West No. 2 | Full List
No. 1: Golden State Warriors
Last Season: 67-15
1st place in West; Won NBA Finals 4-2 over Cleveland
The deepest team in basketball returns more than 90 percent of the roster that led it to its first championship in 40 years, but now the Warriors won't have the element of surprise on their side. While they overwhelmed teams with their ability to play numerous unconventional lineups, the rest of the league without a doubt has spent a lot of time dissecting Golden State's potent small-ball lineups that featured Draymond Green at the 5. So, the Warriors will have to continue to creatively exploit their quickness and basketball IQ advantages.
Perhaps the biggest question mark entering the season is the health of head coach Steve Kerr, who underwent multiple back surgeries in the offseason and is sidelined to start the year. While Luke Walton has a bright future as a head coach in this league, the Warriors' preseason performance has been less than encouraging under his lead, making the team on Kerr-watch until he can return.
Perhaps the most important event that led to the winning of the championship was the roster move that didn't happen: the proposed trade for Kevin Love, who ended up going to Cleveland after the Warriors refused to part ways with Klay Thompson. Instead, Golden State inked Thompson to a cap-friendly extension (instead of using the technical designation of max, which is expressed as a percentage of the cap, they guesstimated the projected number, which came out lower than where the actual max ended up), and Thompson rewarded the team with a career year.
Of course, Thompson's career year was one of several on the Golden State roster, none more impressive than Stephen Curry's MVP campaign. In Kerr's offensive system, Curry was an extremely dangerous player, able to run off screens and attack off the move, taking advantage of the superb passing talents of several teammates. Additionally, Curry was asked to take a more active role on the defensive end, guarding tougher matchups rather than being hidden on the weakest link as he had in prior seasons. Because of Golden State's switch-heavy defense, he was able to be a positive contributor on the defensive end, posting the second-highest defensive real plus-minus (RPM) among all point guards (+1.91).
In all, the Warriors put forth one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history, winning 67 games (tied for sixth-most in NBA history) and posting one of the best net ratings since Michael Jordan's Bulls in the late 1990s. The dominance would continue into the postseason, where the Warriors went 16-5 en route to securing the NBA title.
In the immortal words of Charles Oakley, "If it ain't broke, don't break it," as the Warriors end the offseason with their championship roster pretty much intact. They held on to Green, a restricted free agent, by signing him to a five-year, $82 million deal.
The biggest move was the trade of forward David Lee to Boston for Gerald Wallace, who was in turn flipped to the Sixers for Jason Thompson. Lee had fallen out of the rotation with the rise of Green as a starting 4, and while he handled the demotion with professionalism, he made it known that he wouldn't be able to repeat that role.
Thompson brings something of a duplication of backup big Marreese Speights' skill set, with Thompson being a better defensive player but a lesser offensive talent. If he can demonstrate an ability to extend his shooting depth to 3-point range, he might be able to give the Warriors a different look at the 5 as another spacer.
That dream title season was fun. Now the Warriors are facing adversity from the jump. Kerr continues to recover from back surgery complications, which puts the onus of head coach responsibilities on the 35 year-old Walton. Coaching any team is difficult, but Walton's task is immense in this unique situation. Walton, who retired as a player in 2013, must convey leadership when the leader can return at any moment. Few substitute teachers instruct on so public a stage.
"He still has the player stink on him," one NBA agent said. To succeed while Kerr's out, Walton must wash away the stink, that acrid interregnum between "ex-player" and "head coach." Can he get there quickly? He's well liked in the locker room and has Kerr's trust. Players and assistants insist that he's already grown a lot over the preseason. Also, his roster isn't half bad.
This roster is essentially last year's 67-win squad, minus Lee and Justin Holiday, plus Thompson and Ian Clark. Unlike last year's team, this one played sloppy preseason ball. That can possibly be chalked up to the meaninglessness of the games, though. "It's concerning, but some of it is they just don't want to play preseason," one Golden State official told ESPN. After a season of proving themselves, the Warriors might become a team of flip-switchers, saving their energy until urgency stokes. Look for a team that might get even better on offense, but perhaps slip a bit defensively. Another thing to look for: Curry absolutely throttled these preseason games and was sharp in training camp. The MVP just might be better this season. -- Ethan Sherwood Strauss
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Stephen Curry, PG: +8.5
Klay Thompson, SG: +4.1
Harrison Barnes, SF: -0.5
Draymond Green, PF: +6.8
Andrew Bogut, C: +2.0
Scouting reports on every player on the Warriors
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
Curry, the original Splash Brother and NBA's most lethal shooter, is also the team's best interior threat. The 6-foot-3 guard led the Dubs in paint points per game last season with 6.3.
Thompson, the other Splash Brother, projects to shoot 42.7 percent from 3, the league's fourth-best rate.
All about the space: 5th (461 sq. ft. of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver effect (KKE) -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, which factors in 3-point percentage, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG percentage.
Korver effect: Curry, whose 96.3 KKE is second only to Korver himself, has the NBA record for 3s through six seasons.
They may not be Vegas' odds-on favorite to win the title, but it's clear the rest of the league is trying to catch up to the Warriors' level. No team combines the type of flexibility and versatility on both ends of the court that Golden State does; more importantly, no roster boasts as many high-IQ players from top to bottom, and it is the team's overall basketball intelligence that allows the Warriors to execute the sort of on-the-fly adjustments that makes their offense so hard to stop and their defense so impenetrable.
In many ways, that intelligence is an extension of the brain of coach Kerr, who perfectly balanced communication and ego management with creative play calling. In that sense, while "health" is a caveat that applies to every team's chances of greatness, for Golden State, the biggest health question mark is Kerr. With an early schedule that features double dates against the Clippers, Grizzlies, and Pelicans in the first month alone, it wouldn't be surprising to see them start the season slowly before building toward the end of the year.