Warriors can't agree on luck factor

— -- Upon winning the 73rd game, Draymond Green was triumphant, loose.

With little prompting, he mocked Golden State's reputational knock. "At the end of the day, our championship was luck last year," he sarcastically quipped. "And we lucked out with 73 wins this year, so that's going to continue to be the way it is, and we'll continue to be lucky. It is what it is."

Perhaps more than any other NBA team in recent memory, the Warriors have been associated with the tricky concept of luck. It might have even happened without Clippers coach Doc Rivers publicly raising the issue over the offseason. It was out there, pervasive in the NBA ether.

The Warriors never needed a shot to save their season, but a slew of injury-riddled playoff opponents informed the luck narrative. None of these opponents were, possibly even with the best of fortune, better than Golden State.

But the Warriors were new and lacked the typical title winner's aura of inevitability. And yet luck was very much a part of what built this, however you want to define it. Coach Steve Kerr credits his good fortune every chance he gets. "Luck plays a huge role in all of this. Injuries, matchups, one shot either made or missed," he readily admits

That's a contrast with how owner Joe Lacob, to some derision, mostly denies the role of providence. Of his burgeoning Warriors, Lacob told The New York Times Magazine: "The great, great venture capitalists who built company after company, that's not an accident. And none of this is an accident, either."

Lacob, at his most deterministic, said, "We're light-years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we're going to go about things." A few players -- notably Stephen Curry and Harrison Barnes -- have had fun with that "light-years" quote, subtly slipping it into interviews. When asked about it, a Warrior responded, "So you've caught the inside joke."

Athletes clearly have their own ideas on who controls the fates. As for Lacob, he's not a superstitious man. If people believe his comments to be bad karma, as some have maintained, it's of little concern to him. Similar admonishments were made last year after Lacob took a blowtorch to former coach Mark Jackson at a corporate luncheon. Lacob hoisted a trophy months after warnings that he could get hoisted on his own petard.

"He's our Draymond," says assistant general manager Kirk Lacob of his father's propensity for public brashness. "We joke about it. Steve [Kerr] and Bob [Myers] are Steph, and he's Draymond." GM and public humility practitioner Bob Myers offered, "Good fortune has a hand in a lot of success." He added, "Everyone will have different opinions on the weight of it, or the percentage of it, but inheriting a guy like Steph Curry is fortuitous, certainly."

Resident philosopher Marreese Speights indeed has an opinion on life's luck percentage. "Luck is 30 percent of everything," Speights said. "Every situation you in, got something to do with luck. Just 30 percent, though, that's a small percentage of something special." A few Warriors, including Speights, believe "luck" might have prevented even more winning this season. Golden State has dealt with an increase in injuries from last year, though its All-Star triumvirate of Curry, Green and Thompson remained mostly unscathed.

Of course, it's an open question as to whether injuries mostly redound to the fates. The Warriors and other teams certainly invest considerable money in injury prevention. "A lot of guys thought we could win 76 games, or probably more," said Speights. He then cited poor travel luck as one factor.

"People don't realize we flew the most in the league! That s--- takes a toll on your body."

"Luck's a misnomer," Kirk Lacob said. "It's probability. Life is random. Some people call it luck, some call it probability. Put yourself in position to have the best probability and hope it goes your way."

What's funny about a fixation on luck is that sports are so inherently probabilistic. You pass up a guarded shot to get an open one. On some days, the well-defended attempt falls and the open look clanks, but over time, a good process wins out. Or, at least, it gives you a chance.

"Luck is sometimes the difference when teams are evenly matched," Kerr said. "The famous Allan Houston shot versus Miami in Game 5 is the perfect example of luck," Kerr added. "If it bounces out, Miami wins. But it bounced in, and New York won. The two teams were incredibly even."

So far, the Warriors have avoided the high-leverage Allan Houston situation. As the not-so-demure Joe Lacob reminded the Bay Area News Group's Tim Kawakami in an interview last offseason: "We did win the West by 11 games, which is not a small amount. So the other teams have a bit of catching up to do."

Of course, there are outside factors that inform Golden State's success, not the least of which is Myers inheriting Curry. "You can trace luck back to as far as you want," Myers said. "We're lucky to be born in the U.S."

The professorial Ron Adams, Golden State's assistant coach and defensive guru, gets autobiographical in the assessment of luck. "It's a capricious thing," he begins in his flat, steady tone. "I look at my life. I look at some of the stupid things I did as a kid I could have perished from. I didn't. Some kids did."

What did Adams do, exactly? "Floating on the Kings River [in California's Central Valley] in an inner tube, at age 16, and not knowing how to swim. I fell off my inner tube. You're foolish at that age. I'm on an inner tube, nothing can happen!" Adams just managed to snag his vessel before going under, some five decades ago.

Thanks to the save, one of the game's best assistant coaches lives on to remind complacent athletes not to float on metaphorical inner tubes.

Life is often arbitrary, and the old adage exists for a reason: It's better to be lucky than good. For the season, the Warriors were 21-4 when the score was within three points with 2 minutes remaining in a game -- a veritable fixing of coin-flip situations.

But Golden State also sported the No. 1 defense and offense by efficiency in the final two minutes of a game. Perhaps for a team riding a historic season, it's simply a matter of being lucky that it's good.