Warriors’ path to favorable playoff seed wide open over last 20 games

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Warriors’ path to favorable playoff seed wide open over last 20 games originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

By winning six of their first seven games coming out of the All-Star break, the Warriors are rolling into the NBA homestretch in fine position to reach their regular-season goal stated a few weeks ago.

The No. 6 seed in the Western Conference is theirs to lose after a tremendous 114-102 victory over the New York Knicks on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.

“Really good win,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters in New York. “They all count, but this felt good. On the road, on a back-to-back, against a great team. Kind of hanging in there when shots weren’t going in in the first half. I liked how solid we were for the whole 48. Every possession mattered and there was purpose.

“Jimmy [Butler] has a lot to do with that. But I’d give all our guys a lot of credit because they’re finding a real identity and it’s fun to watch unfold.”

With 20 games remaining, the Warriors are poised to sprint toward the NBA playoffs. If they can maintain the pace they’ve set since Butler arrived, winning nine of 11 games, they’ll reach 50 wins, which could be enough to finish fifth in the West. They are three games behind the fifth-place Houston Rockets. (Here is where we note that only 12 days ago the Warriors were three games behind the sixth-place Los Angeles Clippers.)

Even if Golden State cools down the stretch, it still can achieve the 48 wins that would all but assure escaping the dreaded NBA play-in tournament. After two-plus months of searching for their best selves, they seem to have found it.

“We just try to defend at a high level, first and foremost,” Curry said. “With Draymond [Green] at the 5 and Jimmy at the 4, you can play pretty fast and try to speed teams up on both ends. And you try to limit your turnovers, and usually good things are going to happen. Whether we make or miss shots, we don’t really live and die by that. It’s truly the fundamentals of the game: Play good defense, take care of the ball.”

Coming out of the All-Star break, we separated Golden State’s final 27 into…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/warriors-path-favorable-playoff-seed-215328550.html

Author : NBC Sports BayArea

Publish date : 2025-03-04 21:53:00

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