Who to support in the NBA?

[PaperThin]

The Sixers, because everyone loves record breaking teams.

[The_Admiral]

On 3/10/2016 at 2:35 PM, DG_Now said:

But I do think the Warriors are the perfect storm of amazing drafting, excellent player drafting, and smart coaching that lets players be players. Oh :censored:, the Warriors are the Seahawks of the NBA. I need to write a thinkpiece STAT!

 

I think the Warriors might be sui generis. The Seahawks had a nice little run, but their game-breaker of "can't call holding if we do it every time" doesn't exactly make your heart race with the possibilities of what the human body can do, you know what I mean? (Then there's the Adderall, which makes their hearts race.) 

 

With the Warriors, I can't even wrap my head around how everything they do is done so well. They pulled Steve Kerr off TNT and he turned out to be a coaching genius. Then he hurt his back, Luke Walton had to sit in, and he turned out to be a coaching genius. The front office is operating on another level. Of course, even a one-of-a-kind team has "have an all-time great player" as the first step, but even Stephen Curry's greatness doesn't account for everyone and everything else firing on all cylinders. I don't know how it happened, and as swiftly as it did. I'm glad it did, though, because if any sleeping giant ever deserved to wake up (other than the Blackhawks, natch), it would be the Golden State Warriors. This is cool stuff.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I'm going to double down on my Warriors/Seahawks comparison. I think the structure comparison is apt; the Seahawks operate their franchise different than the rest of the NFL. Different philosophies, different metrics, and different playing style (rugby-style tackling being one example). And while I'm not astute enough to really know, I hear whispers that the Warriors are really good at moving screens that aren't being called as fouls.

 

Anyway, sports come down to performance and what the Warriors are doing is clearly in a class of its own. They might end up with the same record as the 95-96 Bulls, but they'll have gotten there by completely changing the game. The 96 Bulls won 72 games because they had the greatest-ever player and super-great supporting players doing the same things as other teams, but doing it better. The Warriors have outsmarted everyone, with terrific talent on good contracts that fit really well together.

 

It also likely helps that Warriors is that Steph is the fifth highest-paid player on the team (Klay is #1). When your go-to guy allows so much roster flexibility for this season and next, you can surround him with well-paid role players like Iguodala and Bogut without having to overpay for them.

 

We'll see how the Warriors do when Steph's contract (along with Iguodala and Bogut) runs out next season.

[FiddySicks]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

I think the Warriors might be sui generis. The Seahawks had a nice little run, but their game-breaker of "can't call holding if we do it every time" doesn't exactly make your heart race with the possibilities of what the human body can do, you know what I mean? (Then there's the Adderall, which makes their hearts race.) 

 

With the Warriors, I can't even wrap my head around how everything they do is done so well. They pulled Steve Kerr off TNT and he turned out to be a coaching genius. Then he hurt his back, Luke Walton had to sit in, and he turned out to be a coaching genius. The front office is operating on another level. Of course, even a one-of-a-kind team has "have an all-time great player" as the first step, but even Stephen Curry's greatness doesn't account for everyone and everything else firing on all cylinders. I don't know how it happened, and as swiftly as it did. I'm glad it did, though, because if any sleeping giant ever deserved to wake up (other than the Blackhawks, natch), it would be the Golden State Warriors. This is cool stuff.

 

The craziest thing to me is just how much of an afterthought the Warriors were before all of this. Growing up, I really don't think there was a single Northern California team that was more ignored, and rightfully so. That "We Believe" team generated so much excitement because it had been nearly a decade and a half since they last made the playoffs. To put that in perspective, that's 13 years where they weren't even good enough to be better than half of the teams in their conference. It's almost impressive how consistently awful the Warriors had been. And even that team, after the amazing Dallas upset, still got killed by the Jazz in the next round. That was pretty much the pinnacle of Warriors basketball and a second round drubbing was the highlight of many Warriors fan's fond memories. Hell, even the Sacramento Kings were more relevant than the Warriors there for a good stretch. 

 

There's a lot of talk about how Warriors fans are bandwaggeners and about how nobody was really a Warriors fan before this run and, well, yeah. There was little to no point in being a Warriors fan other than pride for the local team for quite awhile. Now don't get me wrong, they had some fun teams there in the 90s, but BARELY. If you were a die hard Warriors fan back then, you were mostly looked at as kinda weird because it was pretty much a constant punch to the nuts to watch them play. You almost had to be self massochistic to really follow that team closely. I've always been a Warriors "fan", but that's more in the sense that I'd root for any Northern California team over any non-Northern California team because that's home. So I'll gladly wear that "bandwagon" label with this team, because as much as some people and the media want to fool everyone, almost NOBODY was a die hard Warriors fan before this. That's another thing that's strange to me. I don't get why everyone tries to tout that this team was so amazingly followed despite their awfulness. Sure they had really solid attendance numbers at times, and when they were playoff worthy they sold the place out. But they had plenty of seasons where average attendance was south of 12,000 a game, too. 

