The last month has been terribly tumultuous for the Golden State Warriors.
Klay Thompson's return and Draymond Green's injury coincided on Jan. 9. Steph Curry's shooting slump never seemed to break. Andrew Wiggins stopped playing like an All-Star, then was named an All-Star starter, and is playing like an All-Star once again.
The Warriors were smoked by two of the best teams in the league, but then they bounced back and blew out other top squads.
There was a stretch where they lost six of nine, only to rattle off a seven-game win streak that continues into Thursday's game against the Kings.
It was chaos.
It's been tough to get a read on these Dubs, who have questionably fallen off from the world-beating form they showed at the beginning of the season.
But despite all the tumult of the last month — both good and bad — and pending questions, the Warriors are still one of the NBA's best teams.
There's simply no need to worry about them.
The Warriors were in first place in the Western Conference for the majority of the 2021 portion of this season's schedule. On Jan. 6, they fell to second place behind the Suns. The Dubs didn't seem too concerned about it — this veteran team isn't worried about home-court advantage.
Outside of two days where they tied Phoenix for the best record in the NBA, the Warriors have remained in second place.
Think about everything that has happened for the last 22 days with the Warriors — for every game that Jonathan Kuminga had to lead the team in scoring, every missed Curry 3-pointer, every moment when Green was desperately missed — it simply didn't matter.
The final 30 games of this season will be about preparing for the playoffs.
And while the Warriors can't fully embrace that responsibility until Green returns to the fold, they're doing just fine without him.
After all, the Western Conference is a joke, though.
Outside of the Suns, Warriors, and the Memphis Grizzlies, what team is worthy of respect in this conference?
Forgive me if I don't divvy any out to Utah, Dallas, or Denver, the final three teams in the true playoffs. I just can't see them actually competing for a title.
And nearly two-thirds of the way through the season, am I truly supposed to respect Minnesota or either LA team?
The Lakers are a sub-.500 team. Am I supposed to believe that's an accident and that regression to the mean is inevitable?
No. They'll probably get worse.
Here's how bad and uncompetitive the Western Conference is right now: The Blazers are doing everything in their power to lose games. They can't play a lick of defense, they have benched Damian Lillard for the rest of the season, they're playing a guy named Keljin Blevins, a 26-year-old, 6-foot-4 forward from Montana State.
The Blazers have lost five of their last six games, sit at 21-30 as of Wednesday morning, and they're still holding on to a play-in tournament spot.
Perhaps the parity of the Eastern Conference — three games separate the No. 1 and No. 6 seed — will make the NBA's product viable up until the playoffs. But in the West, it's clear that there are three teams worthy of your attention and only two of those squads will actually compete for a title.
The Warriors are one of them. No amount of chaos this past month could make that untrue, so expect this truth to prevail until the spring.
