Does Wednesday night's Clippers-Warriors matchup (10:30 ET, ESPN/WatchESPN) feature the two best teams in the NBA? Is this season's MVP playing in the game?
Our NBA Insiders debate.
1. Fact or Fiction: These are the best two teams in the NBA.
Amin Elhassan, ESPN Insider: Fiction. The Warriors are undoubtedly the best team in basketball right now, but I still have the Cavaliers ahead of the Clippers, especially in light of how the Clips' bench has come back down to earth after a hot start to the season.
Jeremias Engelmann, ESPN Insider: Fiction. My own power rankings have the Raptors rated a hair better than the Clippers, who have now lost four out of their last six, including losses against the Nets and the Pacers (twice). If you want to be called a top-2 team in this league, you can't have these kinds of slip-ups
Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Insider: Fiction. They've been the best so far, but Cleveland will be there when it counts. I do see the the Clippers as the biggest threat to the Warriors in the West.
Andrew Han, ESPN.com: Fact-ion. L.A.'s piping-hot season is cooking unevenly as of late, with uninspiring losses and a defense and bench that have regressed. The Warriors are certainly one of the two best teams, but the Clippers? For now it depends on what day you're asking.
Kevin Pelton, ESPN Insider: Fiction. I wouldn't be surprised if the Clippers won the second-most games in the league this season, given their point differential trails only the Warriors, but I think the Cleveland Cavaliers are a better team with less incentive to win during the regular season and greater tendency to drift.
2. The Warriors are No. 1 in offense, and the Clippers are No. 1 in defense. What best describes this dynamic?
A. Great defense wins.
B. Great defense, better offense wins.
Pelton: B. The Clippers' defensive rating is 4.6 percent better than league average -- good, but not at all comparable to the Warriors' historic offensive rating, which is a full 10.8 percent better than league average. No team since 1973-74 has finished more than 9.5 percent better than league average on offense, so the Golden State attack is truly in a league of its own.
Doolittle: B. League ranks are great, but let's face it -- that's not the whole story here. The Clippers' defense has been terrific but we're not talking vintage Spurs here. Meanwhile, the Warriors may be establishing a new tier of regular-season offensive efficiency.
Engelmann: B. While the Clippers have the best defense, their defensive rating is "only" five points better than league average. This pales, in comparison, with the Warriors' historically great offensive rating of 118, 12 points better than league average.
Han: B. Golden State's offense continues to rise in efficiency while L.A.'s defense has slid out of the top spot and back in. Regardless, even if a defense does everything correctly and forces a terrible shot, the Warriors' offense is the rare exception where that might not matter.
Elhassan: B. The Clippers have been tremendous defensively, and a lot of that can be attributed to the continued improvement of Blake Griffin and the growth in playing time for Luc Mbah a Moute, their most versatile defender.
Still, their defensive rating is built on playing offenses that are not the caliber of the best offense ever. Put bluntly: Being the No. 1 defense is all well and good until you have to guard a team with a 7-foot wing who is scoring the most efficient 27 points per game in NBA history,, a guard who routinely launches from 28 feet and is the only unanimous MVP in NBA history and a guard who just scored 60 points off 88 seconds of touch time and 11 dribbles.
3. Which team do you find more intriguing going forward?
Elhassan: Both! Despite the Warriors posting historic offensive efficiency and having a top-10 defense that has been top two in the past 10 games, there's still room for improvement on both ends of the floor. The offense has had regular bouts of bogging down, and there are still defensive lapses, particularly in some switching situations.
For the Clippers, it's recapturing that bench production from earlier in the year and monitoring whether fifth starter Luc Mbah a Moute can continue his efficient offensive play throughout the course of the season.
Engelmann: The Warriors, at this point, are what everyone thought they'd be, so they're not very intriguing to me. The Clippers are more intriguing because, when motivated, they can pose a real threat to this Warriors team that almost everyone expects to waltz through the entire playoffs
Doolittle: Definitely the Clippers. I love a last-stand kind of story, and that's what this season could be for LA. Chris Paul has been playing like it's a now-or-never proposition for this group.
Han: The Clippers, by far, are the team filled with more intrigue for the season. Golden State will be eminently fun to watch, but a good show requires ups and downs, obstacles and resolution. Will L.A.'s bench coalesce and regain its early-season vigor? Is Luc Mbah a Moute acquitting himself as the fifth starter? Can Chris Paul and Blake Griffin galvanize the Clippers' resolve? The biggest question for the Warriors is which player will burst into a supernova for the evening.
Pelton: Golden State the rest of this season. How can you take your eyes off the Warriors when Klay Thompson can score 60 points in 29 minutes with no warning? Their pursuit of the greatest offensive season in NBA history is a must-watch. The Clippers, by contrast, are more of a known quantity. The fascination with the Clippers will come next summer if they're unable to knock off Golden State this year.
4. Wednesday's game will be a test of ...
Doolittle: Early trends. The Clippers have slumped, but overall they have been so much better defensively. There is no better test of that than facing the Warriors right now.
Elhassan: Rational thought. It's going to be very tempting to draw massive conclusions off the result of this game, but it is still one of 82 and a first meeting between division rivals who probably won't want to show their full hand.
Engelmann: The Clippers' bench. After starting the season with a series of unexpectedly solid performances, the Clippers' bench has been outscored by its opponents in five of the past six games. With the Warriors having one of the NBA's stronger benches -- thanks to Andre Iguodala and David West -- the Clippers' bench might dig a hole the starting unit can't climb out of.
Han: The rivalry spirit. For those old-school fans dismayed by the lack of venom between teams today, Warriors-Clippers is sure not to disappoint. They. Do. Not. Like. Each. Other. The Clippers are just good enough to test the Warriors' mettle, and Golden State's Death Lineup is about to face the top starting lineup in the league by net rating. Did I mention they don't care for one another?
Pelton: Our ability to avoid overreacting to a single game in the regular season. From an X's and O's standpoint, I'm most interested to see whether Doc Rivers continues to stay big down the stretch if Steve Kerr goes to the new, improved version of the Death Lineup.
5. Will the 2016-17 MVP be in this game?
Elhassan: No. Kevin Durant has the best shot of any player in this game, as the proud owner of the most efficient 27 PPG in NBA history, including a true shooting percentage that is a full 10 percentage points better than 2015-16 unanimous MVP Steph Curry's. But there's going to be immense pressure on voters to reward someone from one of the other front-runners. There will be numerous rationalizations attempting to explain why a Warriors player shouldn't win MVP this season.
Han: Let's parse out the field. If Wednesday night's game has four plausible MVP candidates, how many other qualified candidates are there among the rest of the league (qualified meaning a star on a team likely to finish high enough in the standings)? Four other players? Then the tie goes to the players not playing in this game, because they likely won't have votes cannibalized by a teammate.
Doolittle: No. Advanced metrics aside, as long as Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple-double and the Thunder are in the playoff picture, it's hard to see anyone but him winning it.
Engelmann: Probably. According to real plus-minus, this season's two best players (Chris Paul and Kevin Durant) and the sixth-best player (Steph Curry) are playing in this game. With the Cavaliers slightly struggling, and Kawhi Leonard playing slightly worse than he was last season, the only other strong MVP candidates appear to be James Harden and Russell Westbrook.
Pelton: No, I think James Harden and Russell Westbrook are more likely to be MVP than anyone on these two teams.