The Golden State Warriors are No. 11 in net rating, No. 17 in turnovers committed, No. 21 in free throw attempts No. 25 in rebounds... And are 4-1. That's in large part because they're shooting the lights out (No. 3 in 3PT%), but it's pretty noteworthy that this team is clearly not playing its best basketball in the "other" categories, and continues to win games nonetheless.
Instead of those numbers being cause for concern, I actually think they're cause for optimism; on a Steve Kerr-coached team led by Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Jimmy Butler, I'm confident that stats like turnovers, rebounds, and free throw attempts will find their level, while the stats the Warriors are excelling in (shooting, mostly) will probably stay pretty good. Maybe that's overly optimistic and we should instead assume every stat will find its level, but at the moment it seems more realistic that the Warriors have lots of low-hanging fruit they can pick as the season progresses.
When they do, the Warriors will look like the high-powered Warriors that fans hoped they would be. And that team could be closer to the "peak" Warriors teams than any iteration we've seen since — maybe even more than the championship team of 2022.
Warriors are winning and not playing their best basketball
If you predicted that the Warriors would win a game 98-79 this season, I have a lot of questions to ask you about my future.
Point is, the Warriors have "won ugly" in a few games, and when talented teams are also willing to win ugly, it's a great sign that they won't falter when the postseason rolls around. That win against the Clippers, in which the Warriors held the Clippers to 36.6 percent shooting and 6-for-33 from the 3-point line, a preview of what the defense can do (okay, that was the extreme of what any defense is capable of) when everyone is flying around.
Everyone's individual stats are looking promising, too. Steph is on an early MVP track, Jimmy Butler is putting up 21/4/4 on extreme efficiency, Kuminga and Podziemski are both overachieving in the early stages of the season.
And while, of course, some of this roster will go through cold stretches, the things we're sure about — Steph being ridiculous, Jimmy being a winner, Draymond's defense still being world-class — are enough to keep things going in the right direction even if the auxiliary players hit a wall at some point. And like we've seen in the first week of the season, even a Warriors team playing its B or C game is good enough to compete with teams around the league.