Last week Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was asked to explain why his team had been stumbling out of the blocks in games recently. It’s a slightly pedantic thing to ask when the defending champs are on pace for around 63 wins, which’d be their worst wins total in four years but still tied for the 24th most ever in history - and that’s supposing they don’t go on a little win streak and end up with 66 or 67.

They might not be quite at the level of the last couple seasons but only because they’ve got nothing to prove. Winning comes easy when you’ve got that much talent. And you can start as slow as you want in games when you can do what the Warriors do in third quarters. Steve Kerr’s response, by the way? This is what he had to offer the conversation: “Just don’t have enough talent in the starting lineup, I think. I’d like to add a fifth All-Star to the starting lineup to help us get off to quicker starts.”

Good one, bro. For the second straight season the Warriors had four all-stars named from within their squad, a feat never previously repeated. While the Cleveland Cavaliers were blowing up their roster, the Dubs stayed put. Not much you can add to a team that already had Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson… although you can expect them to sign a joker or two from the buyout pool in a few weeks. There are those that’d play for next to nothing to win a ring alongside these guys.

Having said that, it’s becoming a real gear-grinder this Warriors fatalism that’s seeping through the rest of the NBA. This is a competition, not a simulation. If everyone truly believes that the Warriors are unbeatable then why are they still playing? Same goes for the idea that if you’re not playing for a title then you should be tearing it all up and starting over. What’s wrong with winning 53 games and losing in the conference semis? Unless you’re the Clippers or Cavs (for different reasons), that’s gonna appease most fans.

Plus the fact remains that the Warriors are one injury, maybe two, from being in a proper pickle. A Curry ankle reoccurrence or another Durant foot thing would throw it all into funky territory but even without either of those happenings, the Dubs know there are a few teams out there that can scare them. They’re not as far ahead of everyone else as it is often portrayed.

There’s a big difference between winning once and winning four times over a seven game series though, so let’s take a peek at some of the teams that might fancy themselves to topple the favourites. Starting with the Western Conference and then switching over to the East in Part 2 (in the knowledge that Eastern teams can only face the Warriors in the Finals).

HOUSTON ROCKETS

Look, a lot of NBA stats are pretty selective. Most points by a left-handed seven-footer with at least three assists and five rebounds with two steals on a Wednesday night in November ever! Yeah, congrats. Great record. Usually those things are only fun ways of pleasing fans, finding positives and celebrating notable performances by ‘legitimising’ them statistically. But then there are those stats which grow far beyond the pedantically optimistic. Like this one, for example:

When James Harden, Chris Paul and Clint Capela all start, the Houston Rockets have a 27-1 winning record.

That, quite frankly, is terrifying. And they aren’t too much worse when one of them misses time either. A 14-game win streak earlier in the season is close to being matched by their current 10-game win streak and right now James Harden has no competition for the MVP trophy that he probably feels has been robbed from him twice in a row now. It shan’t be a third.

Harden’s leading the best offence in the NBA, possibly even the best team. First in offensive rating, first in made threes, second in made free throws, (thirtieth in attempted twos), third in points per game, fourth in steals, second in eFG%, second in defensive rebound percentage and with the best record in the NBA to boot. Harden himself is averaging 31.3p/9.0a/5.1r while Chris Paul and Eric Gordon are also scoring 18-20 points each per night. Clint Capela’s rebounding like a beast.

The question is whether this threes and layups approach, which leans heavy towards the threes, is sustainable in the playoffs against the best defenders. Especially since guys like Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon may bring some decent scoring but they also bring some very mediocre defence and that won’t stick when the Warriors are moving the ball as well as they do, exploiting these weaknesses. Chris Paul and James Harden have each had their struggles in the playoffs before, if you recall.

To be fair to the Rockets, they’ve improved a lot on defence since last season. Harden’s locked in and Chris Paul is a famously brilliant defensive guard. Plus they have swift, rangy guys like Trevor Ariza, Luc Mbah a Moute and PJ Tucker who’d be able to at least hang about with Durant and Thompson. Let’s not lie and say the Rockets haven’t built this team specifically with the intention of tackling the Warriors either. They hate the Warriors. They want nothing more than to put them in a shallow grave. They’ve also beaten them twice already in this campaign.

Ask Clint Capela what he thinks about the Warriors. Ask Daryl Morey. Everyone wants to beat the Warriors but you get the feeling that only the Rockets (and maybe Russell Westbrook) have made it their sole life’s goal. They’re the biggest threat across either conference.

