The Golden State Warriors are evidently the dynasty that won't die. It is a dynasty that will age and eventually expire, of course, because they all do, and maybe this will all collapse in a heap of spent tendons and uncontrolled rage. But dynasties can sometimes linger beyond their rational shelf life; San Antonio's fifth championship came seven years after its fourth. And every time the Warriors seem to flatline—the 2024 season, for one example—they rise up and remember themselves. What they remember, specifically, is not really that complicated. When the Warriors defend, they are truly dynastic. It’s not as easy as they make it look, but it is almost as simple as that.
Their 118-112 win over Boston last night was a fresh reinforcement of that essential truth. Yes, many folks will be distracted by Steve Kerr having the carte blanche to yell at Stephen Curry after Curry passed the mythical 3,000 career turnover mark, but all that has been true forever; Curry turnovers, Kerr getting cranky about it, Curry not making a thing out of getting yelled at, and so endlessly on. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
So much about the Warriors is predictable. Even as they work through their slow-motion endgame—a process exemplified by Klay Thompson suiting up in Dallas and gray creeping up Draymond Green's beard—they have stayed resilient because they have remained so profoundly annoying to play. As incandescently great as their offenses have been, this decade's Warriors were actually built less on their ability to do whatever they want to than their ability to keep you from doing what you want.
That was the story in Boston on Wednesday night. The Celtics, acting their look-at-our-rings-you-plebes selves, struggled to get consistent open looks and were asked to defend more consistently than they are normally required to do. It also did not help the Celtics that Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis remain unavailable, which is why this loss is not indicative of something wrong with the champs.
But the Warriors defending the great and the ordinary alike is a sign of something, even this early; the season remains very young, but they are third in offensive rating and second in defense, and neither looks like an accident. Their history of such excellence coincides eerily with their parades; in the four title years, their defensive rating was 1st, 2nd, 11th, and 1st, and the 11th-place defense was also the year they won only 58 games after winning 67, 73 and 67. Conversely, the Warriors have always been awful at ball custodianship. In the 10 years with Kerr and Curry as the defining figures, their turnover percentage has been 17th, 20th, 23rd, 29th, 19th, 20th, 25th, 29th, 30th, and 21st.
The other unifying force is their effective depth. Kerr employed 11 players in the first quarter alone on Wednesday night, and made it clear that he believed his players could wear down Boston's. The Warriors have an astonishing 13 players averaging double digits in minutes and nobody averaging 30. That's a statement of egalitarianism that should give Kerr a tingly feeling; for all his broad-minded public perceptions, he believes most of all in the eternal verities of ball movement, defense, and depth. Everything else is a second helping of dessert. Yes, including the historical outliers Curry and Green.
There are new items on the league's menu, of course, and the best teams all are going through their own distinctive Warriors stages. Oklahoma City feels like the 2013 version that broke through as a force. Cleveland, whom the Warriors play Friday night, is somewhere between 2014 and 2015, the team on the cusp of, well, something. Boston might be the 2019 version, spent without anyone quite knowing it. The Knicks are very 2014, the much hyped false start. On the other end, Utah has looked very 2020 Warriors—that is, awful at everything for any number of reasons. They may even end up being this year's Pistons, which is an even less desirable comparison than the 2020 Warriors one.
But the Warriors themselves? This early excellence could be another vivifying twitch like 2022, the championship nobody saw coming; it might be less dramatic than that, and merely a reminder to everyone that the Warriors are at least two Curry contract years away from the final collapse. But this is the kind of complete team that best reflects Kerr’s side of the equation, the overarching philosophy that Curry, Green, Thompson and an array of smart veteran supporting casts turned into reality. After his Tuesday of misery, Kerr deserved a Wednesday like this.
