The Golden State Warriors had a season for the ages one year ago. They won 67 games in the regular season, crowned Stephen Curry as an unlikely MVP and took home the NBA championship for the first time in 40 years.
Somehow, the Warriors have been even better this season.
Curry’s numbers are up across the board in another MVP campaign, their point differential is even more impressive than it was a year ago and on Wednesday night Golden State will attempt to break the ’96 Bulls’ hallowed record by finishing the year 73-9 with a win against the Grizzlies.
This season has felt like one long coronation for the Warriors since the beginning, with a 24-0 start giving way to what could be the best 82-game campaign the league has ever seen. Along the way, the Warriors made the NBA their own personal playground, filling the year with countless highlights NBA fans won’t soon forget.
With the season coming to an end and the playoffs up next, our writers decided to look back at our favorite Warriors moments from 2015-16. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments.
By Mike Prada
Y’all remember this clip, right? Surely you do. It was the moment that will forever live in infamy for Kevin Love and the Cavaliers.
At the time, it was a symbol of the enormous gulf between the league’s two likely finalists. In a sense, it also shattered any innocent hope that last year’s Finals would have played out differently if the Cavaliers were fully healthy.
Over time, though, I’ve seen this play in a different light. Rather than it being remembered for Kevin Love’s ineptitude, it should be seen as the perfect storm of every Warriors superpower. As the Warriors moved the ball from side to side, someone screened Love so Draymond Green could then get a clear path to screen for Stephen Curry. Love naturally fell behind in the play and looked silly trying to catch up.
The Warriors combined the ball-handling wizardry of Curry, the unique versatility of Green, the unselfishness of the team’s core players and the precision of their equal-opportunity system in one devastating, six-second loop. They’re special because of each of those elements individually. When they mold them together in one sequence, they ascend to a higher plane of existence that no team in NBA history has ever reached.
And Love wasn’t the only victim of this unstoppable Warriors play. They made perennial All-Defense contender Jimmy Butler look just as helpless one night later.
Let’s stop thinking of that sequence in Cleveland as the Kevin Love Vine. Instead, it should be known as the All-Powerful Warriors Vine.
By Zito Madu
I’m a big fan of defenders getting embarrassed. Few things in the world make me happier. This fandom even extends to defenders that I like and family members; if my mother decided one day to step foot on the court and a random player crossed her over, broke her ankles and sent her to the hospital, I would Photoshop the Crying Jordan face on her before eventually visiting.
With that said, what Stephen Curry did to Kawhi Leonard in January was so rude that it made my little black heart flutter:
Kawhi Leonard was supposed to be answer. He was the ultimate hope in stopping Steph Curry, and he had been when the two met last April, where he began guarding Curry in the second half and stole the ball from the MVP five times.
Then Curry came back this year and broke Leonard down anatomically without even touching the ball.
Curry had one of the game’s best defenders slipping and twirling like he was hit by a Mario Kart banana peel. ‘Til this day I still cackle like a wicked witch when I think about this moment.
By Rodger Sherman
Steph Curry beat the Thunder with a shot you’re not supposed to take:
You’re not supposed to thoughtlessly pull up in the closing seconds of a close NBA game! Normally, as the seconds tick away, teams take time to do the predictable. They call timeout, their coach draws up an iso for their star. By shooting, Curry made the unpredictable happen in an instant.
You’re not supposed to shoot basketballs from 40 feet away! Forty-footers are supposed to be desperation shots. You’re supposed to take them when you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself with the ball 40 feet from the basket with 0.2 seconds left. That wasn’t the case here. Curry had about four seconds left when he decided to shoot, the ball left his hand at 2.6 seconds and then splashed through the rim at 0.6 seconds.
In this game, Curry tied the NBA record for three-pointers made in a game and broke his own record for three-pointers made in a season. He went on to be the first to hit 300 threes in a season, he’s a strong showing away from being the first to 400. And by even attempting that shot, Curry announced he was the first NBA player to consider a 40-footer a legitimate basketball strategy. Maybe you noticed this over the course of the season, but by doing it in that moment, he was letting the world know.
