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If it seems like everyone wants the Golden State Warriors to fail, that might not be too far-fetched. According to a recent TrueHoop podcast, ESPN's Brian Windhorst revealed that there's a growing belief that the Warriors are arrogant.
“Within the NBA, there's a belief that the Warriors are a bit arrogant,” Windhorst said on the podcast. “I can't tell you how many times in the last four or five months, when I'm talking with other people in the league, whether it's agents or executives or whomever, coaches … there's the reference, ‘Well, they are light years ahead so they'll be fine'.”
If you haven't yet heard, in an interview with the Bruce Schoenfeld of the New York Times back in March of 2016, Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob spoke about the status of his team and the organization. Needless to say, Lacob made some very bold statements.
When I asked him about the previous night’s game, he could hardly contain himself. He boasted that the Warriors are playing in a far more sophisticated fashion than the rest of the league. “We’ve crushed them on the basketball court, and we’re going to for years because of the way we’ve built this team,” he said. But what really set the franchise apart, he said, was the way it operated as a business. “We’re light-years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we’re going to go about things,” he said. “We’re going to be a handful for the rest of the N.B.A. to deal with for a long time.”
Not too long after that the Warriors won 73 games and seemed invincible. They weren't able to close the deal, however, and blew a 3-1 NBA Finals lead to the Cavs, becoming the first team to ever do so.
Acquiring Kevin Durant has put the Warriors atop the list of teams expected to win an NBA Championship, and even general manager Bob Myers has acknowledged that training camp and the start of the season will not be as easy and fluid as it was last year.
The Warriors lost six key bench players when they acquired Durant, and it'll be interesting to see the transition takes place from Andrew Bogut, Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli, Harrison Barnes, and Brandon Rush to Kevin Durant, Zaza Pachulia, David West and a couple of young players.
