Update: April 12, 2024
After defeating the Portland Trail Blazers, the Warriors have the same record as the Sacramento Kings and LA Lakers at 45-35, and now have a shot at ending up with the eighth seed which would crucially give them two chances to make the playoffs.
With the way the Golden State Warriors have been playing, you’d think someone lit a fire under them. Having won eight of their last 10 games, the Warriors are making a final push before the Play-In Tournament begins next week.
Clinching an outright postseason berth is now out of the cards, but a favorable Play-In matchup isn’t. The first step towards that took place when Golden State faced the Los Angeles Lakers, who themselves were fighting for the same stakes.
Pressure tends to make diamonds (or burst pipes) and the Warriors produced a gem of a performance, with their 26 3-pointers (the most ever allowed by the Lakers in a game) helping them come away with a crucial 134-120 victory.
Of course, the 3-pointers took the spotlight, but the 37 assists and the eight players scoring at least eight points highlighted another balanced offensive night from Golden State, which by the looks of it, could be peaking at the right time.
In recent years, the Warriors have been counted out due to age, controversy, injury, questionable personnel decisions, or pretty much the rest of the NBA catching up to them. Time and time again, though, they’ve managed to beat the allegations. The 2022 NBA title run was an example of this, as a healthy Stephen Curry and a mix of new blood and upstart veterans took down the Boston Celtics a year after being sent home in the Play-In Tournament.
The next season, however, proved to be challenging as the Draymond Green-Jordan Poole scuffle overshadowed parts of the regular season, with the James Wiseman experiment also being aborted at the trade deadline. That further exposed that glaring lack of frontcourt depth for Golden State that Los Angeles happily feasted on in the postseason.
This season, there was still some of that frontcourt concern early on, but Green spending some time out following another physical altercation allowed Jonathan Kuminga and Trayce Jackson-Davis to blossom and emerge as potential future frontcourt pieces for the Warriors. All the additional lob passes from Chris Paul certainly helped too.
All of that has helped Golden State have some of the best marks offensively in the last 10 games (50.6 percent shooting from the field and 41.5 percent from behind the 3-point line). The 30.3 assists per game they’ve been averaging in that span is good for third in the NBA, but credit must also be given to their defense.
The Warriors’ defense has allowed the fifth-lowest second-chance points (11.4) and the six lowest points in the paint (44.4), indications that they’ve taken away what was once a disadvantage for them at least for now. Part of that has been the personnel they now have at their disposal, but more importantly, it’s that they’ve all had time to play together. The familiarity and the understanding of one’s role can prove critical in producing stops or making statements such as this:
All signs are pointing to the Golden State Warriors marching towards the Play-In Tournament with momentum. The pieces are there, and with it, the play necessary to make it all work. The question now is: Can the Warriors beat the allegations again?
