When it comes to professional sports, winning a championship isn’t the most difficult thing to do. Winning multiple championships is far more difficult when you consider the fact that most professional sports have to deal with salary caps which leads to player turnovers as well as the fact that the team that wins the championship always has a target on their backs. To put this in another perspective, after the Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship last year, almost every online sportsbook had the Cleveland Cavaliers, who lost to the Warriors in the NBA Finals, as the favorites to win the championship this year.
Considering how difficult it is to win multiple championships, what the Golden State Warriors are doing right now is very impressive. The team a lot of people considered to be a one-hit wonder after winning the title last season has not only silenced their critics, they have made believers out of them.
The Warriors are currently 52-5 and are ahead of the pace set by the 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls, who own the record for the most wins in a regular season after their 72-10 campaign that year.
Even with their success, there are still some people that don’t think the Warriors will break the Bulls record.
Here are five reasons the Warriors will break the record.
They don’t overthink things.
The Warriors are one of the few teams that approach every game with the same philosophy regardless of who their opponents are. They don’t get intimidated by other teams or panic when they are losing; they always find a way to get themselves back in the game which is a very rare attribute.
When Steve Kerr announced he would miss some time as he recovered from back surgery, Luke Walton was named the interim coach. In that situation, a lot of teams would be distracted, but the Warriors handled themselves like professionals and played even better than they did last year.
They have been Relatively Healthy.
Health is an important factor when it comes to a team’s success, especially in the NBA. For the past two seasons, the Warriors have been healthy for most of the year allowing them to stay with their regular rotation.
One of the reasons the Warriors have avoided major injury is because their style of play doesn’t require players to do too much damage to their bodies. For example, Dwyane Wade was known for throwing his body around when he was younger, while the explosiveness was fun to watch, it had a lot of effect on his body, which resulted in injuries that caused him to miss significant time later in his career.
As a jump shooting team, the Warriors don’t have to throw their bodies around as much, which has helped them stay healthy. A very deep bench also allows the Warriors to rest players and reduce their chances of getting injured.
Everybody is on the Same Page.
A lot of teams have different personalities that have trouble co-existing, for example, Shaq and Kobe won three championships together and could have won more if they found a way to get along with each other.
The Warriors don’t seem to have that problem because their players genuinely like each other and are all willing to make sacrifices to achieve their team goals. Andre Iguodala, for example, accepted his role as a bench player when he signed with the Warriors last year even though he had been a starter his whole career.
They are Confident.
The Warriors are very confident in their ability to defeat any team in the NBA and have proven that they aren’t scared of anybody with the way they have played so far.
They Don’t Take Any Nights Off.
Some championship teams cruise through the regular season before regaining their focus in the playoffs. The Warriors aren’t one of those teams. Golden State comes ready to play every night regardless of the team they are facing.
These are some of the reasons I believe the Warriors will break the NBA regular season wins record. If they break the record, they will need to win the NBA championship as well to be considered the best team in NBA history.
If you are wondering why they need the championship to validate their regular season achievements, take a look at the 2007 Patriots who were undefeated in the regular season but lost the Super Bowl.