Kerr knows Warriors’ five-year Finals run ‘highly unlikely’ to be repeated

Kerr knows Warriors’ five-year Finals run ‘highly unlikely’ to be repeated originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

We’re almost six weeks into the NBA playoffs and it’s abundantly clear that the Warriors making five consecutive voyages to The Finals, of which they won three championships, was remarkable enough in real time but looks downright monumental in retrospect.

It’s entirely plausible that the Warriors might be the last team to accomplish such a feat.

“I think it’s highly unlikely,” coach Steve Kerr told NBC Sports Bay Area this week.

The Warriors not only are the last team to win back-to-back NBA Finals but also the last team make back-to-back trips to The Finals.

The entire cast has changed every year since 2019, when Golden State, in its fifth successive trip to The Finals, lost to the Toronto Raptors. With both the reigning champion Denver Nuggets and their 2023 Finals foe Miami Heat both bumped from the playoffs, there will be two entirely different teams facing each other next month.

Ousted from the playoffs last Sunday, the Nuggets were victimized by the same beast that has ravaged every defending champion since 2018. Fatigue. It’s as merciless as it is relentless, and it’s growing larger each year.

“I think the run last season and coming back and the amount of minutes that our starters had to play,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after the Game 7 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, “I think mentally, emotionally (and) physically, guys are gassed. They’re dead tired.”

Of course they were. Denver’s 2022-23 season went almost nine months, from opening training camp on Sept. 27, 2022 through June 12, 2023, when the Nuggets clinched the NBA Finals. That’s what it took to become champs.

They did not have enough to repeat. The same is true of the 2022 champion Warriors, who were eliminated in the Western Conference semifinals the next season. It also applies to the Milwaukee Bucks, who won it all in 2021 but were sent home in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2022.

The Los Angeles Lakers, 2020 champs, were a first-round exit the following season. After winning the crown in…

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Author : NBC Sports BayArea

Publish date : 2024-05-24 00:53:52

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