We really don’t need to spend much time detailing the fact — and it is a fact — that the 2015 Golden State Warriors were a very lucky basketball team.
No Clippers. No Spurs. No Mike Conley for a game. No Tony Allen for a 2-2 Game 5. No Patrick Beverley in the Houston series. James Harden threw that pass to Dwight Howard at the end of Game 2. No Kevin Love. No Kyrie Irving. A hurt Iman Shumpert. The worst version of J.R. Smith.
Where the discussion really begins with the new NBA champions is in the past.
The 2013 Miami Heat needed two missed foul shots by the San Antonio Spurs; two offensive rebounds on wild loose-ball scrambles; and two made threes, all in the final minute of Game 6 of the Finals.
The 2012 Heat needed Chris Bosh to return in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals against Boston, following an abdominal injury that sidelined him for nine playoff games. If Bosh hadn’t gained two full games in which to re-acclimate himself to the series (and if LeBron hadn’t played the best game of his career in Game 6), he probably wouldn’t have shot so well in Game 7, which is what put the Heat into the Finals and enabled them to mow down the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games.
The 2011 Dallas Mavericks needed LeBron to play the worst NBA Finals of his career, hands-down. They also benefited from the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs losing.
The 2010 Los Angeles Lakers needed the Boston Celtics to forget how to shoot the basketball in Game 7 of the Finals.
The 2007 San Antonio Spurs needed the top-seeded Mavericks to lose in the first round. That sure didn’t hurt their title push. Neither did the NBA’s suspensions of Amare’ Stoudemire and Boris Diaw in that contentious West semifinal series against the Phoenix Suns.
The 2006 Miami Heat needed a highly improbable Game 3 comeback when on the verge of falling behind, 3-0, in the Finals against the Mavericks. They also needed some serious “Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals” officiating in Game 5 of that series.
(We’ve already given away what the 2002 Lakers needed, as you can see.)
The 2000 Los Angeles Lakers needed the Portland Trail Blazers — loaded with veterans, including Scottie Pippen — to collapse in Game 7 of the West finals.
Shall I continue, or do you get the point?
Ah, just two more examples, from the previous century:
The 1989 Detroit Pistons were being outplayed in Game 2 of the Finals when Magic Johnson got hurt — this, on a Laker team already playing without Byron Scott.
The 1985 Lakers got to play Game 5 of the Finals at home against the Boston Celtics, despite being the lower-seeded team. The reason? That was the year the 2-2-1-1-1 format gave way to the 2-3-2 format. In 1984, the Lakers — also the lower-seeded team — played Game 5 on the road in Boston under the 2-2-1-1-1. They lost that game and the series.
*
Look, everyone: Luck is a big part of winning championships. No, this doesn’t diminish the skill or quality of a given team; it merely reflects what we all know about sports: They are played by flawed human beings and are therefore rife with imperfections, which create all sorts of plot twists and unexpected turns. Some teams get hurt by them, others benefit.
This is the way the sports world works.
How should we view the 2015 Golden State Warriors, then? By all means, one should acknowledge the good fortune this team received. If the Warriors played the Spurs — given everything we saw about the Dubs in these playoffs — that probably would have been a long series, and very possibly a seven-game series. The Warriors were lucky.
However, while acknowledging the great good fortune Golden State received, can we gently point out that the Spurs had Game 6 on their home floor against the Los Angeles Clippers and played poorly before the epic Game 7 which gave that marvelous series the rousing conclusion it deserved?
A similar line of logic applies to the Clippers. They probably would have given Golden State a very tough time. However, exactly whose fault was it that the Clips gacked away that 19-point lead in the final 14 minutes of a potential close-out game, at home, against a team sitting James Harden on the pine?
The Spurs and Clippers would have made life miserable for the Warriors, sure.
They were also not good enough to reach the West finals and create that matchup.
*
As for the Warriors’ victories over teams with important core players who missed games in these playoffs:
1) Conley and Allen were both in the Memphis Grizzlies’ lineup in Game 4 of a series the Griz led, 2-1, with Memphis playing at home. Golden State not only won that game; it smoked the Grizzlies and repeated that feat in Game 6 four nights later.
2) Golden State’s pattern of responding with a decisive Game 4 win on the road, trailing 2-1, and then delivering a Game 6 knockout punch on the road was repeated agaisnt Cleveland.
Even if you can’t stand the Warriors and their run of luck the past two months, you have to acknowledge this: The Dubs’ two toughest series were turned around in Game 4 and then finished in Game 6 with decisive victories. This stands in marked contrast to what the Cleveland Cavaliers experienced in the East semifinals against the Chicago Bulls — no, not the Game 6 road blowout, but the Game 4 pivot point.
This is not meant to diminish Cleveland, but to enhance Golden State: Cleveland, in Game 4 against Chicago, very well might have lost had officials noticed David Blatt calling a timeout he didn’t have. Golden State was so convincing in its two Game 4 transformations in the playoffs (Memphis and Cleveland) that it never left any such doubts in its path.
Are we going to acknowledge that?
*
Here’s a final word on the 2015 Warriors in a larger historical context:
The point differential, the efficiency numbers, the overall number of total wins (83), can and should be allowed to remain historically great. No matter what else the critics or skeptics might say, this is a team that accumulated a lot of historically notable achievements. This was and is and always will be an achievement-rich team. Never take that away from these Warriors.
The luck and the circumstances enter the picture here: While Golden State achieved as much as any single-season NBA team ever has, the Warriors should not be seen as one of the purely great NBA teams of all time. Greatness in terms of achievement? Fair. Greatness in terms of pure quality? That’s where one can legitimately knock down the Dubs a peg or three (not that they should care one whit, with their shiny Larry O’Brien Trophy basking in the Oakland sun).
The 1986 Celtics and the great Red Auerbach predecessors in the 1960s. The 1967 Sixers. The 1996 Bulls. The 1985 Lakers. The 1983 Sixers. The 1987 Lakers. The 2014 Spurs. The 2001 Lakers. THOSE are great all-time teams.
You could wonder what Cleveland would have been able to do with a healthy Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, but save for that one question, there should be no doubts about the championship legitimacy of the 2015 Golden State Warriors, truly the best team in the NBA this past season. Give the Dubs the credit they deserve for what they’ve just accomplished since late October.
It’s only on an all-time scale where assessments of this team should be kept in check.
*
This past season, there was one team better than all the others. It’s the team that’s partying like it’s 1975. If you felt that other teams would have given the Golden State Warriors a tougher time, well, they should have advanced far enough in the playoffs to prove as much.
