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The Warriors are surging without Kevin Durant — so what happens when he returns?
The Golden State Warriors are playing superb basketball, as most evidenced Wednesday by their 22-point comeback win against the San Antonio Spurs in Texas.
There were some ups and downs this season, but over the past three weeks we've seen the Warriors we've grown accustomed to over the past two seasons: a lock-down defensive team that works an inside-out offensive game as well as any squad in the league — the best team in basketball.
Golden State has now won nine straight games, the past two coming on the road against the teams most would consider their top challengers in the Western Conference, the Rockets and Spurs — it's as impressive a back-to-back sweep as there's been in the NBA this season.
Yes, everything is clicking for the Dubs.
But with that success comes a conundrum: What are they going to do when Kevin Durant comes back?
The Warriors' leading scorer and one-time MVP candidate has been out for the entire month of March with a sprained MCL in his left knee, but he's nearing a return and is expected to be fully integrated back into the Warriors' rotation by the start of the postseason.
Given the way the Warriors are playing, the question is going to be asked — do the Warriors even want Durant back?
The Warriors' defense has been the best in the NBA since Durant exited. And the offense — well, the offense looks closer to that of the 2014-15, 2015-16 Warriors than the one they ran with Durant playing 33 minutes per game.
Do you really want to mess with a thing that's working really, really well?
It should go without saying that question is ridiculous, although apparently it doesn't.
Of course the Warriors want one of the greatest players in NBA history back in their lineup. Durant was deadly on both ends of the court for the Warriors, who were 50-9 and on pace to win 69 games before his injury.
And don't forget, we asked nearly the exact same question before — last summer.
Remember the hand-wringing about whether Durant would mess up a Warriors team that won 73 games last year? That concern seemed silly a few months into the season after the Warriors won 23 of 25 games, didn't it?
And as for the defensive intensity, it's not a zero-sum game, and lest we confuse correlation and causation...
Durant is an objectively better defender then the players who have replaced him in the Warriors' starting lineup, Patrick McCaw and Matt Barnes, and the improvement has been more about the Warriors' three best defenders — Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, and Klay Thompson — bringing their A-game every night. Durant can only augment what those three players are bringing it on a nightly basis.
If JaVale McGee can play and not mess up the Warriors' defense, so can Durant.
On the other side of the court, Durant doesn't require the offense to be run through him — it often did at the beginning of the season, just because he's Kevin Durant and giving him the ball is almost always great offense. (In addition to the Warriors wanting him to feel welcome on the team.) It's not going to be easy for Durant, Curry and Thompson to "get theirs" every night, but so long as the ball continues to move at the same rate it is right now, the Warriors' offense will be deadly.
The real question people should be asking is not if the Warriors will be affected in a negative way by Durant's return, but rather if any other team stands a chance of beating an NBA Finals favorite that clearly has found the best version of itself without its best player.
