Even with the addition of Kevin Durant, the Golden State Warriors are not trying to better last year’s 73-9 record. As a matter of fact, Draymond Green doesn’t even want to win that many games.
Draymond: "To be quite frank w/you I don't even want to win 74, 75 games. That's brutal." If W's start 19-6 "the world's coming to an end."
— Janie McCauley (@JanieMcCAP) September 26, 2016
In truth, the single season win record isn’t important. The 2015-16 Warriors will be remembered much like the undefeated New England Patriots or the 116-win Seattle Mariners teams. Sure, they had great seasons, but you can’t mention those teams without also mentioning the fact that they didn’t win the championship.
It’s understandable how a player on the team would feel that a record-setting season is brutal. End of season games that are normally all about getting healthy and staying sharp all of a sudden have great meaning.
If Golden State was 4-5 games worse at the end of the 2015-16 season, those last few games certainly wouldn’t have been as stressful. A player not wanting to go through that again makes complete sense.
The second part of Green’s quote is a little troubling. By normal standards, he’s right it would be ridiculous to have a “world’s coming to an end” mindset about a 19-6 team. That’s a 62-win pace, after all.
The problem is that the Warriors aren’t a normal team and don’t get a normal standard. They have brought the extra scrutiny on themselves. In part, the scrutiny comes from the standard they’ve set. When a team goes 67-15 and 73-9 in consecutive seasons, it’s fair to wonder if something is wrong if and when the team falls off of that pace.
But the scrutiny also comes from the addition of Durant. When an already great team adds a top-tier player, the spotlight is going to get brighter. Quite frankly, it should be held to a higher standard.
Part of the higher standard is going to be blocking out the noise. Sure, even with Durant, a 19-6 start will be fine. But the Warriors were 22-3 after 25 games in 2014-15 and 24-1 the following year. By those standards, 19-6 is bad. So, any questions coming in around a 19-6 start (or worse) will be fair game.
It’s on the Golden State players to block out that noise and not let it bother them. Based on Green’s comments, it’s fair to wonder how smooth that will be.