As the ball rose and fell, my mind went from “Holy crap, Steph Curry just took a 40-foot shot in the decisive moments of a game between the NBA’s best teams,” to “Holy crap, Steph Curry just took a 40-foot shot and no part of me is surprised that it’s about to go in.”
And when it did, Curry made the unbelievable believable.
By Grant Brisbee
Oh my sweet lord, they won in San Antonio
Maybe this is the year the cynicism melts away. Maybe this is the year when I assume that nothing truly bad can ever happen to the Warriors because it’s been a good, solid two years since anything truly bad has happened to them.
Until then, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
My sixth-grade English teacher: That’s a fine essay about the Warriors’ championship, Grant, but you know they were actually swept by the Cavaliers, right?
Me: oh god no what
My sixth-grade English teacher: Also, you’re back in the sixth grade.
Me: this is a very alarming turn of events
My sixth-grade English teacher: Also, you’re wearing nothing but your underwear, which seems very embarrassing.
Me: please, stop
My sixth-grade English teacher: Matthew Dellavedova was sure funny on Jimmy Kimmel after winning the Finals MVP.
It doesn’t seem real. Even today, even with nearly a year to process it, it’s impossible to believe the Warriors aren’t still cursed by the Ghost of Tom Gugliotta. It’s all going to come crashing down, just watch.
Except it’s getting pretty hard to entertain that kind of cynicism. Every time I go to drink from the goblet of sad-sack cynicism, the Warriors slap it out of my hand. The last, and greatest, example of this was them finally winning against the Spurs in San Antonio. It gives me chills just to type it. The last time they did that, Dominique Wilkins was on the Spurs, and Chris Mullin was just 33. Titanic was in the theaters. The first Fallout and Grand Theft Auto games weren’t even released. I still thought I was going to be a rock star when I grew up. It was so very long ago.
So that’s the win that sticks in my mind, partially because of recency bias, but mostly because it’s the Xbox achievement they still didn’t have yet. I gave them a 5 percent chance of winning the game when the schedules were released. After watching them squeak out a taxing win the night before, I gave them a 2 percent chance of doing it. It was just too perfect. It was the win they needed to keep their record hopes alive. It was at their house of horrors. It was on the back end of a back-to-back. It was a package on my doorstep with “WARNING: CONTAINS DISAPPOINTMENT” on it, and I didn’t have any illusions about what was inside.
Instead, there was a puppy in there. Oh, hey, little fella. Snuzza snuzza. It all worked out. Because it generally does work for the Golden State Warriors, Very Good Basketball team. I should probably start getting used to that.
By Ricky O’Donnell
It isn’t classy to celebrate. America demands its athletes to show as little emotion as possible when doing inherently emotional, ultra-competitive things. We write letters the editor of newspapers about Cam Newton’s touchdown dances and gawk in horror at Jose Bautista’s bat flips.
Caught having fun while playing sports? That’s going to be a 15-yard penalty.
The nice thing about the Warriors is they seem to stand in contrast to the overly sanctimonious garbage that infiltrates so much of the national sports discussion. Never was this more evident than when Andrew Bogut started pumping his arms in celebration a good two seconds before Steph Curry ripped a three in a March game against Orlando.
Bless Andrew Bogut. He’s on his second arm pump by the time Curry actually shoots and he’s across halfcourt by the time it goes through the net.
A baseball player might get a lifetime suspension for doing something so audacious. Cam Newton would be pressured into apologizing for weeks if he was this arrogant. The Warriors just truly, deeply do not care, even when their taunting leads to turnovers. It’s a large part of what makes them so great.
By Tim Cato
There’s usually no reason for several thousand fans to be seated at the American Airlines Center 90 minutes before a game. In fact, it’s normally impossible — the doors only open at that 90-minute mark. Except when Stephen Curry comes to town. In so many ways, he’s the exception.
Last month, I stood on the baseline in Dallas watching Curry warm up. It’s an impressive routine — flashy dribbling, impossibly high-arcing layups and a natural machismo oozing from him with every move he makes, all culminating in the effortless threes from the logo that everyone is there to see. It’s famous enough for the NBA to release the entire performance on video. But mostly, I was taken aback by the spectacle itself. Curry is so magnetic that something as drab and dull as him warming up has turned into a schedule-altering event. You don’t accidentally show up to a game an hour and a half before it begins. Sections 104 and 105 aren’t even always this full during a normal Mavericks game!
