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Why the Spurs, Clippers, or Thunder will win the West in 2016. Not the Warriors.

The 2015 NBA Finals felt very different from any in recent memory.

Maybe because it was the first time since the 2010 Finals that neither the Heat nor the Spurs, two of the best run organizations in the NBA, were participants. Perhaps it was because for the first time since 1998 the battle for the Larry O'Brien Trophy was being fought without future Hall of Famers Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, or Dwyane Wade. It is also possible this Finals seemed like an outlier due to the Golden State Warriors becoming only the 10th different team to win an NBA championship since 1980. Or maybe it was all the fresh faces the championship round featured (excluding the King of ESPN making his 5th straight appearance).

These are all valid reasons, but still not why. The chief cause of the peculiar feeling I got from this NBA Finals was the fact that, for the first time in my 22 year old life, it felt like I did not see a championship caliber team win the title.

BUT THE WARRIORS WON THE 3RD MOST GAMES ALL-TIME IN THE TOUGHEST WESTERN CONFERENCE EVER.

You mean the same Western Conference that saw nearly every playoff team/contender suffer multiple and major injuries throughout the season? The Rockets lost their starting point guard. So did the young Pelicans. Blake Griffin went down for 15 games on an already paper thin Clippers team. Wes Matthews' Achilles ended his season, and his tenure, with Portland. Mark Cuban single handedly sank the Mavericks' title hopes by playing 2k15 with his team and trading his bench for a point guard who can't shoot, can't defend, and can't even stop himself from cussing out his coach. The Spurs had everyone injured for some length of time and the Thunder lost Durant and Ibaka for most of the season, which is to say they also had everyone injured. Grizzlies couldn't make 3's if the line was moved to high school distance, so that counts as several serious injuries in today's era of basketball. All this actually happened last year, and people still have the gall to say the West was the toughest it's ever been. Yeah, right.

Getting hot at the right time vs. Getting hurt at the worst time

In the playoffs, it was more of the same as ALL FOUR teams the Warriors played had an injured starting point guard, including the starting back court for Memphis and the starting front court for Cleveland. The injury bug bit HARD in 2015, but Golden State had their can of Cutter to keep it at bay because they seemed to be the only team to have neither a serious injury nor a minor but badly-timed one. This is not their fault and I recognize this. They played solid defense, made open shots, capitalized on the other team's mistakes, and benefited greatly by all the rest their blow-out wins allowed them.

However, after seeing them down 2-1 to a Memphis team who (once again) CAN'T get hot from the three point line if the court itself was on fire, only to bounce back and win 3 straight once Tony Allen hurts his hamstring and can no longer give Steph Curry fits on defense, NOT TO MENTION the fact that they dropped 2 straight games to LeBron James and four guys he met in line at H-E-B despite the fact that they had a much deeper and healthier team, I could no longer deny the feeling that this was a team who got hot, got lucky, and ran into good teams that were at their absolute worst. They still won 16 playoff games, so I'm not saying they didn't DESERVE to win the championship. Of course they did. But those 16 wins, along with their 67 in the regular season, were thanks in large part to a myriad of injuries to most of the major contenders.

Which finally brings me to my point: the Golden State Warriors will NOT repeat as champions and would likely get bounced in the second round and maybe even the first if they played either the Spurs, Clippers, or Thunder. Their only moves of the offseason were to trade away some of their front court depth (David Lee to Boston) and add a wing player (Gerald Wallace) to a team absolutely stacked with wing players already (Klay, Barbosa, Green, the Finals MVP, etc).

Addition by Addition

Meanwhile, the Spurs have front court depth for days thanks to their signing of The Big Fundamental Fan Club President, aka LaMarcus Aldridge and convincing David West to play for 500 pesos and some Buddy Bucks Peter Holt found in between the couch cushions. If Summer League/European MVP's Kyle Anderson, Jonathon Simmons, and Boban the Giant turn out to be any kind of decent, there might not be team in history besides the 1996 Monstars who could knock off the Spurs.

The Clippers kidnapped kept DeAndre Jordan (which is the second time in 7 months that an immature, free-throw-allergic player crushed the Dallas Mavericks' hopes of competing for a championship. You'd think Cuban would learn) turned Matt Barnes into Lance Stephenson and Paul Pierce while also snagging Josh Smith (who is a major reason why the Clippers couldn't make it to the Conference Finals last year and could be once again). These aren't Earth-shaking additions, but with CP3 and Blake Griffin on your team these are the kinds of solid moves that could pay huge dividends if they pan out. Pierce proved with the Wizards he's still as clutch as ever while Smith and Stephenson were both above-average players at one point in their careers. The team that sent the Spurs home early this past year (Tony Parker hobbled, Kawhi disappearing Games 5-7, Tiago/Baynes non-factors) just got deeper. Maybe a lot deeper. We'll see.

There were a copious number of max contracts dolled out this summer, but perhaps none was more atrocious/undeserving than the four-year, $70 million deal the Thunder awarded Enes "The Human Revolving Door" Kanter. Ironically, the only max deal given in July that may have been worse than Kanter's was the 5-year, $80 million contract the Detroit Pistons gave to former Thunder guard (and Spurs killer) Reggie Jackson. Kanter aside, the Thunder still have athletic big men Serge Ibaka and Steven Adams and will once again have the services of the 2013-2014 MVP Kevin Durant, whom everyone seems to have forgotten about in the midst of all the Steph-mania and Riley-sanity. Throw in Russell "The 5th Ninja Turtle" Westbrook, a potential bounce-back year for Dion Waiters, and the Thunder (presumably) having SOME semblance of an offensive system with first-year coach Billy Donovan (which they never came close to having with Scott Brooks) and the Thunder look to be a nightmare for the 29 other teams in the Association once again.

Mission: Repeat will be close to impossible

I'm not saying the Golden State Warriors, with the brilliant coaching mind of Steve Kerr and the emotional lift that comes with playing in Oracle Arena, CAN'T make a title run in 2016. They're still a young, athletic, experienced, and hungry team. But when you factor in the run of luck they had in 2015, the lack of offseason moves (ask the 2015 Spurs how that worked out for them), and the vast improvement of other contenders around them, it is doubtful that the Warriors will be able to handle the blitzkrieg thrown at them by a (healthy) Spurs, Clippers, or Thunder. All three teams will be better offensively and defensively than the hobbled Cavaliers team that pushed them to six games. In 2016 Dub Nation will find out what Spurs Nation has been well aware of for the last 15 years: the only thing harder than getting to the top is staying there.

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