5 reasons the Golden State Warriors can win the 2017 NBA Championship

4. The Warriors still have Stephen Curry

Curry wasn’t himself in last year’s NBA Finals. His scoring dropped to 22.6 points per game and he shot an uncharacteristic 40.3 percent from the field. We don’t know how serious the leg injury he sustained against the Rockets in the first round was, but Steve Kerr did acknowledge something was preventing him from being his normal self.

“We didn’t hide anything,” Kerr said. “If there had been a diagnosis, we would have told you. We don’t hide stuff like that. He was banged up. But that’s not an excuse. It’s not an injury — it’s just the reality of the season and it kind of hit him at the wrong time, given that everything started in the playoffs and carried through.”

Plus, the Warriors still came within a couple of possessions of winning back-to-back titles even though Curry was banged up. And even though he wasn’t as dominant this regular season as last regular season, he still has had an MVP-like impact on the Warriors. For example, he finished behind only Russell Westbrook in Offensive Real Plus-Minus in addition to having the third best true shooting percentage amongst guards and ranking in the top-10 for Win Shares.

Plays like also this show how teams will still do anything to prevent Curry from getting open 3-pointers out of the pick-and-roll, even if it means JaVale McGee ends up rolling to the basket for an uncontested dunk.

Like Durant, the Warriors just need Curry to be healthy down the final stretch. He’s still one of the best players in the world and his 3-point shooting is the ultimate curveball. He proved it once again this season when he averaged 26.9 points per game on 47.2 percent shooting from the floor and 41.9 percent from 3-point range from the month of March onwards. The odds of him not showing up for four games again is slim, especially with Durant being able to take some pressure off of him. There’s a reason he’s a two-time MVP.