One NBA team is enjoying a charmed existence. Behind the league's second-best defense on a per-possession basis and four players averaging at least 20 points per game, it has been able to overcome the absence of its star player -- a former MVP -- to win its past four games and retain the best win percentage of any team.
Another NBA team is down bad. It can't stop anyone, ranking 29th in defensive rating, and the absence of its star -- also a former MVP -- has exacerbated the problem. It has lost its past two games by a combined 68 points to sink to the league's worst record.
The shocking twist? They're the same team:
The defending champion Golden State Warriors at home, and the defending champion Golden State Warriors on the road.
Golden State's overall 19-18 record conceals a Two-Face level separation between their two personalities. At the Chase Center, the Warriors remain unstoppable without the injured Stephen Curry, demonstrated by a Christmas Day win over the West-leading Memphis Grizzlies. On the road, Golden State is fodder, having started 0-8 and been blasted to wrap up a pre-holiday road trip after his injury.
What explains the historically significant difference in the Warriors' home and road play? And what does that tell us about the rest of Golden State's season? Let's take a look.
Shooting looms large for the Jekyll and Hyde Warriors
We've never seen anything in the modern NBA quite like what Golden State is doing this year.
The last time a team simultaneously had the league's best home record and worst road mark more than 15 games into the season was in 1976-77, when the SuperSonics won their first 13 games in Seattle while opening 2-12 elsewhere.
But the strongest explanation for what's happening in the Bay and not happening elsewhere -- that being Warriors wins -- is a thoroughly modern one: opponent 3-point shooting.
There are other differences between how Golden State plays at home and on the road. The Warriors turn the ball over and foul more and are weaker on the defensive glass. Far and away the strongest change, though, is how well opponents shoot 3s.
At Chase Center, Warriors opponents are making 29% of their 3-point attempts -- the league's lowest mark by a wide margin. No other team sees opponents hit less than 32% of their 3s at home. On the road, that trend almost reverses. Golden State opponents make 41% of 3-point attempts in their own arenas -- second only to the San Antonio Spurs.
Given the typical Warriors game features more than 36 3-point attempts, that's a difference of about 13 points per game attributable solely to opponent shot-making beyond the arc. (Some of that difference can be made up in additional offensive rebound opportunities on the extra misses, but not much.) That's approximately two-thirds of the massive 20-point gulf between Golden State's point differential at home (plus-9.7 PPG) and away (minus-10.1).
There are some differences in the types of 3s Warriors opponents shoot. Per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats, a slightly higher share of their 3-point attempts in road games are of the higher-percentage catch-and-shoot variety (72% come off zero dribbles, compared with 69% at home). Second Spectrum data also indicates Golden State is contesting a larger percentage of 3s faced at home (91%) than on the road (89%).
Still, those differences are marginal. Second Spectrum's quantified shot probability (qSP) metric, which considers the location and type of shot, distance of nearby defenders and shooter ability, suggests Warriors opponents should be expected to hit about 35.7% of their 3s at their home arenas and 35.4% at the Chase Center -- a difference 40 times smaller than what we've actually seen so far.
Why neither split is sustainable
Here's the funny thing about those 1976-77 Sonics, who were unbeatable at home (their winning streak in Seattle stretched back to February of the previous season for a total of 29 games, tied for second-longest in NBA history at the time) and winless on the road until December. The rest of the season, they went 14-14 at home and 11-16 on the road, finishing 14th in home winning percentage and tied for 12th away.
Any time fans see a split like this, they're tempted to think that only the bad performance is fluky. If Golden State could just play on the road like they do at home, the Warriors would be the West favorites everyone expected coming into the season.
In reality, most of the time extreme splits are the result of both misfortune in one direction and good luck in the other. The team's true ability is a combination of both.
Let's consider Golden State's home-court advantage from another perspective, comparing its point differential at home and on the road to the first 37 games for other teams since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976-77.
You'll note a couple of things. First, the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz are overrepresented at the top of this list, no surprise because of the benefit they derive from playing at altitude. Second, none of those other teams is from the past three decades, illustrative of the long-term decline in home-court advantage, which Tom Haberstroh wrote about for ESPN back in 2015.
On the heels of the three lowest winning percentages for home teams by season, they've rebounded to win 62% of games in 2022-23, which would be the highest mark in two decades if it holds. (I'll wager it won't.)
Let's return to that group of other dominant home teams to start the season. Over the remainder of the schedule, just one team (the 1987-88 Jazz) maintained or improved its point differential at home. Meanwhile, all 10 improved their point differential on the road. On average, they were three points per game better away and three points worse at home. Their performance evens out considerably but their overall level of play stays more or less the same.
As you might imagine of teams so good at home and so bad on the road, this group was right around .500 on average. It does include a championship team in the 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers, who went 49-33 in the regular season.
Of course, there's reason to believe the Warriors will improve independent of their home/road splits. They've played the past three weeks without Curry, whose absence has overlapped with an injury that sidelined starting small forward Andrew Wiggins. Second-year forward Jonathan Kuminga has taken advantage of the extra minutes, giving coach Steve Kerr a better option to pair with Draymond Green in lineups with Green at center.
Additionally, the wins Golden State has banked at home ensure the team won't fall too far behind in the playoff race while Curry recuperates, with four more home games to start 2023. So it's certainly possible a Warriors surge is coming in the new year. It just won't likely be thanks to becoming as dominant on the road as they have been at home.