“Growing pains.”
It’s a phrase that’s been thrown around abundantly when analyzing how the Golden State Warriors will integrate Kevin Durant into a team that won a league record 73-games last season. Continuity has been one of the defining attributes of the Warriors over the past three years, and part of the reason Golden State has been able to consistently improve is the chemistry they’ve been able to create with the rare benefit of keeping a talented core together for an extended period of time . Even head coach Steve Kerr acknowledged that the addition of Durant may throw a wrench into their early season performances, especially on the defensive end.
Durant is the first major addition to the Warriors’ rotation since the arrival of Andre Iguodala in 2013, and there is validity in the thinking that any major change to a team that looked for a while like the best we’ve ever seen, may have trouble picking up right where they left off.
Based on what the Warriors have done in the preseason, however, it’s looks like we may be overthinking this.
In a small sample size of six preseason games, Durant has integrated even more seamlessly than even the most optimistic expectations could have predicted. Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green have shared the floor for 83 minutes in the preseason. That may be a small number, but in that time they’ve been more efficient, shot better and passed more effectivly than any team in NBA history.
Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the numbers.
As complied by ESPN, the Warriors have averaged 119 points per 100 possessions with their four stars on the floor. According to Basketball Reference, the most efficient offense in league history was Mychal Thompson’s “Showtime” Lakers in 1986-87, who scored 115.6 points per 100 possessions. These Warriors would blow them out of the water.
From a shooting standpoint, things have gone exactly as the rest of the league feared it would when Durant was added to the league’s deadliest three-point team. The Warriors effective field goal percentage, a metric that accounts for the fact that a three pointer is worth more than a two, with the big four on the floor is a jaw-dropping 63.2 percent, which would shatter the previous record set by last season’s Warriors of 56.3 percent.
“There’s only one basketball.”
Thats been another common refrain from those wondering if this much offensive firepower can coexist on the court at the same time. Part of the worry is how seamlessly Durant would be able to integrate into a Warriors offense predicated on ball movement, after playing his entire carer in an Oklahoma City system where he, along with Russell Westbrook, were charged with creating the entire offensive output by themselves. It was not uncommon for Durant to bring the ball up the floor, dribble for 15 seconds and shoot a contested jumper. Often times it was the best chance the Thunder had to score.
That philosophy runs in direct contrast to that of Steve Kerr’s, but that was part of the reason Durant wanted to join the Warriors in the first place, and it’s looking like he’s wasted no time buying in. When sharing the floor with the other three stars, the Warriors have assisted on a whopping 78 percent of their made field goals. Once again, that would be the highest percentage ever in the three-point era, eclipsing the 73 percent mark set by the 2002-03 Utah Jazz.
Even if the Warriors barnstorm the league this year, keeping up these kind of lofty percentages is almost impossible. This is an extremely small sample size that over time is likely to regress. But the idea that Golden State is going to have trouble integrating Durant into their finely tuned machine seems less and less realistic every time he takes the floor.
Really it shouldn’t be all that surprising. The LeBron-era Miami Heat are the most recent precedent for a team with this much talent, and are often used as an example of how a group full of all-stars needs time (sometimes even a full season) to mesh. But the Warriors were a team full of all-star caliber players last year, and the year before. They meshed long ago. They are adding one piece, not reconstructing an entire team, and that piece’s best skill, shooting, just happens to fit perfectly with the players around him.
Most predicted the Warriors would falter at the beginning of last season after winning 67 games and the NBA title in 2015, even though they were bringing back the same team with their best players entering their prime. They were wrong. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s hard to imagine those same critics won’t be wrong again this time around.
