The NBA playoffs are almost here and the Golden State Warriors have two potential paths they could go down in order to reach the NBA Finals.
Which path through the Western Conference would be easier for the Golden State Warriors to navigate in pursuit of an NBA championship?
For the sake of simplifying things, we are going to assume the Utah Jazz manage to cling tight to the fifth seed as they hold the tiebreaker over the Denver Nuggets. So, in this scenario, the Jazz will finish fifth and Denver finishes sixth.
From here, we need to examine what would happen if Golden State slips from third to fourth. The path through the West changes drastically depending on where they land.
Again, to avoid too much speculation, we will focus only on the first two rounds as it feels safe to assume the top-seeded Memphis Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns will advance to round two. The conference finals are too distant to make any accurate predictions so we will hold off on that, for now.