Should the Golden State Warriors chase 74 wins?
By Eric He
The Golden State Warriors won 73 games last season, but lost the championship. Should they actively chase 74 wins this year?
To watch the Golden State Warriors play these days is much more than just watching a basketball game.
That is, you watch the Warriors for their performance art, for the ball movement and the long-distance bombs and fast-paced action that you can’t get anywhere else. You watch the Warriors just waiting for the next exciting moment to break out, be it Steph doing Steph things or Klay dropping 60 or Kevin Durant proving why he is very good at the sport of basketball.
And oh, by the way, they won the game by like, 25 points easy — but that’s an afterthought because it’s pretty much a given.
That’s how they broke an NBA record with 73 regular season wins last season. And, to be honest, they might just mess around and do it again this year.
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Here are some facts from last season: 1) The Warriors won 73 games. 2) They also blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals and became a walking social media joke.
On the surface, I think those two events were mutually exclusive, but after the Warriors did the impossible by besting Jordan’s Bulls and then followed it up with more impossible by blowing the championship in historic fashion, you have to wonder if the byproduct of going all-out for 73 led to 3-1.
Of course, there were other factors. Draymond Green was suspended because LeBron James has a family. Steph Curry was still dealing with injuries and rust. Andrew Bogut missed the last two games of the series. LeBron was superhuman. Anderson Varajeo played eight full minutes in Game 7.
It’s not their fault, though. Sure, winning 73 games was a meaningless record. But it was a shot at history that they couldn’t resist, whether it was the record itself or Green’s impassioned persuasion. It was validation — at the time — that they belonged in the same echelon as the 1995-1996 Bulls and shut up the old-timers who were doubtful they could even be in that conversation.
Not winning the championship, though, settled that debate. By chasing regular season history, the Warriors lost their chance at legendary glory — that is, belonging in the same sentence as those Bulls. By not resting their starters down the stretch after clinching the top seed in the West, the Warriors won the battle but couldn’t last through the war.
That was the toll of going for 73 — the constant stress, the expectation to win, the 24/7 media hoopla, leading off SportsCenter every night. While it certainly did not phase the Warriors’ quest for the record, the attention and hype surrounding last year’s team was unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the history of this league in the digital age.
I think it’s fair to say that the heightened expectations to finish off last season with a title dawned on the Warriors throughout the playoff run. They limped past the Rockets and Trail Blazers, needed a God-like performance from Klay Thompson to come back from a 3-1 deficit against the Thunder, and then fell apart at the worst time against the Cavs.
In short, the Warriors won 73 games during the regular season but looked more average than any of us thought they would during a postseason in which they went home without a ring.
Did the first thing lead to the second, even partially? The argument is certainly there.
Here’s the question, though: Should they go for 74 wins this season? Well…
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I don’t think the Warriors should chase 74 wins in the sense that they are aiming toward a certain number of wins and going for it. For one, they already have the record. And they know exactly how much of a toll it can take.
A lot has been said about the Warriors playing their worst basketball last season at the worst possible time. Winning a championship entails more than doing well in the regular season — it is all about playing your best basketball in May and June.
This year’s Warriors appear set up to do that. The opening night loss against the Spurs was perhaps the biggest blessing in disguise they could have received; it showed them just how much work they had in front of them in the remaining 81 games. In addition, working in a superstar like Durant and seeing which options off the bench would step up after losing key reserves in the offseason all take time — that’s what the regular season should be for.
Instead of focusing on going 24-0 or going undefeated at home (the Warriors lost their first game, at home), the Warriors are better off served focusing on gelling as a unit and building up the monster of talent up to maximum for the playoffs.
While they’re at it, the wins will come. They are 24-4, on pace for 70 wins — and with a few more wins, they could very well be on pace to break last season’s record. But at the same time, they are still working out the kinks — how Durant will flow with the offense, who to put in at center, how to utilize the bench.
The Warriors might be on pace to break 73 again pretty soon, but this time around, the hope is that they look at it as just an interesting factoid rather than something that consumes the locker room and the media coverage day in and day out.
At the same time, all of the above can be refuted by the simple fact that it’s hard to ignore human nature. When the Warriors start approaching that 70-win mark this season, I will very likely re-read this piece and call it entirely unreasonable to convince this team to not set another regular-season wins record. Because when the entire basketball world for some reason hates your team for signing a free agent, but all your team does is shrug and win the championship — and 74 games along the way — that would be the biggest and most enjoyable middle finger ever.