Hello! You there! Yes, you. The part-time casual fan of basketball. The one still stoked on picking up that Charles Barkley knock-off Phoenix Suns jersey at a flea market 18 months ago. The one rocking a crisp Seattle Supersonics beanie (author’s note: guilty as fuck). The one still operating under the assumption that the Los Angeles Lakers are a partway decent basketball team.
It might be time to start paying attention again, as there’s something pretty special brewing this year.
The Golden State Warriors might have stormed their way to an historic NBA Championship last year, but somehow this year they look even better.
That is to say, the Warriors are a really, really, really, really fucking good basketball side.
Operating behind the much-hyped “Splash Brothers” duo of MVP Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, and featuring Australia’s own defensive megalith Andrew Bogut, the Warriors have opened the 2015-16 season by achieving a feat that only two sides before them have ever managed to do.
By today defeating the Denver Nuggets 118-105, the Warriors notched up their 15th consecutive win of the season, without a loss.
That’s 15-0. Not even Michael Jordan and the dynastic Chicago Bulls were able to do that.
In fact, it’s a feat that hasn’t been achieved since the 1993-94 Houston Rockets – and before that, the the 1948-49 Washington Capitols. The Rockets, the only team to achieve the feat in the modern era, went on to win the NBA Championship that year, defeating the New York Knicks in the finals.
So ridiculous has their early-season dominance been, that they’ve won their first 15 games by an average margin of 14.4 points – including a whopping 50-point annihilation of the playoff-fancied Memphis Grizzlies back on November 2nd.
Only one of their games has even gone to Overtime – the November 14th clash with the Brooklyn Nets, in which the Warriors put the foot down in extra time to cruise to a comfortable 8-point win.
Their high-octane offence has yet to be held to under 100 points in a game – scoring, on average, 114.5 points each time they step onto the court. This, behind Steph Curry‘s 33.6 points per game average – by a mile, the best in the league.
The Warriors have the opportunity to break the all-time record with a 16th consecutive win this coming Wednesday (Australian time) when they face the struggling Los Angeles Lakers at home in the now-feared Oracle Arena. The Lakers, for their part, have opened the season with a Western Conference-worst record of 2-14.
Love them or hate them, this Warriors outfit is demanding everyone’s attention.
And you’d be well advised to grant them that. Just to say you were there when.
Photo: Doug Pensinger via Getty Images.
via SB Nation.
