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Now that they’ve blasted through the relative cheesecloth portion of the schedule, riding the crest of success, the Warriors confront the wall. Or, rather, a series of three walls.
“We love the start; to go 6-1 exceeds our expectations,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters Monday night in Washington, after a 125-112 win over the Wizards. “We also know that our schedule has been kind to us. We’ve played some teams who have been injured. We’ve played some young teams.
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“It’s about to get a lot harder. We play basically the three best teams in the league the rest of this week. I like our progress, but we have a lot of work ahead.”
They go to Boston on Wednesday to face the defending champion Celtics, who are 7-1 with an average win differential of 14 points.
They then head for Cleveland, where on Friday they will face the unbeaten Cavaliers (8-0).
Golden State’s five-game road trip ends Sunday at Oklahoma City against the unbeaten Thunder (7-0), who ended last season atop the Western Conference and hold that same position in the current standings.
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The Warriors won’t see a tougher three-game stretch this season, but this is a perfect time for an early status test. To check the strength of their assets, get a hard look at their weaknesses and return to the lab properly focused. Whether they win all three games, lose all three or finish somewhere in between, this only tells them who they are in early November.
Which is not who they want to be in March and beyond.
“This is game seven, and right now we’re trying to put together a great season,” Draymond Green said at the Capital One Arena. “So, for us, it's not necessarily about the team we’re playing, or how hard they're playing, or lack thereof. It's about us. And coming out and establishing the identity of the team that we want to be for 82 games and then on into the playoffs.”
The Warriors learned plenty about themselves through the first seven games. They are deep, capable of excellent defense and there is evident esprit de corps. Kerr has lineup and rotation flexibility and can turn to more legitimate shooting threats than even those teams that rolled to five consecutive NBA Finals, winning three.
What Golden State does not know is how it will respond to teams that are superior on paper and in the minds of those who follow the league. The Warriors are invading places where they came up empty last season, losing by 52 in their last visit to Boston, by 11 in their last trip to Cleveland and in overtime in their last stop in OKC.
We’ve already seen enough to reasonably conclude that these Warriors are better than the team that last season finished 46-36 and not only missed the playoffs but were blown off the floor in the Play-In Tournament game.
But it’s tough to take measure of them until they step on the floor against real contenders. They’ve beaten three rebuilding teams – the Trail Blazers, the Jazz, the Wizards – and they put away the deeply wounded Pelicans twice.
“We're establishing who it is that we want to be,” Green said. “We want to be a great defensive team. We want to get out and push the tempo. And we want to keep our turnovers down. Historically we've been a team that has turned the ball over a lot, and that has fallen on the shoulders of me and Steph (Curry).
"Coach has challenged us to change from a team that turned the ball over a lot and the decisions that we may make that kind of test and push the line a little bit to not make those decisions. To be solid. And that's the mindset that we're coming out with.”
Getting Curry back, and getting him a warmup game against the Wizards, should allow for a truer indication of Golden State’s potential over these three games. After playing 24 minutes, scraping off rust early and shining later, he pronounced himself ready to go higher.
“We’ve got three tough teams, and we want to keep building momentum,” he said. “So, I’m sure I’ll play more. But I feel good enough to do it.”
Kerr, ever cautious, came prepared with a cheat sheet his team will need. He wants tighter offensive execution and more disruptive defensive pressure. He wants the Warriors at their best but surely must know that’s unlikely.
Steve Kerr analyzes where the Warriors must improve entering a difficult part of their schedule pic.twitter.com/pqOIzQaJNU
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) November 5, 2024
After finishing sixth and 10th in the West the last two seasons, the Warriors’ goal is to win as many games as it takes to finish in the top six in the West, guaranteeing a playoff berth.
“Winning a championship or competing for a championship is a yearlong process,” Green said. “And we're just trying to embrace that process and hopefully give ourselves a chance at the end.”
No matter Golden State’s next three results, the sky will neither light up with brilliance nor fall into the earth’s core. They want to know how they’re doing, but this amounts to an early-semester exam.
You want to ace it, but there is plenty of time for a comeback.