Warriors continue to underperform

BASKETBALL 6:46 PM MAR 28, 2016

Updated Odds Of The Warriors Going 73-9
By KYLE WAGNER


I mean, probably? NOAH GRAHAM / NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
With the NBA regular season winding down, the Golden State Warriors are 66-7 and need to go 7-2 over their final nine games to break the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ record for most wins in a season. We have a guess for how this will play out: Our CARM-Elo prediction system says Golden State has about a 66 percent chance of getting there. But we’d be lying if we didn’t say that handicapping the Warriors’ run to 73 is just as uncertain now as it was a few months ago.

Our CARM-Elo NBA predictions use a combination of a team’s (pre-season) personnel and its past performance to estimate its relative strength. For most of the season it has tended to have the Warriors as a little more likely to run up on Michael’s Bulls than other prediction systems.1

As the season winds down, those predictions become less abstract and might seem to take on more tangible meaning. It ought to be easier to predict a team going 7-2 than 25-5, right? But there’s a circular sort of logic to forecasting like this. On the one hand, when the finish line was further out, any effects of late-season lineup-fiddling from the Warriors or their opponents were aggregated over many games. The system doesn’t know that Stephen Curry may sit down in the final week of the regular season because the Warriors secured a 1-seed, or because of a sore hamstring, or because of a bad run-in with room service sushi. But the estimated effect of a game or two without the MVP is smaller in the context of a full season. This can make forecasts from months out feel more precise, less vulnerable to natural rhythms of the season.

On the other hand, it takes a certain kind of willful omnipotent to guarantee that a team’s basic state — three healthy stars and the supporting constellations mostly intact — will remain unmolested by fate. The long-term outlook is always vulnerable to genuine surprise.

As it stands, with nine games remaining, we know the state of the Warriors going into this stretch — a little banged up, but still plenty good. We can be relatively certain there aren’t any big surprises left in the season, just the series of little ones we always knew were coming: The tension between chasing the record and run-of-the-mill rest before the playoffs, plus some nagging injuries to rotation players and the need to bonk the rust off of a few guys coming back from longer-term absences.

WINS AT LEAST THIS MANY WINS EXACTLY THIS MANY WINS
68 >99% <1%
69 >99 <1
70 >99 2
71 97 8
72 89 23
73 66 34
74 33 25
75 8 8
Chances the Warriors finish with:
Now that we’ve arrived at the precipice, though, the step from 72 to 73 wins seems as large as ever. Our model thinks the Warriors have an 89 percent chance to at least tie the Bulls’ record at 72 wins, but those odds fall 23 percentage points, to 66 percent, for 73 or more wins; 74 or more wins is a 33 percent proposition, but let’s not go getting greedy now. These projections also assume teams will play to win, which is uncertain for the Warriors, who can probably coast to a 1-seed, as well as their opponents, who will deal with all the typical late-season machinations for playoff seeding or draft position.

By all appearances, however, Golden State is fixing to up and do this thing.

Coach Steve Kerr said last week that the Warriors won’t be backing down from the chase, at least as long as the players want it. “Yeah, this whole idea of setting a record does make things a little trickier,” he said. “It’s the players who are setting a record. It’s not the organization. It’s the players who are doing it. So they will absolutely have some say in matters down the stretch in terms of how we approach everything.”

Scottie Pippen is likely right. Those Bulls would beat the Warriors.

The major reason? Michael Jordans' unstoppable offense? Nope.

Defense. Socttie Pippen and Micheal Jordan are the only back court in recent times that could not only play the entire game, but shut down 2 guards completely. Draymon Green benefits from the fact that due to their range, Steph and Klay spread the floor more than any other due since way before the Jordan Bulls.