Warriors focused on NBA playoff push in return from All-Star break – NBC Sports

SAN FRANCISCO – During the Warriors’ practice at Chase Center on Wednesday, coach Steve Kerr took a moment and posted the Western Conference standings up for his players to see.

One of the NBA’s hottest teams with an 8-2 mark over their final 10 games going into the All-Star break, Kerr wanted to make sure that his team was fully aware of what scenario it faces as Golden State prepares for what hopefully is a strong second-half push into the playoffs.

“Just to make sure they know what’s at stake,” Kerr said. “We’ve been on a good run, but we got to carry that forward. There’s no reason why we can’t keep winning and do what we did a year ago, which was climb up the standings and put ourselves in a favorable position for the playoffs.”

The Warriors currently reside in 10^th place in the West, 1.5 games ahead of the Utah Jazz and 1.5 games behind the Los Angeles Lakers. Golden State has a chance to trim that gap more when it hosts Los Angeles on Thursday. The good news for the Warriors is that LeBron James already has been ruled out with an ankle injury.

Just getting into the postseason would be quite an achievement for the Warriors (27-26), considering all the ups and downs they went through during the first half of the 2023-24 NBA season.

But merely qualifying for the playoffs isn’t enough. While many have pegged them as a contender for the NBA play-in tournament, the Warriors have loftier goals and are confident they can attain them.

“We got that much confidence that we can beat any team no matter the seed in a seven-game series,” standout rookie Brandin Podziemski said. “We’re not really focused on 7 [seed], 8, 9, 10. We’re looking at No. 6 and No. 5.”

Earlier in the season, it seemed the Warriors were a long-shot to make the playoffs. Now, Golden State looks very much like a team capable of doing serious damage and making a deep run into the postseason.

If there’s any doubt, the Warriors can lean on the lessons they learned from the 2022-23 season. After scuffling for most of the campaign, Golden State closed out the regular season by going 15-8 over its final 23 games to secure the No. 6 spot in the West.

This year, they have 29 games to go before the playoffs, and Kerr is trying to emphasize the importance of each.

“The idea is to just put ourselves in the best position possible, whatever that means,” Kerr said. “There’s a lot of great teams in the West. Everybody’s kind of bunched together. But let’s just put our best foot forward and see where that takes us.

“I like where we are. The guys’ spirit is in the right place. I think we can make a push this way.”

If they can follow the pattern that they established right before the All-Star break, the Warriors easily can make a serious push to get into the postseason.

In the 10 games prior to the break, Golden State had the fourth-best offensive rating in the entire NBA at 120.9, not too far behind the…