Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins published a fascinating piece on Tuesday about LeBron James.
In it he detailed James is already getting ready for the 2016-17 NBA season — the earliest he’s ever done so. James also talked about chasing the ghost in Chicago, alluding to the fact that he has Michael Jordan set in his sights.
But there was a paragraph from Jenkins specifically dealing with Golden State Warriors that flew under the radar:
One NBA front office ran simulations, based on player values, for the upcoming season. Cleveland came out with 64 wins, second best in the league. Golden State came out with 83, better than undefeated. They broke the system.
Steve Kerr has already said on KNBR 680 that he will treat this regular season much different than the last. Draymond Green and Steph Curry pleaded behind the scenes (and publicly to the media) to be given the opportunity to chase the 72 wins record. Kerr relented to the demands. And while the Warriors took a bow after winning 73 games in April, they walked off the Oracle Arena floor in June with their heads hung as James and his Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated their first-ever championship.
Whether the Warriors ran out of gas in Games 5, 6 and 7 of the NBA Finals is entirely up for debate. Does fatigue from the regular season leak into the postseason? That’s a debate science couldn’t even solve. The point is that Kerr likely won’t be putting the pedal to the medal in the grueling regular season, meaning 82 wins are not going to be in the cards. Now that he has four superstars in the fold, Kerr might even pull a Gregg Popovich and randomly sit some of his starters now and then.
There’s a good chance Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Green are asked about going for 82 regular season wins once they meet with reporters in Rio for the Olympics.