the team posted a 115.6 offensive rating (tied for the best mark in history) and a 104 defensive rating (second best in the league) and won the title without breaking a sweat. This offseason, in what may be a replay of the Draymond Green draft, they added 6-foot-9 all-everything dynamo Jordan Bell out of Oregon after he slipped to the 38th overall pick. Oh, and they signed Nick Young. I mean, why not.
It will be an immense surprise if this team (barring injury) does not win the title.
Worst-Case Scenario: The owners side with President Donald Trump in the debate about free speech and protests during the national anthem. Durant’s penchant for using dummy social media accounts to defend himself spirals into his offline persona. The Yellowstone Caldera supervolcano erupts without warning. The warming of the planet continues unchecked. Millions of American citizens left to fend for themselves in the wake of a natural disaster. Massive wildfires raging across California. Nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. Rising tides of nationalism and white supremacy at home and across the globe. Ethnic cleansing. A hurricane hitting Ireland for the first time in recorded history. The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The four horsemen of the apocalypse riding darkly across the land with sword and scythe and blood and fire. Basically everything that’s already happening because—once again—barring injury or some unforeseen catastrophic disaster, the Warriors will win the title again.
I don’t know, maybe adding the chaotic chemistry of Nick “Swaggy P” Young causes the wheels to fall off? That’s the best I can do.
TL;DR: This piece is supposed to be 600-800 words, but come on. The Warriors’ dominance continues.
