For all the obvious and apparent benefits of creating a superteam— and there are a lot of them — it will be impossible to ignore or overlook the unrealistic expectations which will undoubtedly be placed on the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors.
The two players who will share the brunt of this burden? Stephen Curry and Warriors newcomer Kevin Durant, the two NBA players with by far the most to lose going into the regular season.
After breaking the all-time single-season record for wins with 73, how much better can the Warriors really get over an 82-game span?
The knee-jerk reaction to Golden State signing Durant is that 74 wins could be within reach because it obtained a top-five talent. But head coach Steve Kerr would be far better suited to rest his players more deep into the regular season, which would probably put 73 or 74 out of reach.
Even though the Warriors probably won’t, and shouldn’t, go for the record again, Durant’s size, skill, athleticism and versatility unquestionably makes them a better on-court product next season. His addition deepens the roster and allows Kerr to further spread his minutes out among his rotation players. Kerr will be able to stagger his stars on and off the floor in the middle of games so that one or two of Curry, Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green will be on at all times; an unimaginably frightening proposition for other teams’ second units to contend with.
Durant’s signing with the Warriors is the biggest free agent defection since LeBron James left from Cleveland to Miami in the summer of 2010 (sorry, Dwight Howard), and even Durant has more to lose next season than LeBron did six years ago. While Miami did add Chris Bosh in the same summer and absurdly proclaimed that they would win several (not one, not two, not three) championships together, James didn’t sign with a team that was a win away from two straight titles and the immortal status as the greatest single-season team in league history.
Durant surely knows that his signing with the Dubs will be viewed as a failure if he doesn’t help deliver Golden State its second championship in three years. He’ll probably be booed and vilified in many NBA arenas — as will the Warriors team, in a 180-degree heel turn after they were practically treated like a cross between the Beatles and the British royal family last season — and is already being portrayed as a latcher-on rather than as a leader.
Durant is in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. If he wins, he’ll have won without being his team’s featured player, a criticism that will hang over him like an ominous cloud as long as he and Curry are teammates. Anything short of a title and Durant will have helped make Golden State worse, Bay Area basketball’s version of Yoko Ono.
And just as Durant doesn’t have much to gain and a lot to lose by joining Golden State, Stephen Curry has oh-so-much to lose going into the coming season.
https://twitter.com/WeAreDubNation_/status/771429331277058048
After winning his second straight MVP award and becoming the first-ever unanimous winner last season, the Curry-led Warriors became the first team to ever lose an NBA Finals series after being up 3-1, falling to LeBron and the Cavaliers. After leading the league in Player Efficiency Rating during the regular season with 31.5, his postseason PER went down to a more mortal 22.3 due to a combination of injury and fatigue. Curry shot a combined 22-for-60 in those final three losses to Cleveland.
This is definitely an unfair question because his team dynamics will have changed so greatly, but have we seen peak Steph Curry? He was proclaimed the best shooter of all time with a chance to be an all-time great point guard after winning back-to-back MVPs, but how much better can he get?
With Durant on board, how can he not displace some of Curry’s offensive stats and numbers, taking a hit into his time with the ball in Steph’s hands? Can either of them really win an MVP award as long as they’re teammates? Their statuses as MVP candidates will almost certainly take a hit next season.
Steph Curry in isolation is truly not fair: pic.twitter.com/aRWHujfwzy
— KNBR (@KNBR) November 23, 2015
James won two MVP awards with Miami in part because Dwyane Wade stepped back and let LeBron be the alpha player. It doesn’t seem like either Curry or Durant will do that this coming season, and their scoring numbers will both probably suffer because of it.
Both Curry and Durant are used to being the featured player during the final possessions of a close game, when most teams play isolation-heavy “hero ball.” Can either of their egos take becoming an ancillary crunch-time player? Both players will face an immense amount of scrutiny next season, and the bar has been set so unbelievably high that it will almost be impossible to reach, setting Curry and Durant up for apparent failure.
For Durant and Curry to be perceived as having improved from last season, what would he and the Warriors have to do in 2016-17? It obviously starts with a championship, but Golden State just had the best regular season ever. Ultimately, it will be hard for the Warriors to top what they did last season without an NBA title, Durant’s first, and it’s why nobody in the league has more to lose than the game’s newest dynamic duo.
