Warriors built to challenge 1996 Bulls’ win record
The Golden State Warriors were constructed to challenge the 1996 Chicago Bulls as the best team ever.
The Golden State Warriors are off to a video game-like start – the best in both franchise and league history. Golden State’s incredible start in a time where the league’s talent level is nearly at an all-time high boasts an interesting question: can this team contend for 70 wins? More importantly, can this team be as good as the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who finished with an NBA all-time best regular season record of 72-10?
The Warriors’ best player is Stephen Curry, the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player and owner of the “My Vines Get More Absurd as I Age” title. He believes that this Bay Area bunch is better than the squad that ended the organization’s 40-year drought without a title last June. Due to almost an identical roster, Curry believes that the team is more poised at the start of games. That focus makes it easier to close games. Combine the two and you get the team’s hot start, which was highlighted by a rare 50-point blowout victory against the Memphis Grizzlies on November 2.
It comes as little surprise that this Warriors group is so good. ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight highlighted Basketball-Reference’s projection system (Simple Rating System or S.R.S) to show that the metric has been supremely kind to the Warriors. Last year’s NBA Champs won 67 games, sixth most in NBA history and, appropriately, were ranked as the seventh best team in NBA history – as well as the best title winner since the 1992 Chicago Bulls according to S.R.S.
The man behind the transactions and architect of this still emerging Western Conference powerhouse is General Manager Bob Myers, arguably the best GM in the league. Myers was first hired by Golden State in April 2011 as an assistant, and promoted to full-time GM in just one year. The following season is an important year in the timeline of the organization’s transformation. In a war room led by Myers, a strong 2012 Draft Class yielded two current rotation players: highly touted North Carolina forward Harrison Barnes was selected with the seventh-overall pick and center Festus Ezeli was selected with the last pick of the first round. Myers was also the man behind an important March 2012 trade that sent shooting guard Monta Ellis, forward Ekpe Udoh and center Kwame Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for center Andrew Bogut and guard Stephen Jackson.
Fast forward to November 2012, when Myers locks up his franchise point guard Curry to a four-year, $44 million contract extension that even at that time seemed to be an incredible value. That particular contract made everything else possible. Curry’s value has surpassed the contract he signed and then some, but it was just the first example of Myers’ using foresight to construct a team he had anticipated coming together much sooner than everybody else. Last November, Klay Thompson’s looming contract negotiations came up, and Myers stuck to the long-term plan inked Thompson to a four-year, $70 million contract extension.
What makes the Warriors gel so well? It’s easy to rattle off the names of Curry and Thompson. And while they were in the fold before Myers was there, the two became better players due in large part to the roster moves Myers made. It’s easy to rattle off head coach Steve Kerr, the man whom Myers specifically targeted and hired in May 2014 after he fired Mark Jackson. Speaking of Kerr, he actually hasn’t been on the sideline coaching this team at any point so far this season. He had to take an indefinite leave of absence due to multiple offseason back surgeries, and assistant head coach Luke Walton has actually been the head man on the sidelines to start this season. Considering where the organization is, it probably doesn’t matter at this point.
The real reason why the Warriors gel is so blatantly obvious and clichéd, but it’s a rarity in today’s NBA. It’s because they truthfully are the best “team” in basketball. The 2014-15 Warriors were the first team in NBA history to finish with the top-ranked defense and the top-ranked pace. Efficient floor spacing and offensive rhythm lead to easy scoring opportunities and the Warriors took advantage. The Warriors were blessed – and still are – with terrific three-point shooting. Only one team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, finished last season with a higher three-point percentage than Golden State.
All knowledgeable NBA fans should ask themselves this: how many teams can go 10 quality players deep? The answer: not many.
In the salary cap era of professional sports – even when the NBA imposes a much softer “hard cap” than two of the other “big four” North American professional sports leagues – it is much harder sustaining a balanced team as salary structures escalate as quickly as they do. By the middle of last season, the Warriors had 12 players in the fold, and finally settled on a solidified starting five and complementary roles for their secondary players. The lineup that Kerr settled on to start games was: Curry at point guard, Thompson at shooting guard, Barnes at small forward, Draymond Green at power forward and Bogut at center.
In July 2013, Myers made a splash when he signed veteran swingman and defensive specialist Andre Iguodala to a four-year, $48 million contract. By the middle of last season, it became evident that Iguodala was much better suited for a sixth-man role as opposed to starting at small forward, and he accepted the demotion with class. The rest of the lineup filled out swimmingly. Shaun Livingston backed up Curry. Leandro Barbosa backed up Thompson. David Lee, who was hurt for a significant portion of the season, backed up at power forward. Mareese Speights and Ezeli provided quality minutes as reinforcements on the front line. The actual 12th man, Brandon Rush, found his way into 33 games, averaging just over eight minutes per contest.
The best advanced NBA statistic to use in determining a player’s individual value is Win Shares, an all-encompassing stat that measures multiple factors of a player’s ability on the basketball court, both on the offensive and defensive end of the floor. Some factors calculated into the formula include Points Produced per Possession, offensive possessions, Defensive Rating, and marginal defense. The Win Shares formula first calculates that player’s particular value to their team, and by proxy, then the rest of the league. It’s a mathematical solution to give a player a tangible label for his value. The closest cross-sport cousin for Win Shares is baseball’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR).
