Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Should Warriors' 4 Wins at End of 2014-15 Regular Season Count as Part of Current Winning Streak?

As virtually all readers of this blog would know, the Golden State Warriors have yet to lose in the 2015-16 NBA season, increasing their record to 23-0 with last night's win at Indiana. The NBA record for longest winning streak is, of course, the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers' 33-game stretch.

So the Warriors are 10 wins shy of the record. Well, not necessarily. Golden State won its last four regular-season games of the previous season, so it is technically accurate to say the "Dubs," as they're sometimes called, have won 27 straight regular-season games.

After I mentioned on Twitter the idea of counting the last four games of 2014-15, Lakers fan Len Lester tweeted at me that "if you're carrying over last season gotta include post season too." The Warriors won the NBA title last season, but lost a combined five games in the playoffs.

In thinking about Len's point, I have to admit that it's more than a little odd to claim a continuous win streak from April 2015 (when the regular season ended) to the present, when Golden State lost five games in between.

Hypothetically, if the Warriors get to 30-0 just in the current season and then lose -- giving them 34 straight wins over two regular seasons -- I suspect the NBA might create two entries in its record book: longest winning streak within a single regular season, and longest regular-season winning streak spanning multiple seasons.

I've added a poll in the right-hand column, so readers can vote on whether the last four wins of the previous season should be added to Golden State's current total.

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