Warriors Insider: 20 Projections and Predictions for the 2016-17 Season

For as much sheer talent that is on the Golden State Warriors’ roster, and considering the basketball intelligentsia is predicting nothing short of a title, there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding this team.

How much effort will they put into the regular season? How much will head coach Steve Kerr limit his stars’ minutes as the wins pile up? Will they avenge their historic NBA Finals collapse?

And most importantly, will Patrick McCaw sing “Candy Rain” again before the season is over?

We can only assume so much, but there are educated guesses, fact-based analyses and wildly irresponsible assumptions we can make about how it’ll all play out.

So let’s do all of the above with the Warriors’ 2016-17 season.

        

Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry will both finish top-three in scoring

Between the minutes he plays and the effect new head coach Mike D’Antoni will have on Houston’s output, James Harden should once again lead the league in points, but the scoring title is awarded based on points per game. Curry and Durant will get a game off here and there—especially toward the end of the season—but based on the sheer number of threes the Warriors will shoot, plus an expected uptick in efficiency over last season, don’t be surprised to see either Curry or Durant sneak to the top of the PPG leaderboard.

          

Durant will make the NBA’s All-Defensive Team

Oklahoma City Thunder opponents scored 3.2 more points per 100 possessions last season with Durant off the floor, so his defensive impact is clearly considerable. And yet, despite his mammoth 7’5” wingspan, Durant has never made the All-Defensive first or second team in his nine seasons.

Now that he’s reunited with defensive guru Ron Adams, who coached Durant during his formative second and third seasons in the league, expect to see him more focused and energized on that underrated part of his game.

       

JaVale McGee will play in more than 41 games

McGee has been a welcome presence in training camp and has more than a good shot to make the roster. McGee, who doesn’t turn 29 until January, can be a legit rim-protecting backup center in Kerr’s system. He hasn’t played more than half a season since 2012-13, when he and the 57-win Denver Nuggets were upset by (yep) the Warriors in the first round, but Golden State is giving McGee every chance to make the team.

If healthy, he could make a real defensive impact during the regular season. What Marreese Speights was to the Warriors last season, that’s McGee’s ceiling this time around.

            

Draymond Green will serve a multigame suspension for…something

He’s the emotional firebrand that keeps this team focused and energized. Sometimes, that fervor goes a smidge too far, and there will likely be a time this season where that comes to pass in a public way. (Paul Pierce, you might be up first.)

           

Kevon Looney will play more than 750 minutes

Steve Kerr lost a lot of second-unit depth. It’s going to be a challenge figuring out how to best fill the void left by the bygone Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli.

Looney is finally healthy after playing only 21 minutes across five games last season, and he doesn’t turn 21 until February. The Warriors need as much size as they can muster, and Looney (across swaths of this preseason) has played larger than his listed 6’9” and 220 pounds.

           

Klay Thompson will average more than 22 points per game but fewer than three rebounds and three assists

Thompson has been scoring in bunches and not compiling a whole lot of other counting stats this preseason. He’s publicly stated that he wants to average five boards a game, which would be a career high, but if Thompson simply maintained last season’s scoring average and then saw a dip in rebounds—he averaged 3.8 last season—he’d join a select group that hasn’t added a member since Houston’s Kevin Martin in 2010-11.

         

Patrick McCaw will finish top-five in Rookie of the Year voting

Do you know where Curry finished in ROY voting after his first season? Second to Tyreke Evans, who scored more points. My point is the Rookie of the Year Award can be dumb, but McCaw figures to play enough minutes to garner some …

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