The Golden State Warriors have now won three games in a row.
It started with a dominant, and surprising, victory over a sluggish Denver Nuggets team. Stephen Curry took only eight shots and that machup and sat for much of the fourth quarter. It was a major win for a team that needed some momentum coming off a pair of brutal early-season losses (not counting the Phoenix Suns matchup).
Then they dominated the Minnesota Timberwolves. Although they were without Anthony Edwards, and their offense suffered heavily from that fact, the Warriors still managed to put up an impressive offensive performance against a swarming defense. Another major victory.
Then, on Friday night against the Los Angeles Lakers, they went down by more than 20 points in the first half. It seemed as though the issues that plagued them across their first couple of games, including the previous loss against Los Angeles, had returned. But Curry found his footing in the second half, and the rest of the team rallied around him to burst past a stunned Lakers squad en route to a 17-point victory.
The Warriors have now evened their record at 3-3, and there's some reason to have optimism for this team. That doesn't mean there aren't still some major questions to be answered—including their ongoing need for an additional big man in the absence of Kristaps Porzingis.
But as this team tries to stay afloat in the race for a bona fide playoff berth or, at the very least, a top play-in seed with Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody out, these types of wins are what's going to make that possible. And the more of them Golden State amasses, the better their hopes for a successful regular season seem.
This team can't be complete until Jimmy Butler returns—but we've seen some majorly positive signs so far
It's not reasonable to expect Butler to operate at the same level he did pre-injury even if his recovery is relatively speedy. His game isn't necessarily based entirely on his athleticism, but he'll be 37 years old returning from an ACL tear at mid-season. If he's able to provide Golden State with even a third offensive option in the starting lineup, that will be a successful return for the veteran.
But if the Warriors want to have any shot at contending this year, they'll need Butler in the fold to provide them with versatility and the consistent offense alongside Curry and Yaxel Lendeborg. His abilities to get downhill and operate as a complementary playmaker have, in part, been replicated by Lendeborg through these first few games—but that only makes Butler potentially more potent when he returns, especially if Lendeborg can start to consistently hit his shots from beyond the arc.
The key here, though, is that the Warriors can't be scrambling to secure a shot at postseason play late in the regular season. They have too many veterans, and too many injury-prone players across the roster, to exert that level of energy in the final months of the campaign and still hold out hope for a deep playoff run. We've seen that type of fatigue derail their season in back-to-back years, and if Golden State is well below .500 at the All-Star Break, we may be headed in that direction again.
Across those first three losses, it seemed like we were in for a rough ride. The offense simply wasn't consistent enough, and there were too many holes on the defensive end of the court to truly believe in this team as a competitive presence. But since Oct. 26, Golden State is second in the league in offensive rating and 10th in defensive rating. They've found a way to produce when everyone outside of Butler, Moody, and Porzingis is healthy, and that in and of itself is a major development.
There will be some guaranteed losses on this schedule for the Warriors—especially when Curry and the rest of the veterans need rest. But if they can consistently churn out these types of performances when everyone is available, their chances of carving out a mid-season lead on play-in teams like the Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz, and even the Dallas Mavericks suddenly seem exponentially better.
At this point, that's the most the Warriors could ask for.
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