by bill | May 15, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
You know a game isn’t going well when people text at halftime to ask if you’re OK.
In fact I had recused myself from this one. After suffering through three straight increasingly dispiriting losses, I figured I had earned the right not to witness the ignominious end to this weird rollercoaster season. I was hanging out with family, checking my phone only semi-obsessively, and when Minnesota went up 15 at halftime I was feeling pretty smug about my decision.
But then it got quiet and I realized that one of two things was going to happen: Either the Warriors would go on some crazy run, or the season would be over and all would be sweet relief after that. So I flipped the tube on and watched with resigned exasperation as the Wolves repeatedly left the door open for the Dubs, who repeatedly ran straight into the jamb and stood there rubbing their heads and wondering what had just happened.
Unforced turnovers, defensive lapses, poor shot selection — they were all on display as the clock ticked down toward the offseason. I have a lot of complaints and questions, but why bother? Fate had decreed that Steph Curry’s hamstring should be laid low, yea, even unto the ground, and that was that.
Now I get to watch the six remaining teams battle it out without caring much who wins. I guess I’d like to see the Denver Nuggets do well. Or having the Knicks win the title would be fun. But as far as really giving a damn, basketball season is over.
by bill | May 13, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
And it was a good day, mostly. A big chunk of it was spent wine tasting in McMinnville, a compact town where you can hit six or seven tasting rooms on a rainy day without overly exerting yourself. On the whole this was quite enjoyable: We paced ourselves well, found some good wines, talked to some nice people.
And, OK, maybe sometimes I wish I had a mute button when people start talking about what elevation their wines are grown at or what cardinal direction the vines face. I don’t care and won’t remember; all that matters to me about a wine is whether I like it or not. I’m not rude/honest enough to ask them to give it a rest; I often try to change the subject, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. They are after all just doing their jobs, may Dionysus bless and keep them.
Dinner was at a place unpretentiously called The Pub, which turned out to make great BBQ and have a stunning whiskey selection. Then it was off to a bar called the Blue Moon to watch the basketball game, about which the less said the better.
This current version of the Stephless Wonders has not been able to find its mojo since that gritty Game 1 win, with the result that they now stand on the brink of elimination. Game 5 is scheduled for tomorrow, which is the same day Steph Curry’s hamstring injury will be re-evaluated. If he’s able to play, that certainly helps our chances. But Minnesota has Momentum now and may be an unstoppable force.
Whatever happens, I’m good with it. There was a lot of talk in the Nation this year about wanting to play “meaningful basketball” — i.e. games that take place in late April, May, or June — with Steph entering the twilight of his career. And we have done that; anything else is gravy.
Sure it seems wrong that the season should end because of some random hammie. Life isn’t fair and neither is sports. Last night Jayson Tatum appeared to rupture his Achilles on a completely innocuous-looking play where no one touched him; that’s it for the Celtics, then. Sometimes stuff happens. Sometimes Steph happens. We shall see, we shall see.
by bill | May 9, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
It turns out that what I spent two and a half hours of The Time That Flies watching last night was not a basketball game as we think of it, but a science experiment. Let me spillane:
After Steph Curry’s MRI revealed a hamstring strain that would keep him out at least a week, the Warriors had to face the prospect of several games without him. And the first few minutes of Game 2 showed the worst version of that: the W’s just could not score, going down 13–0 and then 25–7. After that Coach Kerr started emptying the bench, throwing all available bodies into the game to see if anything helped. According to The Athletic, “The Warriors became the first team in playoff history to put 14 different players on the floor in the first half of a playoff game.”
But this was all part of the plan; that same article says:
The 1-0 series lead gave Kerr enough breathing room for experimentation. After he met with his staff at the team hotel Wednesday afternoon, they came up with a tentative strategy: try everything, find something and don’t overtax the stars.
The bad news: Dubs lost by 24 points. The good news is, they showed some signs of life in the second half, pulling to within 7 at one point. And more importantly, they gathered important data about what worked and what didn’t. Today they will hunker down and try to figure out how to use that information in Game 3. Which is, thanks to the pitiless logic of NBA scheduling, tomorrow. I’ll be in Bend, OR, trying to find a good place to watch the game; wish me luck.
by bill | May 7, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
It was a weird night of basketball. I had just finished watching the Pacers stun the Cavs in Cleveland, after which visiting teams were 4–0 in the second round of the playoffs. This anomaly seemed to bode well for my team, which had to play a road game in Minneapolis.
The first quarter was going moderately well, with neither team doing a very good job of putting the ball in the basket, when Steph Curry pulled up lame and asked to be taken out of the game. Turns out he had strained his hamstring and did not return, and his status for Game 2 is questionable.
This is, how you say, bad. And yet — after he left the Dubs became even stingier, holding the Wolves to 11 points in the second quarter. In these situations it’s always hard to tell how much is good defense and how much bad offense; suffice it to say that at one point late in the 2nd I looked up and they had put 28 points on the board, and I felt kind of sad for them. They missed their first 13 3-point shots and ended up 5-for-29 from deep.
There is often a weird sort of bump that happens when Steph gets injured and the other players remember, hey, we’re professional basketball players too. Last night they occasionally looked a bit lost on offense, but holding an NBA team to 88 points is no small feat.
Can they keep it up if Steph has to miss multiple games? I dunno. A W is a W and I’ll take it.
by bill | May 5, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
Game 7 was not pretty. After playing 12 times this season (5 in the regular season, 7 in this series), the Warriors and Rockets knew all each others’ habits and played gritty, grind-it-out basketball. Young Rocket Amen Thompson, he of the chiseled Sphinx features, turned Steph Curry’s usual beautiful game into a struggle for survival. I am reminded once again of the Vogons:
Billions of years ago, when the Vogons first crawled out of the primeval seas of Vogsphere, lay panting and heaving on the planet’s virgin shores… when the first rays of the young Vogsol sun had shone across them… it seemed as if the forces of evolution had simply given up on them then and there, turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly mistake. They would never evolve again. They shouldn’t have survived. The fact that they did is a testament to the thick-willed stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? they said to themselves. Who needs it? What nature refused to do for them they simply did without until they were able to correct the gross anatomical inconveniences with surgery.
The natural forces of Vogsphere worked overtime to make up for their blunder. They brought forth scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing them with large iron mallets; aspiring trees which the Vogons cut down to use the firewood for cooking the crabs; and elegant gazellelike creatures with dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on.
Fortunately Buddy Hield — the textbook definition of a streak shooter, who started the season hitting everything, then settled into an extended, frustrating slump, and had 0 points in Game 6 — chose this occasion to catch fire. He scored 22 badly needed points in the first half and 33 in the game, “the most points after going scoreless in [a] prior game in NBA postseason history,” says ESPN. Buddy gets the game ball.
(more…) by bill | May 3, 2025 | Golden (State) Years |
Unfortunately
There will be a game seven
Tomorrow evening
