Golden State Clinches Another 60+ Win Season

Image courtesy of Erik Drost's Flickr page - Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden State Warriors: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/18712418510/in/photolist-uvy36m-uKQ6xG-tRgUTP-uvtpVm-uKQmv7-uvGFwB-uMFFeG-uNpE1e-tBehBy-uN3P3D-tR2Qho-HUSfr-4Taf5q-uvASzv-7vAzf2-qHUK2k-r52g6V-6K6Fki-bgddQ6-4G4nGd-r4UoZy-7NjrkD-9nssXS-rmt3kn-JgQiv-uoEiQf-djFciv-rmokYq-r4Ujq3-7hGokn-4iSMB3-bgdChx-47g67u-qKt9Fn-qKuV8z-qKt9yP-qKt9Ea-3pYanc-4C12US-uvyAju-uvyCCs-buWvMB-3q3GXA-eedDRY-7NopXJ-6r3FD-6r3uV-3pYaeB-dZTukn-dZTkBK

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The Golden State Warriors clinched their 60th win of this season by crushing the New Orleans Pelicans, 125-107 last night at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.

Traditionally, teams can measure their regular season success by certain benchmarks, and reaching 60 regular season wins tends to be the mark of excellence, at least during the regular season. 

Although there usually is at least one team, if not usually at least two teams, to reach the 60-win plateau (and in fact, I cannot specifically remember a season where literally no team reached it), achieving this amount of wins during a regular season is a relatively rare achievement for most teams. More often than not, it also marks the beginning of being recognized as a serious contender come playoff time.

For the Golden State Warriors, this is the second season in a row in which they reached at least 60-regular season wins, as they continue to steamroll through this season. But the real achievement for them with the victory last night is that they became the fastest team ever to reach the 60-win mark, doing so in a mere 66 games.

That means that these Warriors have 16 games left, and in order to achieve the territory of the true elite teams (that is to say, if they can become the second team in NBA history to reach the 70-win plateau), they simply have to finish the rest of the way with at least a 10-6 record. Considering that they are currently 60-6, that should seem easy enough to do for a team this talented.

With the win, Golden State also upped their home record this season to 31-0, and did it on Steh Curry's 28th birthday. Yes, he's only 28, which means he still has quite a few good years of basketball left in him.

Scary thought, as the Warriors keep rolling.