Welcome to February Daily Topics at Golden State of Mind. A question (almost) every day this month to give the community a prompt to talk about!
The Golden State Warriors entered the NBA All-Star break with a record of 29-26, which is good for eighth place in the Western Conference standings. And the advanced stats agree with that assessment: the Warriors’ garbage-time adjusted net rating of +1.9 is seventh in the conference.
That, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story. The seven teams ahead of Golden State — and most of the teams behind them — return from the break with their top pieces intact. The same can’t be said for the Dubs. Jimmy Butler III will not suit up for the Warriors again this season, and the team is just 6-11 when he doesn’t play, compared to 23-15 when he does.
On the brighter side, Steph Curry is expected to return from injury when the Warriors get back in action on Thursday night against the Boston Celtics, and the team is hoping to debut Kristaps Porziņģis as well. But, in returning to the glass-half-empty side, Curry has been dealing with a few lingering ailments this year, while Porziņģis has dealt with injuries every year of his career — counting this season, he’s averaged just 47.1 games played over his 11 seasons in the NBA (which includes missing an entire year due to injury).
The Warriors will spend the rest of the year jockeying for position, though they seem unlikely to move much in the standings. It’s almost guaranteed that they won’t fall out of the playoff race: currently they stand a whopping eight games ahead of the first team out, and that team (the Memphis Grizzlies) just hit the reset and rebuild buttons at the deadline. They could fall down a spot or two to one of the lesser play-in positions — they’re just 2.5 games ahead of both the Portland Trail Blazers and LA Clippers.
Moving up seems less likely, but it’s possible, too, if the Dubs get hot or one of the teams ahead of them craters for one reason or another. The first play-in team, the Phoenix Suns, is three games ahead of Golden State. The final teams in the guaranteed playoff spots, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers, are 4.5 games ahead of the Dubs.
So how high can the Warriors rise, and how far can they fall? For me, the answer is boring: I think they’re stuck in the play-in tournament. I could see them rising one spot to have the top seed in the tourney, or falling to the last spot.
What range of outcomes do you see for the Warriors?