The number one story going into the 2016-17 NBA season is the Golden State Warriors. They’ve fortified themselves to official super team status after adding Kevin Durant. In the process, they lost several pieces of their wholesome roster which helped them achieve history over the last two seasons. While they are now more talented individually, like all super teams, a transition process must be endured and conquered before reaching the desired pinnacle level.
Warriors general manager Bob Myers talked about that process and the expectations of the team on KNBR’s Murph & Mac:
I think a lot of people think we signed Durant and everything is great, which in reality, that is a really good thing. But we have a lot of new parts. This is not a team like last year’s team, where we could just hit training camp in stride. As much as we like our roster, it’s gonna take some time to evolve with guys like Durant, David West, [Zaza] Pachulia. We lost six guys. So even though we’re happy with the offseason, I do think we’re gonna have some turbulence….
One advantage of the offseason was the Olympics in Rio. Kevin Durant, describing this experience with Team USA as “therapy”, had his first taste of playing with two of his new teammates, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, as Team USA captured gold. Myers knows the chemistry still has to develop.
“It takes time to develop chemistry. And that doesn’t happen in one day or one week or one month. It’s exciting. I think it’s gonna be a great process to watch unfold. But I do think because of the expectation level, probably the highest expectation you can ever put certainly on a Warriors team — even though I think a lot of people thought we would win the championship last year, I think people now are even having higher expectations. When you have that level of expectation, that’s where you want to be as an organization, but it also magnifies any adversity or any stretch of losing.
Myers uses the word “exciting”, and he’s right, because the league’s super power is more super. It’s exciting for the league, as LeBron James himself stated, and for the fans. The Warriors will have their growing and adjusting pains, but they made their push for Durant for a reason: when they are able to reach that pinnacle, things will get scary.