SAN ANTONIO SPURS

This one is all about reputation. You cannot discount the Spurs because the Spurs are the Spurs, pretty much. Famous for turning fringe players into playoff heroes, famous for finding a way. Thing is, they didn’t do too well last season when they met the Dubs in the Conference Finals. That series was marred by an incident in the third quarter of the first game when Zaza Pachulia stepped under Kawhi Leonard’s jump shot, causing Kawhi to roll an ankle and miss the rest of the playoffs. He had 26 points already with more than a quarter to play and Golden State went on to win it in a sweep.

Kawhi Leonard isn’t much healthier this season. Missed the first 27 games with a quad thing, came back and did a shoulder and is currently out indefinitely with a recurrence of his ‘right quadriceps tendinopathy’. The Spurs cannot beat GSW without their premier player and arguably the best one-on-one defender in the league. He needs to be healthy, that’s step one.

Of course, KL can do his best on KD but that still leaves Steph Curry and Klay Thompson to bang triples so this would take some Gregg Popovich match-up magic. Going into the All Star break, they’re at a smooth 35-24 and sliding under the radar towards a third or fourth seed in the West… but they’re just 1-5 in February including a 17-point defeat in Golden State. They also lost by 20 at home to GSW back in early November.

Nothing so far to suggest they can do them… but both games were without Kawhi Leonard. And having gone from a place where the franchise was shopping him around for trade offers, LaMarcus Aldridge has stepped up with a big season. Shooting at 50.1% from the field for 22.4 points and 8.4 rebounds. Easily his best form since he was in Portland. There’s an option. People have said it before that one way to take the Warriors out of their rhythm is to slow the game down, pound it inside. Tire our Draymond Green against a bigger opponent or punish Zaza Pachulia and the bench bigs. It’s not working unless they can also get the best out of shooters like Patty Mills, Danny Green and Bryn Forbes but it’s something to plan for, at least.

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

Dunno if you realised this but there’s a little bad blood between the Warriors and Thunder. Apparently Kevin Durant jumped ship to the Dubs straight after OKC almost beat them in the playoffs, going down in game seven, or something like that. Since then it’s been cupcakes, adopt-a-cat and official photographer vests, it’s been an alley-oop at the All Star game and it’s been heated words on the court. It’s also mostly been comfortable Warriors wins.

See that was the thing about Durant leaving. With him (and also Serge Ibaka), the Thunder had taken GSW almost all the way. They resisted the urge to go small against them and get run off the court by doing what very few other teams are equipped to do: the exact opposite. Kevin Durant is basically six foot twelve so having him at small forward with Ibaka and Steven Adams meant the Thunder could go hundies at the boards, they could attack inside without sacrificing much shooting (Andre Roberson, granted, but he also brought some A-level defence which is another necessity against GSW). Adams was flippin’ immense in that series, even after Draymond Green kicked him in the dick.

But once Durant left, the beef reached new levels yet the competition did not. That’ll happen when you take the best player from one team and put him on a team that already beat that team in the first place. The Warriors swept them across four regular season games with an average winning margin of 19.75 points… bloody hell. But this season has been different, it’s the Thunder who’ve won both games – one at home and one away, one by 17 points and the other by 20.

How? Both games have featured less than ideal Klay Thompson games, which is a nice start. He’s got 21 points all up shooting 8/25 in those two. That was a rare consistent, otherwise one game was about defence, the other about offence. First game they forced a bunch of turnovers and rebounded superbly (three guys in double figures) to minimise the GSW threat. Then Westbrook went mental and OKC had a lead they held on to the rest of the way. Didn’t get much offence outside of the OK3 (who scored 76 of their 108 pts) but they didn’t need it.

Next time, however, it was offence that won it. They blitzed out of the gates with a 43pt first quarter. An injury to Carmelo Anthony limited him to only six minutes but Jerami Grant and Alex Abrines gave them scoring off the bench while PG13 only went and bagged 38 points with six threes. Westbrook had 34p/9a/9r. Get a lead early by making things tough for the Warriors or get a lead early by shooting the damned lights out. Hold both leads by never letting up the intensity against a shell-shocked opponent. Neither is a dependable strategy over seven postseason games but when you can do both then you’re posing a threat.

Andre Roberson’s injury takes away OKC’s best perimeter defender but they still have Paul George who, considering Kawhi Leonard’s injuries, is probably the only two-way player in the league in the same tier as Kevin Durant. They need Steven Adams to stay out of foul trouble. They need Westbrook to be shooting something close to 50% or better. They need Carmelo Anthony to make shots and not get in the way. They need their bench to come in and not immediately blow all the good work the starters got up to. Lots of things that need to break right… which is still much better than most team’s chances.

DENVER NUGGETS

The Denver Nuggets! Those bastards? Hey hold on a second there, Jerry, the Nuggets have been very good this season. Plus they also happen to be one of only three teams, along with the Thunder and Rockets, to have beaten the Warriors twice already. (Granted they’ve also lost twice to them).

