National Basketball Association

Playing the Percentages: How the Warriors will (or won't) win the NBA title

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Grant Hughes is an attorney, National Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report and writer of other things elsewhere. Despite his basketball career being mostly over, Grant still regularly practices Euro-steps in Manu Ginobili’s honor. Follow him on Twitter @gt_hughes.

The latest NBA title odds give the unsportingly loaded Golden State Warriors a league-best 5-to-7 shot to win the championship this year. Let’s convert that number and fudge it a little, rounding it up from around 58 percent to an even 60.

That seems about right, doesn’t it? Maybe a little low in light of Kevin Durant, an in-his-prime MVP, joining a 73-win plutonium-powered steamroller? Whatever, let’s just set it there and mull the fatalism that number attaches to the upcoming NBA season.

Except…wait. What about that other 40 percent? That’s, like, a whole bunch of room for other outcomes, isn’t it? Considering the obscene consolidation of sheer talent in Golden State, maybe that 40 percent figure is the one that’s too high. How does the math account for it? What could keep the Dubs from winding up champs four out of 10 times?

Some intrepid hero needs to crunch the numbers and figure out what possible misfortune could keep a ring from this Warriors team. I am that hero. And these are the scenarios that, statistically, could prevent Golden State from finishing on top.

Flagrant Fowl Penalties — 19%

The Warriors have no choice but to impose a contractually negotiated postseason suspension after Draymond Green snapchats himself riding ostriches at the Oakland Zoo at 4 a.m. on April 6, 2017.

Following a stretch of social media gaffes, the Warriors and a contrite Green privately amended his contract to forbid several activities deemed damaging to the organization’s brand and reputation. This particular transgression was, apparently, viewed as likely enough to warrant specific inclusion.

The relevant clause reads: “Player shall not harass, mount, race or otherwise associate with exotic flightless birds — in captivity or otherwise — at any time between midnight and sunrise.”

Additional suspension-triggering activities in Green’s contract include: Paintball tournaments at any officially designated McDonald’s PlayPlace facility, administering noogies to any C-level Warriors executive and commenting negatively about Ayesha Curry’s cookbooks.

The suspension robs the Warriors of their best defender throughout the playoffs, and they come unglued.

The Reminder — 2%

Just before the Warriors take the floor for Game 1 of the 2017 Finals against the Cavaliers, somebody tweets at Stephen Curry that, get this, his team blew a 3-1 lead against these same Cavs last year. This is the first time he’s ever been confronted with that pointed observation, and it emotionally crushes him. He alerts his teammates to it, and they’re similarly destroyed.

Cleveland sweeps a demoralized Golden State team.

Major Buzzkill — 6%

David West’s legendary sternness harshes Klay Thompson’s mellow, reducing the second-best shooter in the league to a frazzled mess who hits just 32 percent of his 3-pointers. Thompson, whose superchill detachment was secretly the reason the rest of the Warriors always handled intense media scrutiny so well, gets really uptight. The trickle-down effect is profound, and a Golden State team that is suddenly all too cognizant of the historic pressure attached to the season simply can’t cope. They start 0-19, and ownership blows it up in early December.

Mark Cuban’s Winter Soldier — 9%

Zaza Pachulia turns out to be a double agent sent by Mark Cuban to avenge that still-raw “We Believe” playoff upset in 2007. Brainwashed by submersion therapy in an actual shark tank, Pachulia’s subconscious conditioning is activated the first time Curry hits 14 3-pointers in a game (which happens on opening night).

Once operational, Pachulia, per Cuban’s instructions, secretly spikes the Warriors’ water jugs with bovine laxatives before every game. They still go 68-13 but understandably wear down and lose in the West semifinals. Dehydration is no joke.

Some Other Team Just Ends Up Being Better — 1%

Come on. Get outta here.

The Singularity — 3%

A top-secret multinational think tank develops artificial intelligence which, predictably, runs amok. As an emerging life form, the AI naturally focuses its attention on potential threats. It isolates the Warriors as the only other omnipotent force in existence, determines they must not be allowed to flourish and sets about getting the 2016-17 season cancelled.

The AI achieves this rather easily by starting a debate online about whether adding the 1988 version of Michael Jordan to the present-day Warriors would have made them better than adding the 1992 version. The ensuing argument crashes the internet, disrupts currency exchanges and plunges the planet into chaos.

Nobody wins the 2017 title.