91/82 L Los Angeles Lakers 97-127
92/82 L Los Angeles Lakers 101-104
93/82 W Los Angeles Lakers 121-106
94/82 L Los Angeles Lakers 101-122
My apologies for my absence. I was licking my wounds/engaging in magical thinking/avoiding the obvious/embracing reality ever so slowly. A quick recap: The Warriors lost, the Nuggets are the NBA Champs, Bob Meyers left the Warriors, the WNBA season started. A quicker recap: life goes on.
I’m not saying I like that last statement. I’m just saying it’s true. The hours pass, the sun rises–or rather in my part of San Francisco, the fog lifts at 2 pm the fog returns by 5 - and somehow the days go by even though there are no Warriors games on television.
I’m not sure entirely what to do with myself. As part of this project, I chose to have the Warriors schedule be the guiding force in the weekly flow of my life. And while there are other sports I’m watching, they don’t have that same weekly regularity. This didn’t happen last year because winning led right to the parade and then the season recaps and then it was Wimbledon and the British Open then Summer League, the US Open, the WNBA playoffs and then I was back at the preseason.
Wait - you don’t live your life from one sporting event to the next? Good on you. I’ve been in the sports gap–this month where I haven’t been writing because I didn’t want to write from this funky cranky whiny “why can’t the Warriors win every year?” place, but unfortunately I’m kinda still there. Side note: Tennis is the other sport I watch a lot of, but it is not the same either this year with Serena and Roger retired, Venus not playing, Osaka having a baby, Nadal out injured. The younger players are talented but they aren’t Rafa and Roger and Serena. Djokovic’s wins are impressive but also…not the same.
Shall we talk about the Warriors? I don’t have any big pronouncements or insights except that the Warriors are exactly who they seemed - a team that didn’t have it for the next level this year, even though they had many of the same players as last year, when they absolutely had it. I’ve been watching the Miami Heat exceed expectations again and again (they were projected with a 3% chance of making the Finals), and the tenacity that all these Miami players have - that extra push to get rebounds, to scramble for shots, to turn defense into offense, to genuinely not care what anyone says about them - the Warriors didn’t have that with any consistency this year. Especially that last part - although they gave lip service to blocking out outside noise, most of the Warriors players seem sensitive to what was said about them. And truthfully, it seems as though the inside noise was quite loud for the Dubs this year.
So what happened and what’s next? Here are my two minor thoughts. First, I think not having Mike Brown was a big deal. His gift with Sacramento has been getting them to buy in as a team and getting them to overachieve with the skills they have. Both of these things were lacking with the Dubs this year. Mike was known as the coach that held players accountable for their performance, especially on defense. That was another missing piece.
As soon as the season was over, coaches, players and local reporters started talking about “actually, the Draymond punch was a very big deal and it impacted the entire season and it’s still a fence that needs to be mended, if it can be at all”. No kidding. It was obviously a big deal. For this particular NBA team, with joy as one of its four core values, the punch was a storm cloud over their entire season.
It is probably true that the Warriors over-performed for what was actually going on behind the scenes, whether injuries, family illness or the preseason. And it leaves many question marks for next year. It seems clear that Draymond wants to return with the Warriors but is also realistic about his future. It seems clear that the Warriors can’t return their same team without paying a lot more for it and without expecting similar results. To my mind, it seems shortsighted to trade Kuminga or Poole because they have the highest future potential of anyone on the roster. They both have key gaps they need to improve on - Kuminga has already been in the gym and Poole is always in the gym so I’m not worried about their ability to improve.
I also think Poole and Kuminga, especially Poole, have been unfairly blamed for the Warriors’ poor performance. Poole’s playoffs were not good at all, but neither was Klay’s, and very few people are talking about Klay with the same vitriol. With 5 HOF players on the squad, the 23 year old is a part of their success but should not be the key to success. I will spare you from my 20,000 word screed on why Poole should stay on the Warriors and how the fanbase should get off his back, but for real - leave him alone and let him hoop. You’re gonna miss him if he leaves.
If I get back to the basics - I love this team. I love the players. I love the coaches. I love watching them. I love thinking about them. I love writing about them. They bring joy to my life on a regular basis and if they were in the Finals (though there’s no way they could have beaten the Nuggets), they would have been beaten by the Heat. Either of those defeats would have felt much much worse. As Steve Kerr has said many times, we weren’t good enough this year.
So, the best thing that I can do is lay it down. Make some resolutions for myself for the off-season. To let it be an off-season. I’m not gonna check twitter every morning for the latest Warriors news. I’m not gonna care about the potential trade moves or draft picks or learn anything about the CBA or the second apron or search out vacation photos of the players or anything else that takes away from the part I love - the basketball part. But I am absolutely going to watch Steph and Klay play golf in a few weeks. It’s infuriating how pretty Steph’s swing is.
What I am going to do is reflect a little. Last summer I made a resolution to watch every Warriors game and write about it. What did I learn? Was this useful? Will I do it again? My current responses are: Stuff, I Think So and Yes. I want to have better answers.
I’m also going to watch the WNBA, at least a little. Not with the same calendared commitment of the Warriors season, but with the recognition that there’s a lot of great basketball being played this summer, by the Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty and Britney Griner and Diana Taurasi in her maybe last season and by Napheesa Collier. There may be actual fun to be had watching basketball where I have no rooting interests to any team.
Also, you can get the League Pass to watch any WNBA game out of your local area for $25 for the season. I’ll repeat that— Not for the month - the whole season. (that is, any game not on national television - those you still get but not until the next day).
Another great deal: right now you can gift a subscription to The Athletic for $19.99/year. Fun tip - you can gift it to yourself on your other email address and it has great writers and reporters, especially Marcus Thompson.
Finally, congratulations to the Denver Nuggets and to the glorious chaos that was the Nuggets parade and celebration. From Aaron Gordon in the streets with the crowd while still in his uniform to the many players shotgunning beers throughout the parade to Coach Malone’s gleefully profane speeches - you’ve earned all the joy. And of course, there’s Jokic and his pre-parade, post-parade responses, both so earnest and so understandable.
I totally get it Nikola.
Timeout Books: (the books I read during the timeouts, this time of the playoffs and Finals)
The Spotify Playlist for A Game At A Time (the songs that play in my head during the writing of each post): Marshall Crenshaw “You’re My Favorite Waste Of Time”, “Without You” from Rent.