Steph Curry & the Golden State Warriors are renowned for transforming basketball, leading the shift to motion offense & three-point shooting. Beyond the flash & titles lies a core value: hard work.
Curry's smooth plays may seem effortless, but his success is built on practice. He puts in hours to perfect his craft, a mindset shared by his teammates, which have the Warriors a feared opponent. This value extends off-court too. The organization prioritizes hard work from staff to front office, fostering a culture that values effort & determination in professional sports. This isn't lost on current and former NBA players like Raymond Felton and Theo Pinson.
“[The Warriors] changed how the whole league wanted to play offense… They basically changed the game of basketball… Now they got big men shooting threes.”
— Raymond Felton 🙌
(via @TidalLeague)pic.twitter.com/Ysaf4sJDhA
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 13, 2024
Felton joined Theo Pinson on his podcast Run The Race and the duo sparked a conversation about the greatness of the Warriors and how they were both able to see it up close as competitors of the Dubs.
“They basically changed the game of basketball. You know, if you think about it, when I first came in, it was legit fives where you had to throw the ball in the post and these dudes trying to get buckets, like Dwight Howard and them Shaq and them…They was throwing the ball in the post of these dudes and these dudes going to work. Z-Bo, all of them. But then if you fast forward a couple, a few years later, they come in. And the stuff they was doing, shooting the threes and now they got big men shooting threes and now the whole game changed. Now nobody want to post up bigs. Now they want dudes to shoot threes.”
“And you can't play in the drop no more,” Pinson added, talking about dropping down off the screen to protect the paint. Now, defenders in pick-and-roll action are forced to either switch, hedge, or double which opens up the defense to be attacked in a multitude of ways.
Raymond Felton agreed and said, “You got to put them in as a dynasty because they kind of changed the game.”
The Warriors' credentials as a dynasty are unquestionable. With four NBA Championships in six appearances, it would be malpractice not to put them in the conversation of the greatest teams of all time.
Bob Myers: The 73-9 Season was not a failure
One of the crowning achievements of the Golden State Warriors dynasty is their 73-9 season, which unseated the 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls for the best regular season of all time. The season is widely viewed as a failure because they were unable to win the NBA Championship, giving up a 3-1 lead to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
However, in a recent appearance on JJ Redick's podcast The Old Man & Thre Three, Myers says that he doesn't see the season as a failure
“When we lost to Cleveland that year—we were 73-9—a lot of people said your team failed, you didn't win a championship. And at the time, I said to Steve, ‘No, no, no, we get to decide what this season meant; nobody else does.' That record's not gonna be broken,” Myers said on JJ Redick's “The Old Man and the Three” podcast.
“I got lucky and won Executive of the Year twice. I didn't win Executive of the Year when we had the best record in history; I didn't win it that year. I'm so proud of that season for me and the team because it was so fun. It was pristine, but we didn't win the championship—you failed. That's your definition of the season. That's not mine.”
Sports fans often view a successful season solely based on winning a championship. However, the Golden State Warriors' 73-9 season undeniably contributed to their dynasty, affirming the strength of their winning system and culture.
Golden State holds the tenth seed in the 2024 NBA Playoff race. They face the Jazz in the final game of the regular season on Sunday, aiming to make a final push to climb the Play-In Tournament rankings.
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