ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy thinks that the Golden State Warriors are on the verge of becoming the NBA’s greatest dynasty, or at least the best one since the Boston Celtics in the 1960s.
Jeff Van Gundy thinks the Warriors will go to ‘8 to 10’ straight NBA finals
Van Gundy has the Warriors penciled into the finals for the rest of the decade and then some.
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“Just the combination of offense and defense, the talent that they’ve been able to amass, it puts them in position where this is a dynasty to me,” Van Gundy said on a conference call prior to the Warriors’ 4-1 NBA Finals victory. “They have their youth, they have their health. I see nothing preventing them from going to eight to ten straight Finals. It will be a massive upset, I think, if they’re not there each and every year.”
The only franchise to reach 10 straight finals is the Celtics, who went every year from 1957 to 1966. (They won the Finals in nine of those 10 years.) After losing in the quarterfinals in 1967, Boston won two more finals again the next two seasons.
We’ve seen several teams go three times in recent years (Warriors, Cavaliers, Lakers twice), while the Miami Heat made it to the Finals all four years that LeBron James was there. Before that, you must go back to the Lakers and the Celtics in the 1980s, who both went to the Finals four straight years.
Are the Warriors really set up to be a dynasty that long?
Yes and no.
Golden State’s four key players are all under 30 — Stephen Curry is 29, Kevin Durant is 28, and Draymond Green and Klay Thompson are both 27. Especially for Curry and Thompson, their jump shooting means they likely won’t face any severe decline until their mid-30s, though you never know for sure.
Assuming Curry and Durant both re-sign long-term this summer, which they’re expected to do, then the next free agent that the Warriors will have to deal with is Thompson in 2019. Thompson, who will be 29, might consider leaving, especially if the Warriors aren’t willing to pay him upwards of $200 million that his salary will assuredly command.
There are injuries to worry about, with Durant and Curry both having seasons where they barely played due to foot and ankle problems, respectively. You can never rule that out.
It also feels like the league is more competitive in 2017, in the sense that if you slip up, somebody will take advantage of your mistakes. This is especially true for the Western Conference, which has historically been savage. Then again, the Spurs and Lakers still managed to make 12 finals since 1999, so maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
So yes: The Warriors could easily dominate for the next five, six, or seven seasons before their players start wearing down. They have a combination of players who are all young enough, assuming they are all happy with the role they’re playing and want to keep on winning as many finals as they can.
But also no: Trying to predict dynasties is a notoriously unreliable exercise, and even if the Warriors have all the makings of becoming one, you never know for sure until it happens.
