The clock has hit zero on the NBA regular season and the playoffs will start this weekend. The current standout team to many is the Golden State Warriors who have the best record in the NBA ever, with 73 wins and nine losses.
However, the Warriors are not invincible. They seem to have found a cheat code of sorts, the three-point line. Golden State is phenomenal from three-point range and beyond. They led the league in three-point percentage, with .415% behind Steph Curry, making an NBA record of 402 three-pointers in one season.

The solution to stopping the Warriors is defense. Offense wins games but defense wins championships. Every team knows the Warriors’ strength is the three-point shot and are likely planning to put a stop to their unhuman like ability to make these shots.

The Warriors will have to face many tough opponents throughout the playoffs, the first of which will be the Houston Rockets, led by James Harden.

The other matchups in the West include the Spurs vs an injury-torn Memphis team, Oklahoma City Thunder vs the Dallas Mavericks and the current Cinderella story of the NBA: the Portland Trail Blazers vs the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Warriors have been working hard all season just to beat the regular season record. This may seem like an advantage because they have been working hard all season. However, 82 games is a lot of basketball which has likely led to some fatigue among the team members as they begin the playoffs.

Many other teams, such as the Spurs, have been resting players throughout the season preparing for the playoffs while the Warriors have been wearing themselves out.

Everybody wants to be the team that takes down the Warriors. Almost every team in the West is capable of playing fantastic basketball and some have already done so against the Warriors earlier in the season.

Oklahoma City has two of the best players in the NBA who are nearly unstoppable and the Spurs have the best defense in the NBA and a very lethal bench with plenty of playoff and championship experience. No matchup is easy in the Western Conference.

In the East, the Cavaliers can be expected to sail to the championship game where they will face a tough Western Conference champion. The Cavs made it to six games against the Warriors last year as Lebron James put the team on his back while stars Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving were sidelined with injuries. If the Cavs can keep all three of their stars healthy, they will be a force to be reckoned with.

The Cavaliers will face the Detroit Pistons in the first round. Other first round Eastern Conference matchups include Toronto vs Indiana, Miami vs a Linsanity-bolstered Charlotte, and the Atlanta Hawks vs a young Boston Celtics team.

The fight for the West will be a tough one, but mark my words, the Warriors will not make it out of the West. This year’s NBA championship will likely be an amazing battle between Lebron and his Cavs and one of the many good teams from the Western Conference.