FAKE RONJAN!!Do the Warriors win like the 96-97 Bulls?
In our last two posts, we saw that the Warriors were off to the best start in modern NBA history, but they'll need to keep up a torrid pace in order to match the 95-96 and 96-97 Bulls in wins and overall point margin. The 95-96 Bulls set the record for most wins in NBA history (72) and point margin in the 3-pt era, but the 96-97 Bulls actually started the season out being more dominant.
The Warriors have since been defeated, but they still hold the record for best record through 25 games at 24-1. After that loss, we had one final question.
Do the Warriors win the same way that those Bulls teams did?
We looked at point margin by quarter in the first 24 games of the season and compared this year's Warriors against the 96-97 Bulls through their first 24 games (they were 21-3). The results were interesting:
Wow! The Warriors this year are fast starters - they tend to go up early in the 1st quarter and pull away as the game goes on. The Bulls from 96-97 were the opposite - they turtled in the 1st quarter and built their leads by closing out the first half strong and opening the second half strong.
This may be a fun view to monitor as the season goes on.
-rj