Steph Curry, Draymond Green have Warriors back on top of the NBA hierarchy

By Yaron Weitzman
FOX Sports NBA Writer

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — We knew the Golden State Warriors were a good team, even before their 117-99 shellacking of the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday. 

We just didn’t know how good. 

That’s no longer the case. I’m always wary of jumping to conclusions off a single game, but after watching Steph & Co. dismantle the Nets — in Brooklyn, no less — to improve to an NBA-best 12-2 on the season, I think it’s safe to say the Warriors have cemented themselves as legitimate championship contenders. 

Given how wide-open the league looks right now, they might even be title favorites. 

"That’s a team that you look at, you take a lot from that as a team and understand that’s the level you want to get to," Nets star Kevin Durant said after the game.

As brilliant and breathtaking as it can be to watch the Warriors when they have the ball, their defense has set the tone so far this season. They entered Tuesday night boasting the league’s top defensive rating — 99.3 points allowed per 100 possessions — and that number will only improve after they held the Nets to 99 points on 38.6% shooting.

The Warriors are long, fast and athletic. They force a ton of turnovers (eighth in the league, according to Cleaning the Glass), protect the rim (no team has allowed a lower percentage of opponent shots to come at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass) and have been the best in the league at keeping opponents off the offensive glass. 

It all starts with Draymond Green, who right now has to be the favorite for Defensive Player of the Year. Fans saw why Tuesday, as he was able to hound Durant into his first off-night of the season, with a 19-point performance on 6-for-19 shooting.

"You can’t do a better job defensively than what Draymond did tonight," Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said after the game.

Any defense featuring Green is going to be one of the league’s best. "Draymond is unreal both in terms of his versatility and leadership on the defensive end," Curry said. 

But this is far from a one-man-show. Andre Iguodala can still blanket the league’s top wings. Andrew Wiggins always possessed the physical tools to be a defensive ace and is now putting in the effort. Reserve wings such as Gary Payton II and Damion Lee wreak havoc off the bench.

The group rotates as if they’ve been together for years. And Kerr isn’t afraid to mix things up, as he did Tuesday, when he unleashed both a box-and-one and a triangle-and-two. 

"The constant pressure we put on the defensive end, it wears on teams," Curry said. 

As for the Warriors' offense — which entered Tuesday as the league’s third-most potent — you know the engine. Curry, who torched the Nets to the tune of 37 points while splashing nine of his 14 triples, is, to quote Durant, "a master at what he does." The bombing from deep garners most of the attention (and oohs and aahs) — and for good reason. Curry stopping-and-popping in transition from 35 feet away or pulling up from the logo in the face of some sluggish big man who forgot to leap out off the screen remains one of the most glorious and exhilarating sights in all of sports.

But it’s what he does off the ball that separates him from every other sweet-shooting guard. 

"There's never been anybody like him," Kerr said. "He's an offense just by himself. He's an offense because he's going to pull defenders with him 35 feet from the hoop, and then it's a matter of putting smart people around him like Draymond, like Andre and many others who are going to take that defensive attention that Steph gets and then play-make behind the play when Steph gets the ball out of his hands.

"So the fact that Steph can be dominant on and off the ball is what makes him unique. There's nobody in the league now — or, as far as I'm concerned, ever — who had that combination of on-ball skill and pick-and-roll dominance. But, you know, the off-ball game of Reggie Miller, Rip Hamilton or, you know, somebody flying off screens."

The chemistry Curry and Green have formed is unparalleled. But as Kerr said, Curry’s cutting and constant motion have opened up the floor for players such as Wiggins (18 points per game) and Jordan Poole (17 PPG) to thrive and vets such as Otto Porter (43.6 3P%) and Nemanja Bjelica (46.7 3P%) to be revived.

Sure, everything derives from the stars. But the Warriors are also succeeding because they’ve surrounded their two stars with a plethora of savvy and talented role players capable of leveraging Curry and Green’s greatness. What happens when Klay Thompson returns? Or even James Wiseman? There’s no timetable on Thompson, but he’s getting closer. He was recently cleared to begin playing five-on-five. Kerr said Thompson did so Monday and is "progressing well."

There’s no telling what kind of player Thompson will be upon his return from a two-year injury hiatus or how long he’ll need to reacquaint himself with the NBA game. But the proposition of the West’s top team adding one of the greatest shooting guards of all time to its rotation should have the rest of the league concerned. 

This Warriors team might not be a juggernaut like it was a few years back. But that’s not the bar. They don’t have to be better than some previous version of themselves, just the rest of the NBA.

Right now that looks to be the case.

Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports and the author of "Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports." Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.