Denver’s got some groovy talent. Nikola Jokic is just a marvel, a genuine triple-double threat from the five with passing that would make Steve Nash look up from his latest philosophical read and take notice. Gary Harris, Jamal Murray and Will Barton, obviously. Then there’s Paul Millsap who’s been out since November but will be back long before the playoffs. They’re the second best offensive rebounding team out there and regathering their own misses has been one of OKC’s secrets to troubling GSW as well.

So yeah, Mike Malone’s got a curious young team in the making. Don’t know how much stock you can put in their December 23 win since the Warriors given that Patrick McCaw and Jordan Bell were starting, although they did force bad ones outta both Klay and KD. The Dubs were a combined 3/27 from deep and scored a season-low 81 points. Frankly that is never going to happen in the playoffs so strike it from the record.

The other win though, that was earlier in February and the Core Four of GSW all played at least 35 minutes. None shot especially poorly, all around 50% (KD was 12/16 FG) yet Denver slipped it into hyperdrive in the fourth quarter, scoring 38 points in the frame to come from behind and snatch it. The lineup of Murray, Harris, Barton, Chandler and Jokic went and did all the damage. Interestingly, with Jokic’s particular set of skills and all that, they chased Zaza Pachulia right out of the game in the fourth quarter and with that DEN won the rebound battle over the final 12 minutes by 16 (7 off) to 7 (3 off).

It’s something to think about.

PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

This is a weird one but if you watched the Trail Blazers vs Warriors in their most recent game then you saw Portland do something that not too many other teams can match: they put 40 points on the Warriors in the first quarter. Damian Lillard scored 18 of them. Naturally things chilled from there… but not for Lillard. The Blazers withstood the notorious third quarter against Golden State and they withstood 50 points from Kevin Durant (thanks to 44 in reply from Video Game Dame) to win 123-117.

Portland had been up 20 points earlier in the contest. With a shade over seven minutes left they were tied at 99-all. So two things happened here, one is that the Blazers got that bloody marvellous start that you need (or rather, they weren’t on the other end of one, which is what’ll get ya) and the other is that they were able to close it out after losing that headstart. CJ McCollum was big down the stretch, Evan Turner made some clutch free throws, Jusuf Nurkic had 17p & 13r despite playing through back soreness… there ya go.

Now, the Blazers are nobody’s idea of a perfectly designed basketball team but they have one thing that can keep them in any contest: shooting, and lots of it. Between Lillard and McCollum there’s roughly 48 points per game already. They’re a heat check kinda team, prone to extreme highs and extreme lows… but on their day they’re capable of taking on Dub Nation at its own game. Like the meme where spiderman meets spiderman.

THE REST OF THE WEST

We’ll breeze through this nice and quick-like…

Minnesota Timberwolves – The Dubs scored 125 and 126 points in their two wins over the Wolves so far. Lots to like about Jimmy Butler and his mates yet a team that gives up 37.1% shooting from 3pt range (sixth worst in the NBA) is not a team that can keep up with the Warriors in the playoffs. Given that they probably won’t be in the 7-8 seed range to get GSW in the first round, if they play them at all then they’ve already exceeded expectations.

New Orleans Pelicans – Not without DeMarcus Cousins they won’t. Probably not with him either. Anthony Davis, Jrue Holiday and Nikola Mirotic might well get them to the playoffs but it’s doubtful they go any further. Could be a first round sweep if they draw the Dubs (wouldn’t be the first time).

Los Angeles Clippers – One of only 10 teams to have beaten Golden State so far this season. You’d think that losing Chris Paul and Blake Griffin would ruin them (Griffin was injured when they beat GSW) but you don’t need All Stars when Lou Williams is dropping 50. Sorta doubt he’s capable of making eight threes in four of seven games in the playoffs, though.

Utah Jazz – Tell you what, a month ago they were irrelevant but since then they’ve ripped off a 10 game winning streak while shooting league high numbers from deep (Joe Ingles is now the best three-point shooter in the NBA, folks) amidst some prime Rubio & Gobert as well as the wonderful phenomenon that is Donovan Mitchell. They beat Golden State in that streak (as well as Toronto, Portland and San Antonio (x2))… sorry, they THRASHED Golden State. Beat ‘em by 30 points. Doing that in the playoffs would be ruthlessly tough but they’ve put themselves back in contention for an honourable mention.

Los Angeles Lakers – Not making the playoffs

Memphis Grizzlies – Not making the playoffs

Phoenix Suns – Not making the playoffs

Dallas Mavericks – Not making the playoffs

Sacramento Kings – Not making the playoffs

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