For the fourth straight season, the Golden State Warriors have the league’s best record. For the third straight season, they’re setting a record for the highest effective field-goal percentage in NBA history. And for the second straight season, they’re setting an all-time record for offensive efficiency.
But the champs are still just two games in the loss column ahead of the Houston Rockets for the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, and Houston would have the tiebreaker having won the season series 2-1. So the Warriors can’t take their foot off the gas, even though they’d love to be in Cabo right now, as the Mercury News‘ Mark Medina writes after an uninspiring win in Sacramento in which they couldn’t put the Kings away until late in the fourth quarter:
The Warriors eventually secured a 119-104 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Friday because of their star power with Kevin Durant (33 points), Stephen Curry (23), Klay Thompson (20) and Draymond Green (13). Even though the Warriors (41-11) may have satisfied the bottom-line result, they needed to hit a reset button multiple times amid sloppy play (25 turnovers, one shy of a season-worst 26 on Oct. 29 against Detroit), five ties and six lead changes. Such a trend reflects more poorly on the Kings (16-35) and their inability to take advantage of the Warriors’ miscues, than the Warriors actually offering anything positive.
“I did not do a good job of regrouping them,” Kerr said. “I tried to regroup them, but I never did regroup them. They won tonight on talent and shooting the ball. That’s all.”
The main reason for the Warriors’ inability to listen to Kerr?
“Our guys are dying to get to the All-Star break,” Kerr said. “We’re limping to the finish line to the All-Star break. But we got to fight through the break and then get the hell away from each other and go sit on a beach and relax and then we’ll be in great shape.”
There is only one problem. The NBA All-Star break is not until Feb. 15. The Warriors still have six more games to play, including on Saturday in Denver.
“We have to fight human nature a little bit. We know how important that post All-Star run is and coming back strong and refreshed,” Curry said. “But if we don’t build the right habits and have the right spirit around our team heading going into the break. That could carry over. You don’t want to have that negative energy out of the team.”
