There’s eight pretty good teams, four really good teams, two great teams, and one historic team in the West playoffs this year. But will the postseason play out like the regular season? Let’s take a look.
(1) Golden State Warriors vs (8) Houston Rockets
What happens when you set the single-season record for wins in an NBA season, and you’re not even the lead story on SportsCenter that night or the #1 trending topic on Twitter?
This is reality for the Golden State Warriors.
Maybe this team embraces the disrespect, maybe they embrace the pressure; judging by their historic performance this season, both statements would appear to be accurate. This team is definitely flawed, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to matter.
We know he’ll win back-to-back MVPs, which will put him on a super rare list of greats (already including Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Bird, Magic, Jordan, Duncan, Nash and LeBron), but do you want to hear what’s really nuts? Here’s the case for Stephen Curry for Most Improved Player:
• Increased his scoring average by 6.7 points per game (which is A LOT)
• Increased his rebounding average
• Increased his field goal and three-point percentage
• Broke his own record (again) for most three-point field goals in a season by a staggering 116 threes! That would be like a baseball player breaking Joe DiMaggio’s 75-year-old 56-game hit streak record, and extending it to 72 games!
• Helped his team increase their win total by six games, while resulted in a NBA record for wins as his coach missed half the season
• Legitimately Increased his range to what, 50 feet? Ask yourself: if Steph shoots a 50 footer at the end of a quarter, don’t you expect it to go in at this point?
Sidebar: That’s just from this year alone. But check this out…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXu73iZzBM
Sidebar cont.: So what we have here are three different videos. Yes, there were some retreads, but three videos were necessary to capture all of the loooooooonng distance shots by the alien. He does this now with such regularity, that there’s no one video that contains all his half court shots from this year, and over his career. He’s even made one within the last two weeks that didn’t count that weren’t captured in this collection.
Looking over the rest of the league, it’s a pretty compelling Most Improved case. All that, and we haven’t even gotten to Klay Thompson (who made the second most three’s in the NBA on the season by a wide margin), Draymond Green, a bench that includes Shaun Livingston (aka the perfect role player) and numerous other areas of Golden State dominance.
The irony here is we’re looking at a Western Conference Finals rematch in round one, as the Dubs will take on the least likeable team in the NBA: the Houston Rockets.
The Rockets are led by James Harden and Dwight Howard, two players that don’t have a drop of leadership in their body. Harden (who reportedly came into the season out of shape) insults the game of basketball with his lackluster defensive effort on a nightly basis but gets more respect from the refs than anyone, while Howard will one day go down as the most despised Hall of Famer in NBA history. The Rockets have a knack for not trying for three quarters of every game. The Rockets got their coach fired for no good reason. The Rockets screwed up last year’s playoffs because they were supposed to lose to the Clippers, and that would’ve yielded a much more entertaining West Finals. The Rockets have annoying players like Patrick Beverley, Josh Smith and Michael Beasley. And the Rockets have a GM that’s arrogant in spite of the fact he’s never accomplished anything.
“Least likeable” may not be strong enough of a term. Let’s go with “hate”.
I hate these Houston Rockets.
Warriors in four.
Anthony’s pick: Warriors in four
Kenneth’s pick: Warriors in four
(4) Los Angeles Clippers vs (5) Portland Trail Blazers
Curry has no shot at winning Most Improved player, because Portland’s CJ McCollum has that award sewn up. McCollum quickly had Oregonians forgetting about LaMarcus Whatshisface as out of nowhere he dropped nearly 21 points a night while shooting .448 from the field and over .410 from three. Pairing him with Damian Lillard gave the Blazers one of the three most lethal backcourts in the game.
I wrote this about Damian Lillard back in October…
Perhaps it was the commercials that siphoned away his focus, or maybe he was burdened by expectations, or perhaps LA’s free agency sword hung above him and robbed him of the ability to play freely. Regardless, Lillard was not the same player he had been in 2014 (nevermind the numbers, which appear mostly on par with his first two seasons).
At this point, I’d like to take credit for the monster 2015-16 season Dame has put together. His scoring (25.1 a night, sixth in the league), assists, rebounds and three-point shooting all outpaced his career averages. We saw what he did to Steph and the Warriors, and if you didn’t, HHSR replayed the destruction when we talked about why Damian Lillard had kicked it into overdrive.
The frontcourt matchup on this series is pretty one-sided. The only question is if the Clippers (who won 10 of 12 to finish the season) can get Blake Griffin back on track. It was just two years ago that Blake finished third in MVP voting. He’s been out for so long that people forget this Clippers team, which managed to win 53 games with Blake appearing in only 35 contests, has this All-NBA player coming back into their lineup. To make matters worse for Portland, they really don’t have an advantage in the backcourt, because JJ Redick and Chris Paul together has been at least as dominant as Portland’s duo, if not more so.
The CP3 vs Dame matchup has the potential to be a sublime one, if we’re lucky. But on the low, Chris Paul has kind of owned Damian Lillard. And just getting to the five seed means Portland has already massively overachieved this season.
Clippers in five.