Tim Cato
This is the stardom that Curry has achieved. His in-game theatrics and impossibly long game winners made him famous, but now crowds of people hang on his every movement, no matter what it is or where it happens. Curry isn’t the NBA’s first sensation, nor the last. But there’s no doubt he’s the one we have right now, and there really, truly isn’t anything like him.
By Andy Liu, Golden State of Mind
Everyone remembers Stephen Curry’s shot heard around the world in Oklahoma City. Less than a week later, they would tussle with the Thunder again, this time at home, and the hopelessness would course through them one more time.
Throughout the first half, the Warriors struggled with the length and athleticism of the Thunder. It happens from time to time, but this team handled it a little differently in this matchup. Down double-digits late in the third quarter, Marreese Speights was still flinging full-court passes out of bounds, Klay Thompson still jacking up contested 28-footers in transition and the entire GSW team playing with the reckless abandon like this was a preseason affair instead of the game that could tie them with the Chicago Bulls for the most home wins in a row.
But when the fourth quarter began and Kevin Durant checked back in against the Warriors bench, the Thunder’s hopelessness reached its crescendo. Billy Donovan’s staggering strategy backfired in his face as Durant was phased out of the offense and the rest of the Thunder were unable to defend or score. When it was all said and done, two bench players starred. Shaun Livingston’s surprising blanket defense of the past MVP was the story, and Speights’ three was the dagger.
Stephen Curry sprinted off the court for a flying chest bump as the Warriors congregated on the logo to celebrate the run that put away the Thunder for what seems like the rest of Durant’s OKC career. As the rest of the Thunder headed back to their bench head down, Durant paused near halfcourt, soaking it in, eyes deceiving his emotions. He watched the Warriors celebrate for what seemed like an eternity before collapsing into his seat, waiting for it all to end. Meanwhile, the Warriors are hoping perhaps something else was just beginning.
By Tom Ziller
There are certain maxims in the NBA, certain laws handed down by the Basketball Gods. One is that staying out too late and partying hard on the road before a day game is trouble. The Raptors have long taken advantage of teams visiting on a Sunday, squads that arrive late Friday, rest up, run through a Saturday shootaround and paint the town red. (The Knicks have a bunch of Sunday afternoon home games, too, though it’s usually the Knicks who look ragged in those instances.)
The smokin’ Warriors arrived in L.A. late on Friday, March 4. They didn’t play until the early afternoon of March 6. We don’t have proof that certain players known to party hard actually went out and partied hard … except that the Lakers beat the stuffing out of a vastly superior team on Sunday. The Warriors had more turnovers than a German bakery, they shot erratically and they really never stood a chance against a team led by Nick Young and D’Angelo Russell (pre-saga).
Why is this my favorite Warriors moment? Its harsh morals keep me and all of us grounded. Like Icarus, the Warriors flew too close to the sun and got burnt.
By Paul Flannery
There’s a phenomenon on the NBA beat known as Warrior Therapy. Feeling rundown by the never-ending season, worn out by narrative fatigue? Well, salvation is only a plane ride and a BART trip away. Golden State is the most open and accessible team in the league, which is mostly a credit to Raymond Ridder and his media relations staff, but also a reflection on the players, coaches and executives. You can get pretty much anyone you want and just about everyone is an interesting interview.
I was reminded of this while on my trip in January to catch up with Draymond Green. Talking with Draymond is no trouble at all — dude loves to talk — but everyone wants to talk to Draymond, so you have to wait your turn. That’s what I was doing after practice when Steve Kerr appeared out of the backroom. Kerr was by himself so I wandered over, reintroduced myself and spent an hour chatting with the coach.
At the risk of getting too media-meta here, that openness and transparency has become such an essential component of their team psyche that very few things bother them. No matter how big the event, or how huge the media contingent becomes, the Warriors seem cool with whatever comes their way. That also makes them extremely likable. Does that translate into more favorable coverage? Sure, but it also allowed them to handle the crush of this rather insane pursuit of 73 wins while remaining outwardly chill and down to earth. If only more teams operated like this.
This article was written by Mike Prada from SB Nation and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.