We’re officially at the quarter post of the season, with most of the league’s teams having played their 20th game at some point this past weekend, so we’re moving on from, “It’s early, but …” to having a large enough sample of games to make some declarative statements.
And the most obvious of those is the bifurcation of the league into two camps:
Group 1: Golden State and Phoenix.
Group 2: Literally everybody else.
While there is no guarantee the hierarchy stays this way — certainly Milwaukee will have something to say about it, while Philadelphia, Brooklyn and the Clippers each have All-Stars who have yet to play a game, and the Jazz are quietly humming toward another mid-50s win total — the dominance of these two clubs thus far has been a huge and somewhat surprising story.
With the two teams set to meet each other twice this week (Tuesday in Phoenix, then Friday in San Francisco) after their combined 35-5 romp through the rest of the league, it’s as good a time as any to examine what’s made them so good.
I’ll start with Phoenix, the defending conference champion riding a 16-game winning streak. It’s not exactly a shock the Suns are good. But most saw them as a really solid team without a top-drawer superstar, one everyone certainly expected to contend in the West this year … but not roll along like this.
After a 2-3 start, the Suns continued their streak over the weekend by polishing off the Knicks and Nets with relative ease in a Big Apple back-to-back.
