It wasn’t all that long ago when the Golden State Warriors were the class of the NBA. Heck, they won a championship as recently as two years ago. But when a fall from grace happens, it’s usually never gradual. It’s more akin to a dive off a cliff.
On Sunday, the Boston Celtics, a team many believe is one of the NBA’s cream-of-the-crop title contenders this season, absolutely pasted Curry’s Warriors. After about six minutes of roughly even first-quarter play, the Celtics opened up the floodgates on Golden State, eventually winning 140-88 in a wire-to-wire laugher.
When asked about what went wrong for the Warriors after the loss, Steph Curry wouldn’t lie to himself.
He resigned himself to the Celtics’ prolific firepower, and when noting that’s what the Warriors used to do to teams at their peak, it almost felt like he was acknowledging Golden State’s time at the top of the league was probably over:
By no means are the Warriors irrelevant. They will be at the forefront of NBA conversations as long as they have Curry shooting lights-out most nights and a still somewhat promising nucleus. But they’re also ninth in the Western Conference right now, a team firmly in the play-in. They’re just 3-11 against teams that have a 60 percent winning percentage or better (read: the NBA’s best teams). Perhaps most importantly, no team has ever lost by at least 50 points in the regular season and gone on to win the title.
Golden State does have a relatively soft schedule down the stretch and will likely make some kind of noise this spring. But at the very least, it’s probably fair to write the Warriors off as a dominant juggernaut that can make it to the Finals in June. That time feels over.