Are The Warriors “True Title Contenders?”

By Ken Cheng

Despite the plethora of statistical evidence illustrating just how much the Warriors’ offense has improved – evidence made super easy to understand by the long list of league-wide first place rankings they currently own – there remains a pervasive skepticism about the team’s viability as “true title contenders” among a certain segment of the NBA watching population. Various national media members – which, for the sake of this article, we’ll composite into a single, hypothetical, analyst named Lord Gnarles Fartley – remain wholly unimpressed by the near-historic numbers the Warriors are producing (not to mention the “stat geeks” who love to cite them). The crux of Lord Fartley’s argument against the Warriors (and Hawks, for that matter) combines an almost willfully inaccurate reading of the Warriors style of play combined with one of the more well-worn, “old school,” aphorisms in the NBA and it goes something like this: “The Warriors are not title contenders because they’re a perimeter team and perimeter teams don’t win when the game slows down in the playoffs.

Lord Fartley will tell you that only teams that can bang inside and score easy buckets in the paint can win slowed down playoff games. Fair enough. Here’s where fun things like math and spreadsheets and not having gotten any girls in high school can help determine whether Lord Fartley’s analysis is right, partially right, mostly wrong, or a heap of hot, useless, stinking, trash.

Yes, the Warriors shoot a lot of 3s. They’re good at it. They’re third in the league in attempts and 2nd in makes. We also know this because Warriors fans are nearing the first recorded case of mass hip dysplasia from standing and raising three fingers in the air roughly 28 times per game. But reducing the Warriors to the label of “jump shooting team” ignores the fact that despite the high volume of 3s attempted, the Warriors are somehow also 3rd in the league in points scored in the paint. Lord Fartley might be surprised to learn that 53% of the Warriors’ total field goal attempts per game come from within 15 feet of the basket and 43% come from within 10 feet. They’re 5th in the league in points scored inside 5 feet! It seems odd that a so-called perimeter team scores 6 out of every 10 buckets from inside the perimeter.

Contrast this with, say, the Clippers – a team Lord Fartley practically falls over to praise for its inside prowess. The Clippers are 5th in made 3s but a lousy 25th in the league in points in the paint. Only 46% of their total field goal attempts come from within 15 feet, while attempts within 10 feet comprise a measly 36% of total attempts. Weirdly enough, you don’t hear Lord Fartley describing the Clippers as a “jump shooting team” very often.

A good chunk of the Warriors’ points in the paint come as a byproduct of their league leading defense and the devastating fast breaks they spawn. Not surprisingly, the Warriors are – here we go again – first in both points off turnovers (20 per game) and fast break points (21 per game). Having a potent low post scoring threat is nice, but buckets don’t get much easier than 2 or 3-on-1 fast break layups. This abundance of easy baskets (combined with their accuracy from behind the arc) is a big reason the Warriors are, once again, FIRST in the league in effective field goal percentage.

So, now that it’s been established that the Warriors are super good at scoring easy buckets, let’s examine the second part of Lord Fartley’s claim – that the slow pace of the playoffs will somehow gum up what the Warriors do best. Since the Warriors are – wait for it – first in the league in pace with over 101 possessions per game, the thinking goes that the playoffs will make maintaining that pace an impossibility. But a look at last year’s playoffs (which, coincidentally, were won by the team that finished 10th in pace) indicates that the pace of individual series were more predicated on matchups than some steadfast rule about slow playoff games.

The Spurs, for example, finished last season averaging 95 possessions per game. This decreased to 91 in the first round against the Mavs (a team that finished in the middle of the pack in pace), but increased to 96 in the second round against the Blazers (who finished 12th). For their entire playoff run, the Spurs averaged 92 possessions per game – a tiny 3% decrease from their regular season clip. In fact, -3% was the average regular season pace differential for all Western Conference playoff teams, last season. So, while Lord Fartley’s claim that playoff games slow down may be technically true, the implication that they become low scoring marathons is exaggerated at best.

For the sake of argument, though, let’s assume a 3% drop from the Warriors’ current pace for the playoffs this season. That would still mean 98 possessions per playoff game. The Warriors have played 22 games at or below the 98 possessions pace this season and have won 18 of them by an average of 13 points. I dunno, this seems pretty good?

Lord Gnarles Fartley is a jovial, entertaining, character that pokes holes and says controversial things about basketball while making fun of stat geeks never getting laid. The one thing he is not is a psychic. Neither are the stat geeks that use historical data to try and ascertain the likely outcomes of inherently chaotic events like basketball games. The Warriors are good. They have the best record in the NBA, 50 games into the 82-game season. It’s not a fluke. They aren’t going to suddenly forget how to play basketball come May and (hopefully) June. So, Lord Fartley’s argument dismissing the Warriors as false “title contenders” in February is meaningless, because the label “title contender” is meaningless. Like the word flarfugerber. But that’s okay, because Lord Fartley is hilarious and for the first time in a long time, people are arguing about whether the Warriors can win it all; which, if you think about it, isn’t bad for a jump shooting team.