It was the year 1996 and Michael Jordan had just returned after his first retirement from the National Basketball Association a year prior. After the Bulls were eliminated by Shaquille O’Neal’s Orlando Magic in 1995, Jordan picked up the next season right off where he had left 1993 and won his fourth championship.
But 1995-1996 was special; that Chicago Bulls, which was regarded as the strongest team in the history of the NBA, set a record with 72 wins and 10 losses. The trio Jordan, Scott Pippen, and Dennis Rodman caused havoc in the league.
Twenty years later, another member of that historic Bulls team is about to break the record he helped set. Steve Kerr was a point guard on the 1996 team and is now the coach of the Golden State Warriors who are likely to go down in history as one of the best basketball teams ever.
The Golden State Warriors have already set new a record by concluding 53 wins so far. No one seems to be able to stop them. The San Antonio Spurs, who have posted their best start to a season, already notching 50 wins, were utterly demolished by the Warriors. The same goes for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the best team in the Eastern Conference.
When the Miami Heat and Oklahoma Thunder seemed about to inflict the Warriors their sixth defeat this season last week, their hopes were upset by the best player in the world: Stephen Curry.
Curry, son of former NBA player Dell Curry, is a marksman from three-point range and can score at will from almost anywhere on the court. During the last game with the Thunder, with just four seconds left in overtime, he shot the ball from nearly 40 feet away from the hoop, making the shot with an uncanny ease.
But it is not only Curry.
The Warriors claim the talent of another great player: Klay Thompson. Thompson also the son of a former NBA player recently won the three-point contest at the 2016 All-Star competition two weeks ago. Thompson, like Curry, is a near perfect shooter, passer, and attacker. It seems that the Warriors have a complete arsenal of out-standing players: Draymond Green, who finishes almost every game with a triple double; Andre Iguodala, who unselfishly agreed on coming off the bench despite his dominance; Harrison Barnes; Andrew Bogut; and Shaun Livingston. They are all exceptional players who move around the court and can make lethal game-winning shots at ease.
What distinguishes the Warriors from the rest of the teams is their chemistry, an unselfish fast-moving game that leaves their opponents trailing widely behind. And if that combination does not suffice, they still have Curry, who can a barrage of three-pointers in less than a minute. In the last game with Oklahoma, Curry broke his own record finishing the night with 12 three-point field goals made.
To anyone following the NBA, it is crystal clear who will be crowned as champion for the second year in a row. As Curry put it on the “Warriors Plus/Minus” podcast with the Bay Area News Group: “We enjoy what we do. But for the most part, you don’t hear us talking about, you know, comparing ourselves to other great teams and ‘We could beat this team, we’re better than this team’. We’re living in the moment.”
Still basketball fans all over the world are wishing for a decisive show–down in which the Warriors will be truly tested.
