The 2015-16 Warriors' 73-9 Season, Explained

The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors are the best regular-season team the NBA has ever produced. They are also nine losses of evidence that 82-0 is a different universe from “the best record ever.”

The record, and the record inside it

Golden State finished 73-9 — a .890 winning percentage that broke the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ 72-10, a mark that had stood for two decades. They didn’t sneak up on it, either: they opened the year 24-0, the best start in league history, before Milwaukee handed them their first loss on December 12, 2015.

Stephen Curry won the league’s first-ever unanimous MVP, set the single-season record for made three-pointers, and turned a spacing-and-movement offense into something opponents genuinely could not solve. This was peak pace-and-space basketball, and it rewrote the ceiling for what a regular season could be.

Nine losses is the whole point

Here’s the sentence that matters most: the greatest regular-season team in NBA history lost nine games.

Not because it faltered — a .890 clip is otherworldly — but because 82 games is long. Nine losses across a full schedule is what “nearly untouchable” actually produces. And that’s before the postscript: Golden State led the 2016 Finals 3-1 and lost in seven to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The best regular season ever didn’t even end in a title, which is its own reminder that playoff basketball is a different test entirely.

What a real 82-0 would have required

Start from 73-9 and do the arithmetic on perfection. To finish 82-0, this team would have had to convert all nine of its actual losses into wins — and not pick up a single new loss anywhere across those same 82 nights. There’s no margin in a perfect season; every game is a must-win by definition.

The Warriors were, on any given night, enormous favorites. But as the odds of going 82-0 breaks down, favorites still lose sometimes, and “sometimes” across 82 tries compounds into “several times” almost every season. Even a team good enough to win 90% of its games — a higher rate than the 73-9 Warriors actually managed — would go undefeated only about once in thousands of seasons. The best real team ever landed at nine losses because nine losses is roughly what that level of dominance mathematically buys you.

Why the roster still couldn’t close it

Golden State had everything the model rewards: elite shooting, real defense, positional versatility, and a bench that didn’t collapse the lineup’s chemistry when starters rested. That combination is exactly why they lost nine instead of twenty. But roster quality raises your per-game win probability; it never pushes it to a flat 100%. Injuries, scheduling, a road back-to-back, an opponent’s career shooting night — the same variance that stops every contender was still live for the 73-9 Warriors on nine specific evenings.

For how this team compares directly to the other historic near-misses — the 72-10 Bulls and the 33-game-streak Lakers — see every NBA team that almost went undefeated.

Build the team that gets nine losses closer

The 2015-16 Warriors set the real bar: historic record, historic shooting, and still nine short of perfect. 82-0 lets you draft your own five and see how close era-accurate spacing and balance can push your season. Free, no account required.