It became increasingly obvious as the 2014-15 regular season progressed that the Golden State Warriors were no ordinary team. They climbed to the top of an extremely competitive Western Conference early in the season and never looked back, clinching the top seed by March. They finished the regular season with a 67-15 record (including a ridiculous 39-2 mark at home) and an average point differential of 10.1.
Once it became clear that the Warriors had a chance to join that exlusive club of teams to finish a season with an average Margin of Victory (MOV) in the double digits, NBA pundits far and wide started asking where the Warriors stood among the greatest teams of all time (June 17, 2015
The resulting .806 winning percentage from the Warriors' 83-20 combined regular season and postseason record is the eighth-best mark ever and the best since -- you guessed it -- the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls (84-17, .832).
And their point differential domination from the regular season carried over into the postseason. Their Net Point Differential for the entire year (including the playoffs) finished at +992, tied for the fourth best mark in NBA history and the best since...well, you get the idea:
Highest Net Pt Differential in NBA History (incl. playoffs) 1971 MIL: +1208 1996 CHI: +1194 1972 LAL: +1055 2015 GSW: +992 1992 CHI: +992
Simply put, the 2014-15 NBA season belonged to the Golden State Warriors from start to finish, and no team has truly stacked up to them across the board statistically in almost two decades.
Final Thoughts
Placing this year's Warriors team on a ranked list of the best teams ever to play in the NBA would be a tall order, inevitably filled with biases and heated arguments. We'll leave that kind of thing to the professionals, like ESPN's stat guru, Kevin Pelton.
As for placing the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors on the all-time great list in the first place, that much has become a no-brainer if you believe in the numbers (and honestly, even if you don't). In terms of recent history, it would even be hard to find a better and more complete single season by a team since Jordan's second retirement in 1998.
The early-aught Lakers, the Spurs dynasty of the last 15 years, that lone Celtics championship in '08, and even the recent Miami Heat teams might be in the conversation, but neither of them had a single season that was so damn close to perfect and so clearly the gold standard for the whole league at the time. Honestly, apart from the what-ifs that this postseason's injury report conjure up, what can you take away from a team that dominated a talent-flooded NBA in its most challenging conference from wire to wire and in just about every facet of the game (keeping in mind that we haven't even mentioned their historic shooting)?
Not a whole lot.
So, now that we've answered that question, the next one is painfully obvious: Can the Golden State Warriors turn a single season of all-time greatness and their franchise's first championship in 40 years into the NBA's newest dynasty?
Well, we're about to find out.