Dmo and Bev would have made at LEAST the 6 point difference it would have taken to win Games 1 and 2. We would be up 3-1 going back to Golden State.
I'd love to see some "big data" type analysis on this, but the last few seasons have really driven home to me how related offense and defense performance can be. Curry at least seemed to be more human offensively when he was forced to guard other team's players that were effective - early games this finals, against mike conley, etc. Curry's worst skill is defense. And for the most part, the guy's he was assigned to guard throughout the playoffs, were either not good at all offensively on the whole, or injured. But we saw this last year with Lillard going off against the Rockets and struggling against the Spurs (of course, the Spurs are/were better defensively, but I think the correlation is there). We saw Klay struggle basically since the Rockets series. You just can't exert so so so much effort defensively and not have it impact your offense. And you can't just let someone like Curry have a "free pass" defensively. As it relates to the Rockets, the need for another backcourt creator/offensive player is clear.
Who was healthy this year? Of recent "good" regular season/playoff teams of recent memory where key roster players missed 15+ games: Clippers - Blake missed 20ish games OK - Westbrook/Durant missed large parts of the season Bulls - Butler, Rose, and Taj Gibson all missed 20 games or more this season. Cavs - lost two all stars in the playoffs Mavs - lost Parsons for large parts of the season/playoffs Indy - missed Paul George most of the year Houston - we all know how the Rockets suffered through losses to 3 starters through most of the season. Memphis - relatively healthy although Randolph and Conley both missed 10+ games in the regular season and of course Conley and Tony Allen were the walking injured in the GS series. Portland - Wes Matthews and then Aaron Aflalo both missed significant time Spurs - lost Kawai for nearly 20 games and Parker for a few less than that. And we aren't even talking about players playing through injuries that have make them less effective(see Dwight Howard). Having that many injuries not just to role players, but key parts of a team's roster impacts how competitive a team can be and GS by virtue of being a really good team who was also relatively healthy, benefited from that in a historic way. They caught a lot of breaks and that doesn't normally happen for a team. Injuries do impact how competitive a team can be - look no further than GS. They were just over a .500 team without Bogut who missed 15 games. Now take that number and imagine if Bogut missed as many games as Dwight, or Blake, or Paul George, or Westbrook, Rose, Goerge, or Durant, etc. Then the Warriors are just another 50 win team. ....there is a chance that the Warriors might have won the title even if everyone else in the league were healthy, but I just think we all got robbed of the chance to see that. The fact is the Warriors didn't face a legit contender in the playoffs who was healthy enough to compete fairly. It's not the Warriors fault - but it still impacts what I think about this team - that they are very good, but I don't know how good compared to rest of the West.
Fully healthy? I don't think the Rockets sweep the Cavs, but probably win in 5. I know you are a Dubs homer, but even with 2 starters out, the Rockets played the first 2 games close, fully healthy they probably win both and it's a totally different series.
The people claiming Warriors title is an asterisk as they got lucky because they were at full strength or other teams had injuries or they didn't have to face OKC or Clips blah blah are the same idiots who probably think Rockets didn't deserve the title when MJ was out. You beat what is in front of you and GSW absolutely demolished each and every opponent on their way to one of the most convincing titles ever. Excuses are for losers. There is nothing to say that GSW wouldn't have won it even if all other teams were at full strength just like nothing would have stopped Dream even if Jordan was there. Lots of sour grapes here.
Warriors "fans" just can't be happy for a championship without trying to add extra accomplishments to it to make it seem like their run was more historic than it actaully was. Congrats on a championship it just wasn't a tough run that's all. Even rockets fans don't try to hype up those championship teams that much. Congrats on captilizing on a weak year in the NBA. U wish the rockets could have done the same this year
This is how the Clippers killed Houston earlier in the season when Reddick's shot was falling and they had Harden chasing him around Deandre/Blake screens all night leading to a miserable offensive performance.
keep spreading the truth, man. look,,, a title is a title. and i can respect any championship team, incl this gsw team. but "all time great"? gimme me a break...
I'm not comparing the Warriors to those great teams (those teams are better imo), but let's not discredit what the Grizzlies, Rockets etc. They had great teams playing in playoffs with or with injuries. Spurs and Clippers had their full squad playing and they couldn't make it out West. Let's not act like it was a easy Western Conference this year.
Every team plays injured teams over the course of a season. Is there any evidence that the Warriors played an abnormally high number of depleted team compared to everyone else? Because against the same schedule as everyone else in the west, they won a whole lot more games by a whole lot larger margins. It wasn't like they just won a few more games than their opponents. They were top-10 all time in wins and scoring margin. And going into the playoffs, no one was saying "the west was weak this year because of injures". The claim was that this was one of the toughest western conferences in recent memory - and GS dominated that conference. Just about every top seed every year has a relatively good run of health. There's absolutely an element of luck there. Certainly - but a big part of coaching is putting your players in a position to succeed. That's a key reason for the Spurs' success over the last 15 years. When all your players dramatically improve in one offseason, coaching gets some credit for that unless you think it was just one big coincidence.
There is a difference between 1 person being out and all of your competition facing injuries to key players. Rockets were still challenged by great teams
D-Mo would've made a big difference. A lot of those turnovers by Dwight when the Rockets forced the ball into him in the post would have been negated. Same with the terrible shots thrown up by Josh Smith. I said it in another thread. Game 2 was decided by a single point and Smith was 5-17 from the field. No way in hell does he get that many attempts if D-Mo is starting in his place. And that's to say nothing of the option of removing Dwight or Josh when Kerr resorted to Hack-a since D-Mo could at least make 60+% of his free throws. Bev's defense is overrated by a lot of people around here, but he clearly would've made Curry work a little harder to get off those 3-pointers. Does that mean the Rockets win the series? No. But I think they absolutely would've come away with a split in Oakland in the first two games and we're then looking at a 6 or 7 game series.
Can any team other than the Warriors say that they won a championship without ever playing a single team in the playoffs with a complete starting lineup? In that sense, the Warriors championship run truly was historic.
It's not like we don't have data on this. PG is one of the deepest positions in the NBA and Curry played against all sorts of good and great ones all season long. His numbers seemed just fine.
The same people saying the west was tough this year are the same people who discredited the hawks 61 wins while being 22-8 vs the western conference.
But the Rockets had to play really good teams at full strength in their title runs. In 1994, they played a fully healthy Suns squad(well, aside from Chuck's sore back) who were the defending Western Conference Champs, a fully healthy Jazz team who had been in the Conference Finals before and were on the verge of becoming a dominant 60+ win team over 3 of the next 4 years, and a fully healthy and brutally physical Knicks team. And in 1995, Holy Lord did they have an insane slate of opponents. The 60 win Jazz, 59 win Suns, 62 win Spurs, and 57 win Magic. The 4 best teams in the league without home court in any round. And while the Jazz were without Felton Spencer and the Suns were without Danny Manning, the Rockets also had to go without Herrera or Maxwell. Granted, they had that brutal path to the title thanks to their p-sspoor regular season which landed them in the 6th seed, but no one can put an asterisk next to that bunch. If the Warriors win another title next season or the year after, I think it eliminates any doubt over how good this year's team was. But if they never sniff another NBA Finals appearance, I'll always wonder if they really were as good as their regular season record made them look.
For sure, if the Dubs manage to make another deep playoff run next year, it'll lend some legitimacy to this year's title. However if they get eliminated in the first or second round.....confirmed fluke.
Yeah winning 67 odd games in the Regular season and the blitzing through opponent after opponent in the playoffs is a fluke.
