The Golden State Warriors became the second team in NBA history to win 70 games in a season on Thursday night, and clinched the top-seed in the Western Conference along with it. Now, coach Steve Kerr says he is leaning towards resting players, but that he will meet with the team to discuss the predicament at hand.
The Warriors have three games remaining, and are three wins away from breaking the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls record of 72-10. “We are going to talk about it tomorrow,” Kerr told the media after the game, per ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss.
“We’ve been putting it off for as long as we were able to, which was until we got the 1-seed. Now that we have that, I’m inclined to give some guys some rest if they need it, but I’ve sort of made a pact with the guys that if they are not banged up and they are not tired and if they want to go for this record or whatever then — so we got to talk.”
While you could imagine that the Warriors are all-in on trying to break one of the more untouchable records in basketball, Kerr isn’t quite as high on it.
“I’m a little uneasy about it. It’s not that I’m worried about injury. You can get injured in practice. It’s not so much that I want to rest guys to avoid injury, but we do have a back-to-back here. It will be our third game in four nights.”
Kerr was on the 1995-96 Bulls team, and when asked about a comparison between them and his Warriors, had perhaps the best answer you could possibly give (via Reddit):
Draymond Green said that he believes the team wants to go for the record, and that the Warriors have come too far to just forget about it, per Strauss:
“Think about the year we’ve had: started 24-0, haven’t lost two in a row all year, have had several streaks of seven-plus wins in a row, yet we’re still sitting here needing three in a row. That tells you how hard this is to do.
So to get this far and kind of just tank it and say, ‘Aw, never mind.’ … Let’s face it, we probably will never get to this point again. That’s why it’s only been done one time. I think most guys in the locker room are all-in, and we’ll figure that out this weekend.”
Strauss also said that Green previously sent a message to the team in the players-only group chat.
“I just told guys, ‘Hey, if you need the rest, take the rest, and if you don’t, we going after it,'” he said. “I think it can be tough depending on how you want to look at it, and most guys in the locker room are saying we’re right here, we put all this effort into it, let’s try to go for it.”
Klay Thompson was in a similar boat with Green, saying, “I’m only 26. When I’m 36, I’ll be looking to rest more.” Harrison Barnes expressed a similar tone, saying, “I’m 23, so I’ve got no problem playing the rest of these games, and we’ll go from there.”
So, in case you were worried that the Warriors weren’t going to try to make history, at the very least it sounds like the young guns are ready to roll.
[ESPN]
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