Golden State returns 12 of the 15 players from last season’s Championship roster. That includes retaining the do-it-all-stretch-forward Green by signing last season’s Defensive Player of the Year voting runner-up to a fresh five-year, $82 million contract extension this past July. The 12 players mentioned above accounted for 65 Win Shares last season. If you exclude Brandon Rush who had -.3 Win Shares, the Warriors actually finished with 64.7. The better you are, the higher your Win Shares are. Curry led last season’s Warriors in Win Shares with 15.7. The next best was Thompson with 8.8. Curry’s improvement on both ends of the floor and becoming one of the league’s elite defenders at his position is why he was a no-brainer selection and won the MVP. For comparison, the Minnesota Timberwolves finished last season with the NBA’s worst record at 16-66. Their best player by Win Shares was platoon center Gorgui Dieng, who averaged 30 minutes per game and contributed 4.9 total Win Shares to the T-Wolves.
The Warriors actually outperformed their Pythagorean Win Expectation by two games; Golden State was “expected” to finish last season with an overall record of 65-17 based on their total point differential. The 2015-16 Warriors are already exceeding expectations. Golden State is currently fourth in pace and first in defensive rating. The top nine players in the Warriors’ primary rotation have already produced 8.7 Win Shares in their 10 game sample size – based on their current trajectory, that number extrapolated over a full season would produce 71.34 Win Shares.
The camaraderie of Golden State in this brief two-year period is a significant reason why a team that won 67 games last season stand a chance to not only approach 70 wins this season, but approach the heralded 1995-96 Bulls’ 72-win mark for the best mark in NBA history. Doing that won’t be easy, especially given the current state of the Western Conference. The Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers will continue to test the Warriors throughout the season, who are essentially returning an identical roster of upward trending, already seasoned group of players.
So, how does that compare directly with the NBA’s greatest team in history? I don’t need to go into excruciating detail about how naturally talented, good and valuable Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were to the Bulls. Two Hall of Fame players playing together at their apex for over a decade were also unquestionably two of the greatest team generals ever. The 90s Bulls are split into two three-peat squads; the 1990-93 iteration and the 1995-98 iteration. The 1991-92 Bulls, who in comparison to the 1995-96 team were slightly deeper, went nine deep from Jordan at the top to Bill Cartwright and Will Perdue at the bottom. That team finished with 64.2 Win Shares. The 1992-93 Bulls changed their distribution of minutes to accommodate a slightly deeper team, and their top 11 players finished with 57.5 Win Shares.
Jordan quietly retired from basketball for two years before returning in 1995. The 1995-98 Bulls quickly picked up right where they left off after Jordan returned from his first retirement, and promptly won 72 games. This Bulls team is arguably the most top-heavy of Jordan’s six Championship teams. The team’s top seven rotation players based on majority of minutes played were: Jordan, Pippen, sixth-man specialist Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper, Dennis Rodman, Luc Longley, and… none other than Kerr. The seven combined for 67.1 Win Shares, which even today is an incredible accomplishment. Jordan and Pippen contributed 20.4 and 12.3 to that total respectively. Rodman is regarded as one of the best pure rebounders in NBA history and provided an intimidating presence in his prime. Rodman led the NBA in Total Rebound Percentage from 1990-98, and provided 14.5 Defensive Win Shares and 20 Win Shares in his three years in Chicago.
Another incredible statistic is that Jordan’s 20.4 Win Shares in 1995-96 is only the second best in his career – he finished with 21.23 in 1987-88 – and only the 14th best in NBA history according to Basketball-Reference. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain dominate the top of the list with a combined eight of the top 14 seasons. It’s hard to actually know which three-peat iteration was better, but technically, the peak of the 1990s Chicago Bulls Dynasty was that 1995-96 season. The 1995-96 Bulls did not go 12 deep. None of the Bulls teams of the 1990s went 12 deep. Last year’s Warriors technically went 12 deep, even though it’s hard to account for Rush. This year’s Warriors could go 12 deep if health and other circumstances stay on their side. The Warriors don’t have a presence like Rodman was, but compensate by getting extra defensive production from the other four positions on the floor. In today’s NBA, analytically, the deeper teams have a distinct advantage. Gregg Popovich and the Spurs have turned into a pseudo-dynasty because of their emphasis on floor spacing and creating deep rotations filled with players who can contribute on both ends of the floor. Having Hall of Fame players David Robinson and Tim Duncan for the entirety of their careers certainly helped too.
In the end, we don’t need an overdose of advanced statistics to comprehend what the eye test has already confirmed. This iteration of the Golden State Warriors put together by Myers is one of the best group of players in the history of professional basketball. Rarely does a team go beyond 10 players deep, but the Warriors do, and they do it better than mostly every team in the NBA. Rarely is the head coach of a team the direct disciple of one of the greatest coaches in NBA history. Kerr comes from the Phil Jackson coaching tree, playing on those Chicago teams that Jackson coached in the 90s.
Good things rarely last. Despite the salary cap skyrocketing because of the mammoth TV deal, giving teams extra money under the cap to spend, the organization must continue the last six years of efficient scouting and drafting to find that extra depth. There is also the storyline of Barnes’ impending free agency. He’ll most likely seek a max contract next summer; a contract that unfortunately should price out the Warriors. For now, Golden State needs to be cherished because this team is special. Potentially 70-win special. MAYBE 1995-96, or even 1996-97 Bulls special. Contributions right on down the line to the 12th man can help make that happen.
I’m looking at you, Brandon Rush.