The Lost Season
Let Me Sum Up
Wow, that didn’t take long. When the Warriors opened their season they were no longer the favorites they had been at the start of the past four years. How could they be, with three of their five All-Stars no longer available - Durant and Cousins both injured and signed to other teams in any case, and Thompson still a Warrior but out with an ACL until at least playoff time.
Still, pundits figured, Steph Curry is an MVP-level talent, and Draymond Green is pretty good. They’ve got a good coach and a bunch of promising young players to put around the stars. How bad could it be?
Oh my goodness.
Bad. Appallingly bad. Horrifically bad. Charles Barkley picked the team to make the playoffs before its home opener, and retracted his opinion at half time. The exciting, young, new-look Warriors had nothing and were wiped off the floor by a strong Clippers side, 141-122.
Well, maybe that was a one-off, said wise men around the League. After all, with newly-signed Kawhi Leonard the Clippers are a juggernaut, and many have picked them as the Team Most Likely in this, the most wide-open NBA season in years. Let’s see how the Warriors do against lesser competition, let’s say, the OKC Thunder, a rebuilding team that just lost its two big stars. How bad could it be?
Worse. OKC boatraced the Warriors. After the 120-92 beatdown, Draymond Green dispassionately assessed the situation, saying “we fucking sucked.” Few disagreed.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance
But last night’s visit to New Orleans offered a ray of hope. Defensive effort occurred - a novelty in this young season - and we saw a few glimpses of the old Warrior magic as Curry and Green started to figure out how to play with their younger teammates.
Eric Apricot, my go-to man for the Xs and Os of this team for the past half decade, put the good feelings in perspective:
The Lost Season
But it can never be what it was, even when Klay Thompson rejoins. It will be a lost season, one in which even making the playoffs will be a moral victory.
This is where I should get off. I am a shameless front-runner. I worship excellence, and there likely won’t be much of that at Chase this year. And yet, I linger.
It’s true that sometimes there are compelling stories even when there’s no championship in prospect. Two baseball classics, Brosnan’s The Long Season and Bouton’s Ball Four, were about teams that were going nowhere. And Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game, about a doomed Trailblazers team, may be the best basketball book ever written.
So maybe it’s ok to keep caring. Maybe I will. Maybe I’m growing up, after all.
Postscript 11/1
In the game after this was posted, Steph Curry broke his hand, an injury that will likely sideline him for months. This led to speculation that the Warriors might intentionally tank in order to secure a lottery pick for next year, when Curry and Thompson would presumably be back at full strength. Warriors owner Joe Lacob denied this, stating that the team would never tank, then tanked the audience, drank a tankard, and drove away in a tank shouting “Happy Tanksgiving!”…. Tank you very much.
Monte Poole, “How Warriors fell from NBA mastery to misery in six devastating games” (link)