The Golden State Warriors are currently the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, and look far more likely to fall rather than rise.
With Stephen Curry potentially out for much of the remainder of the regular season, Sunday’s loss to the Spurs was an indicator that wins are going to be hard to come by in the final few weeks of the season. Combine that with the fact that the Utah Jazz are currently just 2.5 games behind Golden State, a No. 4 seed is very much in play for the Warriors.
On one hand, that seems like a huge disappointment considering the Warriors had the best record in the NBA for nearly half the season. On the other hand, it could actually end up being a good thing according to ESPN’s Marc J. Spears.
“I’m starting to wonder if not being a No. 1 or 2 seed is a good thing,” Spears said on KNBR Tuesday morning.
“I met with Ty Lue yesterday and I said ‘Have you given up hope that Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are going to play this season.’ He just smiled and said ‘I haven’t given up hope.’ I asked ‘If those guys play how good is this team?’ He said, ‘special.’
“So then I watched the Lakers play last night. Starting to play a little better, Anthony Davis is coming back soon, LeBron is playing on a crazy MVP level. If you look at the play-in, it’s quite possible that a healthy Lakers and Clippers teams play the No. 1 and 2 seed. Do you want that action in the first round?”
Perhaps playing against a healthy Lakers or Clippers in the first round wouldn’t be ideal, but would it really be better than either the No. 6 seeded Nuggets or the No. 5 seeded Mavericks, one of the hottest teams in the NBA? The Mavs are 7-3 in their last 10, while the Warriors are 4-6.
“My point is, this play-in stuff is going to make it really, really interesting. It could end up being a detriment to the high seeds, because it could be a situation like 1999 when the Knicks were all beat up and ended up getting healthy before the playoffs and beat Miami.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 – 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.
