West No. 2 | Full List
No. 1: Golden State Warriors
Last Season: 67-15
1st place in West; Won NBA Finals 4-2 over Cleveland
The deepest team in basketball returns more than 90 percent of the roster that led it to its first championship in 40 years, but now the Warriors won't have the element of surprise on their side. While they overwhelmed teams with their ability to play numerous unconventional lineups, the rest of the league without a doubt has spent a lot of time dissecting Golden State's potent small-ball lineups that featured Draymond Green at the 5. So, the Warriors will have to continue to creatively exploit their quickness and basketball IQ advantages.
Perhaps the biggest question mark entering the season is the health of head coach Steve Kerr, who underwent multiple back surgeries in the offseason and is sidelined to start the year. While Luke Walton has a bright future as a head coach in this league, the Warriors' preseason performance has been less than encouraging under his lead, making the team on Kerr-watch until he can return.
Perhaps the most important event that led to the winning of the championship was the roster move that didn't happen: the proposed trade for Kevin Love, who ended up going to Cleveland after the Warriors refused to part ways with Klay Thompson. Instead, Golden State inked Thompson to a cap-friendly extension (instead of using the technical designation of max, which is expressed as a percentage of the cap, they guesstimated the projected number, which came out lower than where the actual max ended up), and Thompson rewarded the team with a career year.
Of course, Thompson's career year was one of several on the Golden State roster, none more impressive than Stephen Curry's MVP campaign. In Kerr's offensive system, Curry was an extremely dangerous player, able to run off screens and attack off the move, taking advantage of the superb passing talents of several teammates. Additionally, Curry was asked to take a more active role on the defensive end, guarding tougher matchups rather than being hidden on the weakest link as he had in prior seasons. Because of Golden State's switch-heavy defense, he was able to be a positive contributor on the defensive end, posting the second-highest defensive real plus-minus (RPM) among all point guards (+1.91).
In all, the Warriors put forth one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history, winning 67 games (tied for sixth-most in NBA history) and posting one of the best net ratings since Michael Jordan's Bulls in the late 1990s. The dominance would continue into the postseason, where the Warriors went 16-5 en route to securing the NBA title.