
Warriors consistent trends
Now, how does that compare to their five-year run that culminated in three NBA championships and two Finals appearances? When it comes to the postseason, the Warriors finished fourth, eighth, second, seventh and first in first-quarter plus-minus between the 2015 and 2019 playoffs.
So, although their first-quarter issues weren’t as drastic as what they’re facing now, there were a couple of playoff runs (2016 and 2018) where they were a below-average first-quarter team despite being a great team overall.
That 2017-18 championship team had first-quarter concerns season-long. Their +0.6 in the playoffs was actually better than the dead even (0.0 – ranked 15th) plus-minus they had during the regular season.
This was a team that had four All-Stars and finished with a 58-24 record, yet still consistently failed to start games in the manner you’d expect.
Now, if we extrapolate this data into a first and second half contrast, we can easily assert that the Warriors are simply a far superior second-half team. This isn’t necessarily surprising – lesser talented teams, in most sports, can often compete early in a game before fading to the more talented, skilled team.
But the playoff numbers are too stark to simply put it down to this, especially given it’s a competitive playoff environment where numbers can’t be skewed significantly by playing really bad teams.