Full disclosure: Beating the Golden State Warriors is going to be a difficult task.
While the 2017-18 NBA season is sure to offer plenty of fun highlights and interesting subplots, the Warriors enter the season as heavy favourites to once again lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy come season’s end.
But there are a handful of teams that, if they play at their absolute best, have a puncher’s chance of unseating the reigning champions. Here’s how they can do it.
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavaliers have a loaded roster that, while older, looks deadly. This is a team featuring Isaiah Thomas, Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Tristan Thompson, Kyle Korver, Jae Crowder and, last but certainly not least, LeBron James.
James alone can make just about any collection of scrubs into pseudo-championship material, but the guys around him certainly aren’t slouches. This team will struggle defensively, but that won’t matter much given just how much firepower they’ll have at all times.
Cleveland has a projected starting lineup of Rose, Wade, James, Crowder and Love. Between Rose, Wade, James and Love there are 32 all-star selections, five MVP awards and four Finals MVPs — not too shabby. Even scarier is the fact two-time all-star Thomas isn’t projected ready to be back until January and he figures to be Cleveland’s actual starting point guard, meaning the Cavaliers won’t be at full strength to start the season.
This all bodes well for the Cavaliers to potentially beat Golden State. With the addition of Kevin Durant, the Warriors severely outgunned the Cavs, even with James. Now, offensive ability shouldn’t be much of a problem as Cleveland has shooting from almost every position with any lineup it trots out.
And while Golden State’s defence is certainly formidable, even it may crack under the three-point barrage Cleveland’s looking to bombard the league with, meaning the two sides will likely get into a shootout when facing each other — one the Cavaliers actually have a chance in.
Houston Rockets
The Rockets’ all-analytics style of basketball was supposed to be the kind that could take down the Dubs. Unfortunately they never got the chance last spring, falling to the Spurs in the second round of the playoffs. To ensure this doesn’t happen again, Houston signed defensive stalwart P.J. Tucker along with Chris Paul — who also happens to be one of the least analytics-friendly players in the league.
While this is an odd match, it still pairs up two of the league’s best playmakers under the creative mind of Mike D’Antoni. There’s sure to be an adjustment period but James Harden and Paul are absolute wizards with the ball so we assume they’ll figure things out eventually.
When that happens it could spell serious trouble for the Warriors. Golden State plays analytically approved basketball, but not to the extent the Rockets do. No team in basketball takes or makes as many triples as the Rockets and if Houston can get enough stops thanks to a guy like Tucker, they will be able to beat the Warriors.
[relatedlinks]
Boston Celtics
The Celtics drummed up all sorts of drama this off-season, most notably walking away with Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward and No. 3 overall pick Jayson Tatum. This has set them up to be a major power in the Eastern Conference and potential threat to the Warriors.
Whereas the Cavaliers and Rockets are set up to be all-offensive dynamos, the Celtics feel a lot more balanced, featuring talent, flexibility and versatility at multiple positions. In some ways there are similarities between Boston and Golden State’s respective rosters with both teams emphasizing ball movement and free-flowing point guard play.
Are the Celtics actually better than Golden State? Likely not, but we haven’t really seen what these new-look Cs can do in the first place. At the very least, attempting to emulate what resulted in the most successful season in NBA season in history isn’t a bad idea.
San Antonio Spurs
Like Golden State, San Antonio is highly adept at playing on both ends of the floor and these two teams probably would’ve had a much more competitive series in last season’s Western Conference Final if it hadn’t been for Zaza Pachulia blatantly dirty accidentally over-aggressive closeout on Kawhi Leonard that knocked him out of the series in Game 1.
Leonard, at the moment, is dealing with a quadriceps injury that will likely sideline him for the season opener, and maybe beyond, but he’ll be healthy when it really matters. Given how Leonard is arguably the best two-way player in all of basketball, you have to like the Spurs’ chances against the Dubs, especially when Golden State still has to worry about the likes of LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol, a pair of legit big men who could hold the key to beating the Warriors’ nuclear small-ball lineups (more on this further down).
Oklahoma City Thunder
This is really simple: Carmelo Anthony, Paul George and reigning MVP Russell Westbrook.
Will it actually work? No one can say for sure, but if it does the Dubs better look out. In a lot of ways this could end in complete disaster, but there’s also reason to believe these three could work harmoniously.
Westbrook needs to dominate the ball to be effective, but George doesn’t. If Thunder coach Billy Donovan can convince George to be more of a spot-up shooter or outlet for Westbrook when the MVP gets into the lane there will be a lot of shots to be had. Where Anthony fits into this is also as an outside outlet, but seeing as he’ll be playing the four, just giving him occasional iso post-ups won’t be a bad idea either because he’s such an effective post player.
This style of offence will likely chew up clock on each OKC possession, something that could slow the game down and drag it into a territory the Warriors don’t want to be in.
[snippet id=3360195]
The Blueprint
Lastly, this brings us to what we’ll call the “blueprint” to beating the Dubs. None of the teams listed below actually have any hope of beating Golden State, but they have the key weapon that could eventually slay the dragon: talented big men.
This may seem odd because the Warriors, essentially, killed off the traditional big man with their remarkable small lineups, but the counter to that is actually a transformative big.
Small ball and the three-point revolution we see now is a result of analytics. You want threes because they’re worth more than twos and you want lay-ups because they’re the highest-percentage shot to take in basketball. A lot of big men are now turning themselves into three-point shooters following this philosophy because that’s the flavour of the league, but also because they just aren’t all that good.
If someone like a Shaquille O’Neal or Hakeem Olajuwon were to play in today’s game, small ball wouldn’t be as much of a factor because you could dump it into them almost every possession and walk away with a bucket or a drawn foul. There’s no need for these kinds of big men to step outside because they’re so good at getting a high-percentage look as close to the basket as possible.
Teams like the New Orleans Pelicans, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and even the Memphis Grizzlies, who feature Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins, Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Jokic and Paul Millsap, and Marc Gasol have the kind of bigs that you’re looking for to play these large lineups that could force the Warriors to adapt to them.
The Warriors win because they’re a matchup nightmare for every other team as they boast the most skilled and versatile small-ball lineups in basketball. Flipping the script on them with a truly great big man might be how you crack this code.
