No one is stopping the Warriors

Obviously, the Golden State Warriors are the best team in the NBA and the overwhelming favorite to win another championship. FiveThirtyEight’s model currently gives Golden State a 46 percent probability of winning the title, and it honestly seems low.

This is despite Golden State making few meaningful changes in the summer, and three of the five closest challengers to the Warriors (the Rockets, Celtics, and Raptors) getting substantially better. (The Spurs didn’t, and the Cavaliers just got weirder.)

This is despite the fact we still haven’t seen a full complement of Spurs in a series against the Warriors.

This is despite the specter of Isaiah Thomas in Cleveland and the chance the Cavaliers might get a shot at trading that Nets pick that rode to town with him, maybe even for DeAndre Jordan or Paul George. (A boy in need of a [wisp of a hope for a] competitive NBA Finals can dream, ¿verdad?)

This is despite the Warriors getting bored here and there, with relatively few challengers hitting hard enough to gain their attention.

The Warriors loom over this season as they did the last, but they lack the mystery of how exactly it will look in action. Now we know, after a year-and-a-half of regular-season warm-ups and a beastly 16-1 playoff run. We know how this ends and what it looks like on the way.

Golden State currently has two of the three best basketball players on the planet, who also happen to be two of the most unstoppable scorers and efficient shooters the universe has ever seen. Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant can occasionally be a little awkward together, and they can be unadulterated magma together at times. (Ask the Raptors, who tasted both in a triumphant moral victory over the weekend.) But clumsy or gorgeous, they are deadly. No one in their path can avoid that truth.

It’s really almost funny we even analyze another Cavaliers’ loss to the Warriors. Golden State has now won six of the last seven over Cleveland.

Once upon a time, before the magical 2016 Finals, the Warriors had won seven straight games in the rivalry, including the end of the 2015 Finals, two regular season squabbles, and the beginning of the 2016 Finals. This stretch of Golden State skew feels different, though. It feels more indestructible, more permanent. In 2015, LeBron James — the unnamed member of the aforementioned Best In The World trio, with Durant and Curry — had little support due to injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. In 2016, the Warriors were a touch worn out, and Draymond Green’s nerves (and nerve) was frayed.

Since then, Green has snapped back into place, Curry sits whenever a limb or ligament flares up, and oh yeah, Durant is lurching around.

Of course there are no apparent weaknesses here: Look at them! But we can’t even find good fictions to convince ourselves the Warriors are fallible.

Durant and Curry could go full Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant — or heck, Jim Jackson and Jason Kidd — and it wouldn’t matter. The Cavaliers could flip the pick and salary filler for Jordan, an All-NBA center, and it wouldn’t matter. The Raptors could actually perform in the playoffs like they do at their regular-season peak and it wouldn’t matter. Kawhi Leonard could get healthy and LaMarcus Aldridge could stay awesome and it wouldn’t matter. (It probably wouldn’t matter. The strange magic of that franchise is difficult for us mere mortals to comprehend. As such, it’s best to stay just shy of definitive.)

The Celtics could get Gordon Hayward back and set Irving up on a date with Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Hubble Telescope and it wouldn’t matter. James Harden could borrow a vial of Chris Paul’s playoff cool, and Paul could remember what it felt like to beat the Warriors long ago, and it wouldn’t matter. Everything could go perfectly right for the Timberwolves, and it wouldn’t matter.

Look how far we have to stretch our brains and reality to imagine the Warriors getting beat. Catastrophic injuries to multiple MVP candidates. The Thunder deciding to flip George in a panic trade with Cleveland. Some world-imploding Anthony Davis trade shocker. A major breakthough for Irving’s spiritual alchemists on Instagram. The opening of Karl-Anthony Towns’ third eye.

Maybe it will be different next year, as other teams make incremental improvements and the Warriors get closer to the end of the Klay Thompson or Green contracts. Maybe it will be different when other rising superstars make additional leaps. (Looking at you and that hypothetical third eye, Mr. Towns.) Maybe it will be different in 2020, as Curry approaches age 32. Maybe it will be different in 2021, when Steve Kerr is sworn in at 1600 Pennsylvania and Joe Lacob gets more vocal in complaint about the luxury tax payments. Maybe it will be different in 2024, when Bronny Jr. joins his dad in Cleveland, or Los Angeles, or wherever, to form a Megatron LeBron.

But this is now. No one is stopping these Warriors in 2018.

If you need something different, you’d better just skip the rest of this season and hope for the best in the future. There’s no avoiding what comes this June.