Dec 14, 2014; New Orleans, LA, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts after scoring against the New Orleans Pelicans during the first half of a game at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
On Sunday night, the Golden State Warriors beat the New Orleans Pelicans in overtime, pushing their league-best record to 21-2. They’ve won 16 straight and feel like they’re beginning to dip their toes in the water of some sort of historical greatness. In trying to suss out how good the Warriors actually are, and could be, there are really two tracks—their record and their point differential.
By point differential, the Warriors look ready to take history by the throat. The graph below shows all teams since the three-point era, by strength of schedule and SRS, a metric from Basketball-Reference that takes into account both a team’s scoring margin and their strength of schedule.
You can see that the Warriors strength of schedule has been very soft, but SRS, which, remember, takes into account both point differential and strength of schedule, has the Warriors as the fourth-best team of the three-point era right now. The only three teams above the Warriors on this chart are Chicago Bulls teams led by Michael Jordan.
I threw in the Philadelphia 76ers for no other reason than to point out that they are chasing history of their own and have been terrible, by roughly the same historic margin that the Warriors have been fantastic.
The Warriors have set a hard-charging pace for themselves, but their performance thus far has been absolutely sterling. Of their 12 most used lineups (all of which have played 22 minutes or more this season), nine have a Net Rating of +24.0 or better. That kind of depth would seem to indicate that they could weather some storms, including injury, and still stay near the top of the league.
When we move from point differential into actual wins and losses, the Warriors’ pace looks like it may be a little more difficult to sustain. By pythagorean expectation, a team with Golden State’s point differential would be expected to have won 19 of their first 23 games. Right now, their point differential alone projects them as about a 68-win team, a pace they are slightly ahead given that they actually won 21 instead of 19 of their first 23. However, John Hollinger’s Playoff Odds have the Warriors at 66. One of the reasons for that slightly lower projection is that the Warriors schedule is about to get a lot more difficult.
The graph below shows the rolling five-game average for the Warriors’ opponents SRS across the entire season.
Obviously, this isn’t a perfect measure of schedule difficulty as it doesn’t take into account home-court advantage (or the lack thereof), travel, back-to-backs, or the way each opponent’s performance might change between now and the time the Warriors actually play them. Still, you can see that their 16-game win streak came during an unusually large soft patch in the schedule. Honing in to specifics, here are the teams that the Warriors beat on their streak:
- Nets, Hornets (x2), Lakers, Jazz, Thunder, Heat, Magic (x2), Pistons, Pelicans (x2), Bulls, Timberwolves, Rockets, Mavs
Here are the next 16 teams on their schedule:
- Grizzlies, Thunder, Kings, Lakers, Clippers, Timberwolves, 76ers, Raptors, Thunder, Pacers, Cavaliers, Jazz, Heat, Rockets, Nuggets.
There are some dips and cupcakes in there as well, but it’s a much tougher stretch than the one they just played. Especially when you take into account the fact that the Thunder are probably better now than their SRS to this point, given the returns of Westbrook and Durant.
Still, looking at both pieces of the puzzle, it seems entirely plausible that the Warriors could finish with a win total in the mid-60s and an SRS that would rank among the most impressive in recent memory. This next stretch in their schedule will be really important in determining whether their pace stays elite or drops back somewhat to just very good.