Warriors Take Over League's Top Offense

The correlation between having the NBA’s leading scorer and a team scoring the most points per game isn’t as common as some fans would think. Sure, the offense will usually land itself in the top 5, but the best offenses in the NBA are predicated on moving the ball and making sure everyone gets their touches. What’s crazy about the Golden State Warriors is that they’re able to do both - because their leading scorer (and the top scorer in the league) pulls so much attention with his shot-making, that the rest of the floor can play 4-on-3.

Putting up 113.9 points per game and the only team to score over 100 points in every game they’ve played this season, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that the Warriors are this good amidst another MVP-calibre season from Steph Curry. Breaking and setting shooting records left and right, the greatest shooter alive is an anomaly that defenses can’t figure out: Leave a defender on an island, he’s going skating and getting a triple launched right in his face by the 2-time MVP. Bring a help defender, and the ball’s swinging to any number of effective passers who can crash the paint and get an open look for one of their guys. The Warriors are prolific because they have the best system in basketball: Get Steph on the court somewhere.

There should be a lot of credit given to plenty of guys on the roster, however. Draymond Green’s facilitation capabilities that few at his position can match, shooters like Otto Porter Jr. and Nemanja Bjelica that have the game IQ of where to go and when to go there, Jordan Poole’s ability to collapse the defense with an supersonic first step, and a myriad of other guys who can take advantage of how open Steph gets everybody. A guy who usually draws the entire defense’s attention isn’t usually somebody running around off-ball while his team operates, somebody dragging help defense to the outside to open up driving lanes.

Seeking his third scoring title (which would be his second in a row), Curry is once again proving that he is the system. Some people who casually watch the game or just hate how good the Warriors are will try and detract from Curry’s all-time status, saying that it’s the system which makes him so good. But the system does not work unless it’s got him in it, which is why no other team has been able to replicate it so far. His supreme talent is generational, otherwise we’d be seeing James Harden and Damian Lillard finding success whenever they step on the court.

The Dubs are 14-2 ahead of a tougher bit of their schedule: They play the Raptors tomorrow, but have the Sixers, Blazers, Clippers, and two against the Suns in their next 6. Phoenix is looking red-hot right now, on an 11-game winstreak with some big wins of their own in the midst of it. Those two matchups - and their Christmas Day faceoff - should set some expectations for how people act about the Warriors.

Until then, Golden State’s indisputable status as the best team in the league not by a flukey schedule, but by their legit team talent to complement the greatness of Steph Curry, will be known to the few who actually know what they’re looking at when they tune in to the games.

(Photo credit: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)