Anthony’s pick: Clippers in six
Kenneth’s pick: Clippers in six
(3) Oklahoma City Thunder vs (6) Dallas Mavericks
While we’re on the subject of teams we incorrectly had missing the playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks are back again. The combo of Dirk and Rick Carlisle cannot be disrespected like that. Lesson learned.But what happens when they run up against a clearly more talented team? You can’t get fat on the Sixers and Lakers in the playoffs; now the Mavericks are living on borrowed time.
The Chandler Parsons signing never quite materialized into what Cuban & Co. expected. The shooting numbers are solid (aside from his confounding .684 free throw percentage), but his scoring average and games played have dipped for the second straight season. The Zaza Pachulia falloff (from the time he almost miraculously made the All-Star team) has been perplexing, but not as perplexing as the stable of has-been point guards the Mavs have trotted out in an effort to compensate for the fact that they don’t have an elite lead guard.
Deron Williams, Devin Harris, Ray Felton and JJ Barea each range from aight to decent, but the expectation is for Russell Westbrook to take one look at this group and ravage like a savage. Russ, and Kevin Durant are obviously two of the five(?) best players in the league. OKC has many shortcomings, and Billy Donovan hasn’t done much to distinguish himself from Scott Brooks in his first season as coach, but the talent disparity here ought to make for a quick series.
Like the Cavs in the East though, the Thunder appear to be a super-talented, yet mentally fragile bunch. They need to make short work of Dallas, because if the Mavs gain a little confidence (like, from the Thunder blowing yet ANOTHER double-digit lead, an unenviable category in which this team led the league), OKC will need to expend way more energy putting this team away than they should.
Thunder in five.
Anthony’s pick: Thunder in six
Kenneth’s pick: Thunder in five
(2) San Antonio Spurs vs (7) Memphis Grizzlies
Remember this?
Ignoring the foreign language thing, this was the Grizzlies (an eight seed) knocking the Spurs (a one seed) out of the playoffs and seemingly putting a hollow-point in the Spurs’ Duncan/Parker/Ginobili era. Felt like a changing of the guard, right? That was FIVE years ago. What’s happened since then?
Two months later, the Spurs dealt George Hill for the 15th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft and selected a physically gifted/raw prospect named Kawhi Leonard. That single phone call irreparably altered the NBA for the next half decade. In the years following, the Spurs would make two more Finals trips, winning one and literally coming within five seconds of winning the other. San Antonio would continue to monitor the workload of their trio of future Hall of Famers, while sliding the keys over to Kawhi and free agent signee LaMarcus Aldridge. Meanwhile, the Grizzlies battled through several injuries as they continued to run the same core of Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and Tony Allen back year after year. The only substantial change they made (aside from selling the team to a thirty-something-year-old billionaire, Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning) was firing the head coach.
In that five year stretch, the Grizzle only made it out the second round once, which was madd fluky because they eliminated a Thunder team in the conference semis that was minus Russell Westbrook. Now, Gasol AND Conley are both out for the season following foot surgeries, Z-Bo is three months shy of his 35th birthday, and although Kawhi Leonard is walking through that door, he’ll be suiting up for the other team.
If the season were a few weeks longer, Memphis probably doesn’t even make the playoffs. They’re so banged up, they’re signing guys under hardship rule. Meanwhile the Spurs are still Spur-ing. It never seemed possible that a team could go 67-15 (and a record tying 40-1 at home) and still fly under the radar. But, these are the Spurs— the entire organization has a doctorate in clandestinity. Though they already got their revenge for 2011 via a sweep in 2013, they’ll make quick & quiet work of the Grizzlies in 2016.
Spurs in four.
Anthony’s pick: Spurs in four
Kenneth’s pick: Spurs in four
Prior to the season, ya boy had the Spurs coming out the West. While I hate doing this, I’ve had to revisit this preseason prediction. The Warriors almost seemed to be disrespected on the latest HHSR Podcast, and while no part of me would be shocked if the Spurs dropped the Warriors, who again, are a flawed team (most notably their defense has fallen off considerably), it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Spurs, or anyone else in the West, derails this team.
The Warriors won an NBA record 73 games. They won a record 54 straight home games dating back to last season. They had a point differential 10.8 (highest the NBA has seen in 44 years), and they’re the defending champions. If not for Golden State, the Spurs would’ve been viewed as one of the best teams in NBA history, which they very well might be. But will Popovich slow the game down enough? Can they crush Golden State on the boards? Will they capitalize on the Dubs’ careless turnovers? Can they hound Curry and Thompson for an entire series? Can they win a Game 7 in Oakland?
In the four games they played, the Warriors defeated the Spurs three times by an average of 15.7 points per game. The Spurs beat the Warriors once by eight, however it was a three point game with less than two minutes left, and The Splash Bros. combined for 11-38 shooting, which won’t happen four times. Only five other teams won 50+ games this year; the Warriors went an astounding 14-1 against those teams.
Basically, there’s no empirical data that suggests the Warriors won’t at least come out of the West, so the pick has to change (I don’t like it any more than you do). Still, the Spurs are more than capable of beating them (and I certainly expect the Clips to give them a series), but seriously, where’s the evidence that says they’re going to lose? Nothing is a lock, especially with the Warriors leaky defense. But if you’re asking me to project how the playoffs unfold, I can’t fathom a more likely scenario than Golden State defending their title in the Finals.
I’m about to take a shower now.
To see our Eastern Conference Round 1 picks, click here.