Call it a good problem to have, but there is a lot of pressure on this Golden State Warriors team right now. Such is the burden of attempting to win three straight championships and four in five years. There's a reason it's been 50 years exactly since any team accomplished both those feats -- the 1969 Boston Celtics finished off a run of nine titles in 10 years, six years before the NBA-ABA merger. Shaq and Kobe's Lakers got the three-peat, but not the four in five. Same for Jordan's Bulls, who got the three-peat twice but never the four in five because Jordan went to play baseball for two years between the runs. 

Speaking of baseball, only three times in over 115 years has a team won three straight championships and four in five years. It's happened four times in 90-plus years of NHL action. It's never happened in the NFL. Bottom line: This is really hard. 

And don't just say the Warriors have stacked the deck. The Garnett-Pierce-Allen-Rondo Celtics stacked the deck and only won one championship. The Big Three Miami Heat stacked the deck like no team, to that point, in history, and they only won two out of four. The Warriors are battling not just their own fatigue and injuries, but also the monster they created by forcing all these other teams to up their game, and significantly upgrade their rosters. 

The Rockets added Chris Paul. The Raptors added Kawhi Leonard and Marc Gasol. The Sixers added Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris. The Celtics added Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. The Bucks put a thousand shooters around arguably the most physically gifted player in the league. These are super-teams in almost any other era, and they're all built for one thing: To take down the Warriors. 

This is what Tiger Woods did for golf. He was so good, so dominant, that everyone had to get better. They had to figure out to hit the ball as far, how to become putting assassins, how to think and train and play like the guy who was running away from everyone. Now Woods is having to beat the most talented collective field of golfers in history. It's what made his recent Masters win so impressive. There was a pack of absolute dogs, largely born and bred by his influence, on his heels the whole way. 

That's what the Warriors are now dealing with, arguably the most collectively talented field of title contenders in league history, and it starts with this second-round series against the Rockets, who have every reason to believe they would've won last year's conference finals had Paul not gotten hurt. 

Earlier this year, I asked Tony Parker what that next season was like after the Spurs lost in the 2013 Finals to the Heat when Ray Allen shocked them with that game-tying 3-pointer in the closing seconds of Game 6. He said it was all they thought about all season, getting back to right that wrong. They did it. Hungry and motivated and ticked off, they came back and won the title. Houston has also been waiting for this chance for a full year. Clint Capela said it. He's wanted a Warriors rematch all along. A team bent on revenge is dangerous. 

But it's not just that. After DeMarcus Cousins already went down for the year with a torn quad, now the news comes out that both Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are questionable for Game 1 with injured ankles. Dealing with injuries in the playoffs certainly isn't unique to the Warriors; it's a reality for every team. That's a big reason why no teams have done what the Warriors are trying to do in half a century. Things happen. Fatigue piles up exponentially. It's easy to forget how long and grueling the NBA playoffs are. 

"We've played extended seasons for four years now," Warriors assistant Ron Adams told CBS Sports in late February. "That takes a toll, mentally and physically. And the second you let up, look at all these teams out here gunning for us."

So the Warriors are a little bit older, a little bit more hobbled and a lot more tired, and now here come the Rockets, healthy and hungry, fresher than they were last year having gotten rid of the Jazz in five games and now able to face the champs one round earlier. People have asked: Are the Warriors the same team as they've been in the past? At their peak, yes. But that's the issue: Getting to your peak, game in and game out, after this long a run, is easier said than done. Basketball players aren't robots. The same parts don't always equal the same output. 

Then again, Kevin Durant went for 95 points in the last two games against the Clippers. He's averaging 35 points on 57-percent shooting, including 40 percent 3-pointers, in these playoffs. He remains unstoppable. Draymond Green looks great. We'll have to wait and see how healthy Curry and Thompson are. Maybe it's much ado about nothing. But remember, for all the talk about the Draymond Green suspension, you could argue the Warriors would've won in 2016 and would now be going for five straight titles had Curry not sprained his knee in the first round against Houston. He wasn't the same player the rest of those playoffs. It only takes one little thing to derail even one championship run, let alone three straight and four in five years. 

Never mind all the noise surrounding whether Durant is going to leave this summer in free agency, and if so, the pressure of knowing this is this group's last run. If they win three straight and four in five, they go down in history. If they don't, they probably still do, but not by themselves. 

There are no more surprises. They're not catching anyone off guard with Curry and Thompson launching away before the league was ready to combat that. Their switching defense is now something pretty much everyone employs. The Warriors are probably still better than every other team, but they're no longer different. They're playing the same game. And any time two teams are playing the same game, and those teams are relatively evenly matched from a talent standpoint, and one of those teams has a vengeful chip on its shoulder, the recipe is there for something to give. 

There's an old saying that if doing something great was easy, everyone would do it. The flip side to that would be if something is hard, very few accomplish it. Again, there's a reason nobody's done this in 50 years. It's hard. And starting Sunday in Game 1 vs. the Rockets, perhaps without the services of Curry and/or Thompson, or at the very least with a somewhat hobbled version of both, it's only going to get harder.