There are many teams in the history of the NBA that will feel like they have a right to call themselves the greatest team ever. Bill Russell’s Celtics teams won more titles than any other team ever has, the Showtime Lakers changed the game in their ways, Larry Bird’s Celtics were a behemoth in their own right, and there isn’t much to be said about Michael Jordan and his unstoppable Chicago Bulls that hasn’t already been said.
But the one modern team that has an argument to stand against any of these teams is the Golden State Warriors. In 2017, they assembled a team that is often considered just unbeatable, when they added Kevin Durant to the winningest roster in NBA regular season history. The Warriors had gone 73-9 in 2015-16, something unheard of, before losing dramatically to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, which stopped them from undisputedly claiming the tag of the best team ever.
Their response was to add Kevin Durant to the roster, a move that sent shockwaves through the NBA and created perhaps the most potent offense in terms of spacing that basketball had ever seen.
And that Warriors team won the championship, making up for the deficiencies of the previous one. And they were so good, that they got the notoriously loyal Bill Simmons to pick against his Boston Celtics. Simmons admitted on his podcast that they were probably better than the 1986 Celtics team with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish.
“The inside-outside game they have was ridiculous.”
A lineup of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala is incredibly overpowered, allowing them to own the space on the floor and run circles around their opponents. How they would have fared in the post against the likes of Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, while the size of Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson would certainly cause trouble for the backcourt.
Both teams went 67-15 in the regular season before breezing through the playoffs, although the Warriors lost fewer postseason games. It is safe to say that picking between the two would simply be splitting hairs. The Warriors deserve a lot more recognition in terms of their place on the all-time list, and if Bill Simmons is putting them above the Celtics, then it might be safe to say that they are actually getting it.
