PHOENIX, AZ – FEBRUARY 10: Stephen Curry #30 of the Golden State Warriors watches from the bench during the NBA game against the Phoenix Suns at Talking Stick Resort Arena on February 10, 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona. The Warriors defeated the Suns 112-104. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
NBABy Dan Levy on

From the opening tip of the NBA season, the Golden State Warriors have been on a race for 72 wins.

With a 102-92 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night, the Warriors reached the 50-win plateau in just 55 games this season. Their .909 winning percentage has them on pace for 74.5 wins, and would anyone who has watched this team play not give them the benefit of the doubt on that extra half a win?

Even if we round down, Golden State is on pace to break the NBA regular season wins record and still give Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson a few nights off before the playoffs, just to keep them fresh. Every night seems more incredible than the one before it, too. In Monday’s win over the Hawks, the Warriors basically took the third quarter off, getting outscored 36-18 on 7-of-22 shooting and 1-of-11 from beyond the arc in that stanza, and still beat last year’s top seed in the East by double digits.

Did you know, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls also won in Atlanta on February 22—it was win 47 for those Bulls—ending the season on a 25-5 stretch to finish 72-10.

That Bulls team lost the following night at Miami, while these Warriors get a day off this year before facing the Heat on Wednesday. Still, if the Warriors finish the rest of the season with just five losses after February 22, they will tie the Bulls’ regular season wins record.

Only, the 1995-96 Bulls didn’t just win 72 games. They won 87 games.

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Last season’s Warriors finished 67-15 in the regular season, topping the next best team in the stacked Western Conference by nine games and still, as the playoffs began, few had faith that Steve Kerr’s team would roll through the postseason like they did, winning 16 of their 21 games en route to the NBA title. If you listen, you can still hear Charles Barkley telling people that jump shooting teams can’t win championships. And yet, somehow that jump shooting team did, and are the favorites to win it all again.

But what if they don’t? What if the Warriors struggle through the Western Conference playoffs and face a much healthier Cavaliers team than they saw last season? What if LeBron puts an entire city on his back like he did last year, but the Cavs show up with a healthy Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love as well? The Cavs took the Warriors to six games last season, so nothing in the NBA Finals is guaranteed this year if a healthier Cavs team shows up on the other side.

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And what if the Warriors don’t even make it that far?

The Bulls had the best record in the Eastern Conference by 12 games in 1995-96, and 20 games in the Central Division, but the Seattle SuperSonics won 64 games to lead the West, and fought the Bulls to six games in the NBA Finals. This year, the San Antonio Spurs are just four games back in the loss column from Golden State, and themselves are on pace for 69 wins.

Only three times in NBA history has a team won 69 or more games: the 1995-96 Bulls with 72 wins and both the 1996-97 Bulls and 1971-72 Lakers, each winning 69 regular season games and the NBA title.

This season, not only will a team with one of the highest winning percentages and most regular season victories in league history not win the NBA title, but one of them won’t even get to the NBA Finals.

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While the NBA world is fixated on the Warriors catching the Bulls, Kerr needs to make sure they don’t get caught by the Spurs, because winning the most regular season games in NBA history is a fantastic accomplishment, but if the Warriors don’t cap that record with an NBA title, it will be an enormous let down.

Not even getting to the Finals would be an absolute disaster for the Warriors.

Golden State still has a tough schedule the rest of the way, so there is no guarantee this team will hit 72 wins. They face Oklahoma City twice in the next few weeks and get San Antonio three times between now and April 10. There are also games against Portland and Memphis each twice and Dallas and the Clippers and Miami and a whole host of other teams that probably won’t be making the playoffs but will damn sure be getting up for a chance to take down the Dubs.

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Nothing in the NBA is guaranteed, even if the season began with only five or six teams having a real shot at the title, and even fewer with a good chance now. Certainly the Warriors are in that group—the leaders of that group until proven otherwise—but winning 73 or 74 games out of 82 is not the goal of this season. Winning 16 games of a possible 28 is.

If the Warriors win 16 playoff games, they will be the first team to go back-to-back since the Lakers in 2009 and 2010. They will be thought of as one of the great teams in NBA history, like the three-peating Bulls of 1996, ’97 and ’98. They will be legends, whether they win 71 or 73 or run the table the rest of the way and finish a ridiculous 77-5. Without that title, though, none of the regular season wins matter. Not one.

Just ask the 2007 New England Patriots about that.

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The Patriots finished the 2007 season undefeated at 16-0—we can debate which is harder, winning 16 NFL games with no losses or winning 50 of 55 NBA games, at another point in time— and rolled through two playoff games en route to Super Bowl XLII. The Patriots were one game—hell, one drive—from being considered without much debate the greatest team in NFL history.

That loss undid everything about the season. For Patriots fans, 18-1 felt worst than 8-8, and the sting of that Super Bowl loss will never go away, no matter how many titles New England has won or will win since. No one will forget that game, which is without question the most memorable loss and biggest upset in Super Bowl history, and that includes Super Bowl III and every Big Game since. The Patriots’ loss was magnified because history was on the line. Without the Super Bowl title, an undefeated regular season meant nothing. It means nothing.

Without an NBA title, 72 wins mean nothing. The Warriors know that, and as they get closer and closer to that record, the pressure will continue to mount. Beating the Bulls won’t matter if they end up like the Patriots. Winning the title is the only thing that really matters.

About Dan Levy

Dan Levy has written a lot of words in a lot of places, most recently as the National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. He was host of The Morning B/Reakaway on Sirius XM's Bleacher Report Radio for the past year, and previously worked at Sporting News and Rutgers University, with a concentration on sports, media and public relations.

View all posts by Dan Levy