by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Warriors are sitting here in mid January at 31-5 they have the best record in the NBA, the Atlanta Hawks have as many wins but they have a few more loses than the Warriors. Golden State just keeps rolling and nothing seems to faze this team it doesn’t matter what adversity they face what injuries they have. They seemed to be able to play right through them. Except that little blip on the radar in Los Angeles against the Clippers and the Lakers around Christmas time.

The Warriors really don’t have any issues on the court, there have been a couple of close games but those are even hard to come by. The Warriors have won eight straight games won by double digits. This is a team that’s not only winning every night but their winning fairly easily, their not facing a lot of close end of game situations. That’s something they struggled with last season.

The Warriors largely came back this season with the same personnel they won 51 games which is a very good season and the made it to the playoffs. One of the problems they have was late in the game when they had a decent lead they let up and when they let up the other team would get another breath of fresh air. The opponents would get a second wind and they would start coming back and the Warriors would have to start fighting them off and hang onto that victory.

Sometimes last season they would get a win and sometimes they didn’t, the big problem was they were letting the other teams back into the game. That poses all sorts of problems, number one it risks the results of the game from getting that win. On several occasions games that seemed pretty well in hand in the third quarter last season ended up going the opposite way and the Warriors ended up losing.

If the Warriors win those games they would have to end up bringing in the starter to close out the game to seal the victory because the second stringers weren’t able to hold and finish. That just wore the team out last year of over the course of the season. When you think about Steph Curry’s ankle and every single body part on Andrew Bogut and just the general wear and tear that goes with the full season.

If you can rest a guy for the last five or six minutes of several games over the course of the season that really adds up and what happens was the Warriors in the playoffs Bogut went down late in the season and didn’t play against the Clippers. Everybody was just generally worn out, when your doing these double digit victories early in the season it bodes well for later in the season because you can cut down on the minutes of the starters and you can get them some rest.

David Zizmor does weekly commentary on the Golden State Warriors for http://www.sportradioservice.com