The Warriors can't go 16-0 in the playoffs ... can they?
So that's that then. The Golden State Warriors made history on Wednesday night, notching their 73rd win of the season. They bested the once-untouchable 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
Now it's on to the next opponent: the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers.
That defending champion team had a kind of "eh" 56-win regular season, during which the uneasy tension over who was first and second fiddle was just beginning to bubble between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal. But after Derek Fisher returned from a foot injury, the Lakers got their act together and busted the postseason wide open like giddy children taking cuts at a pinata without blindfolds, losing just once on the way to their second consecutive chip.
To beat this record the Warriors have to go a perfect 16-0 in the playoffs, which just can't be possible. Can it?
Let's step outside the box and play a little game of What If.
First Round
It shouldn't be all that hard to sweep the Houston Rockets in the first round, barring Dwight Howard suddenly reverting to the 2009, "Future Hall of Famer" Dwight Howard. The closest Houston has come to beating Golden State this season was losing by four points, and there's no reason to believe the Rockets will buck the trend.
In the second round, they'll get either the Clippers or the Trail Blazers. The Warriors more or less own the Clippers, and though the Blazers beat them once in February, Golden State beat them so badly the following two meetings that the Blazers should have to apologize for beating them the first time.
The Western Conference Finals are where things get sticky.
Western Conference Finals
Assuming the Dallas Mavericks waste another anachronistically good season by Dirk Nowitzki and the Memphis Grizzlies finally collapse in on themselves, it'll be the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference semifinals.
If the Warriors get the Thunder, Steve Kerr will coach circles around Billy Donovan, who's only a slightly better Scott Brooks. Maybe Russell Westbrook or Kevin Durant steals a game with a crazy individual performance, but chances are, even if the Thunder jump out to lead, the Warriors will eat them up in the fourth quarter. Remember when the Warriors sent the game to overtime and Steph Curry hit a buzzer-beater from Tulsa to seal a 121-118 comeback win back in February? How can you ever feel secure in a lead after that?
The Spurs, on the other hand, are a well-oiled death machine; less a basketball team than an ineluctable force of nature. Considering San Antonio's terrifying regular season form, getting out of this series at all would be tough, to say nothing of getting out completely unscathed. But the Warriors did hand the Spurs their only home loss of the season, and there's historical precedent for a sweep: en route to that 2001 championship, the Lakers vaporized a top-seeded, 58-win San Antonio Spurs team (mind-exploding hands), winning the final two games of the series by 29 and 39 points, respectively. So a sweep is not likely per se, but it is possible.
The next level of the pagoda (operating on the assumption that the Toronto Raptors don't finally Do It this year) is the Cleveland Cavaliers; a rematch of last year's Finals. On the one hand, LeBron James recently flipped The Switch, and has been playing like a man possessed. He already got punked by this Warriors team once, and it's hard to imagine he'll be going out like that a second time.
But on the other hand: Tyronn Lue. This Cavaliers team is basically a ticking bomb, and should Kevin Love go missing in the same game that Kyrie Irving decides you know what, this is MY team while LeBron is frustrated about being down 2-0 in the series again, Tyronn Lue isn't really the one you want cutting the wires.
I want it on record that I don't think 16-0 will happen. Kawhi Leonard very well could put the clamps on Curry. The Warriors could have another epochal off shooting night like the one they had against the Lakers back in March at any time, or, heaven forbid, someone could get injured.
It doesn't feel possible. But still, they might do it though.