 

Now, I remember watching that series vs the Spurs in 2013 and when the Warriors tied it up I thought to myself "Wait a minute, really? The Warriors are actually competitive? I almost don't believe it." To see them go so quickly from "Hey, this team finally has some promise!" To what they are now is hard to even fathom. 

[The_Admiral]

Bill Simmons had something going for a few years where he'd give Warriors fans a little pat on the head for their games not looking like a total bomb scare after 10+ years out of the playoffs. Then they finally did make the playoffs and everyone was like "wow, they do have good fans."

[DG_ThenNowForever]

That Warriors series against the Spurs was their coming out party, for sure. It's too bad they didn't play in the playoffs last year.

 

The real shame of the Warriors' current success is they're called "Golden State" and not "Oakland." Oakland deserves a championship to call its own.

[FiddySicks]

The "Golden State" moniker doesn't bother me for a couple of reasons. The Bay Area has two baseball teams, two football teams, and then you have this weird split between having one Bay Area basketball team and one team up in Sacramento (then you have the weird case of the Sharks being down south, but that's a whole other story). The fact that San Francisco doesn't have a literal "home" team is pretty bad because that's the cultural center of the Bay Area. For a lot of Bay Area residents, rooting for a team with "Oakland" attached to their name while their other two teams are "San Francisco" teams is a bit of a hard sell. I think it's a bit silly, but I still kind of get that considering the (mostly friendly) rivalry. This kinda unifies the Bay Area a bit and helps to not leave a portion of the area feeling unrepresented. Also, the GS branding came about because they were sort of a travel team there for awhile without an established home, so it's a bit of a nod to their history. 

 

More than that though, I just like the way that Golden State Warriors sounds. They could be the Oakland Warriors, or even the Bay Area Warriors, but Oakland has a bit less flair and Bay Area sounds a bit too clunky for my tastes. 

[SFGiants58]

4 hours ago, Bucfan56 said:

 

The craziest thing to me is just how much of an afterthought the Warriors were before all of this. Growing up, I really don't think there was a single Northern California team that was more ignored, and rightfully so. That "We Believe" team generated so much excitement because it had been nearly a decade and a half since they last made the playoffs. To put that in perspective, that's 13 years where they weren't even good enough to be better than half of the teams in their conference. It's almost impressive how consistently awful the Warriors had been. And even that team, after the amazing Dallas upset, still got killed by the Jazz in the next round. That was pretty much the pinnacle of Warriors basketball and a second round drubbing was the highlight of many Warriors fan's fond memories. Hell, even the Sacramento Kings were more relevant than the Warriors there for a good stretch. 

 

There's a lot of talk about how Warriors fans are bandwaggoners and about how nobody was really a Warriors fan before this run and, well, yeah. There was little to no point in being a Warriors fan other than pride for the local team for quite awhile. Now don't get me wrong, they had some fun teams there in the 90s, but BARELY. If you were a die hard Warriors fan back then, you were mostly looked at as kinda weird because it was pretty much a constant punch to the nuts to watch them play. You almost had to be self massochistic to really follow that team closely. I've always been a Warriors "fan", but that's more in the sense that I'd root for any Northern California team over any non-Northern California team because that's home. So I'll gladly wear that "bandwagon" label with this team, because as much as some people and the media want to fool everyone, almost NOBODY was a die hard Warriors fan before this. That's another thing that's strange to me. I don't get why everyone tries to tout that this team was so amazingly followed despite their awfulness. Sure they had really solid attendance numbers at times, and when they were playoff worthy they sold the place out. But they had plenty of seasons where average attendance was south of 12,000 a game, too. 

 

Now, I remember watching that series vs the Spurs in 2013 and when the Warriors tied it up I thought to myself "Wait a minute, really? The Warriors are actually competitive? I almost don't believe it." To see them go so quickly from "Hey, this team finally has some promise!" To what they are now is hard to even fathom. 

 

As a guy who started high school the year after "We Believe," almost all of my friends were Warriors fans (who had been following the team for some time) who simply accepted that team would be terrible/mediocre forever. We never got our hopes up too much, and we always expected the other shoe to drop the minute the team did something good. Good preseason? Momentum doesn't carry over. High draft picks? Never pan out. Acquire star players? Trade them for peanuts. Get this stud from Davidson? Can't play defense and he's got ankles made of glass. Simmons did a good job outlining all the crap Warriors fans (whatever ones there were) went through before 2013. 

 

When 2013 and 2014 came around, I was consistently skeptical of the team's success, waiting for it to come crashing down, which it did in the Mark Jackson fallout. Heck, even in the last few seconds of last year's NBA Finals, I expected something to go horribly wrong for them, but it didn't. I never would have thought the Warriors could turn into what they are now.