Warriors Begin the Trek to the Promised Land

We have a guest poster today who is a bigtime Warriors fan. He brings the pain on the Mavs and Mark Cuban. He also explains how the Warriors are the "Borat" of the NBA Playoffs. Read on if you dare.....

If the West Coast Kid's comments haven't inspired enough naysaying and general rage at the idea that the Warriors are going to take it to the Mavs beginning tonight, I invite you to read on and suggest having a small dog or other domesticated animal of choice near by so that you can kick it at the end of this column.

As a disclaimer: I am and always have been a biased Warriors fan... and yes, in the past this has clouded my judgment and perhaps led to some poor choices that have both impacted my financial situation and general self-respect. That being said, I fully believe as both the Warriors have grown and improved, so has my own ability to predict the outcome of sporting events.

That being said, I fully believe the Warriors can and will win this series with the Mavs and I am particularly confident in Game 1 tonight. Let's just say, if I weren't already 6 figures in debt because of various questionable decisions about continuing my education I would be making a little trip to Vegas to enjoy all the anti-Warriors sentiment flowing into my bank account. Speaking of which, here's how you know you are a die hard Warriors fan. I was in Vegas for the NBA All-Star weekend for a bachelor party and the highlight of the weekend for me was making 2 dollar horse-racing bets at the MGM Grand Sports Book next to Chris Gatling (former Warrior power forward from the early 90's). I was so stoked that one of my friends (Lakers fan) half-jokingly asked me later if I got Gatling's digits. A little pathetic? For sure. But undeniably awesome if you ever were at a Warriors game in the early 90's and saw Gatling throw down on Manute Bol from just inside the free-throw line with 15,000 Warriors fans in going completely insane? No doubt.

As for the game tonight, one thing that kills me about the comments we've seen so far is that everyone keeps asking how we can possibly question the strength of a team with one of the best records in the history of the NBA. First of all, if you stretch out the last 22 games of the Warriors season when everyone was finally getting healthy and gelling together, the Warriors won 17 of them. You stretch that over a season and that's not that far off from what the Mavs did and this is the team the Mavs are going to have to play in the first round. Who cares what happened the first 60 games of the season with injuries and two different starters not even on the squad? And if you do care so much about those regular season games when the Mavs were so dominant, guess what? The Mavs did not beat the Warriors once! So essentially, any argument that you should pay attention to the regular season falls completely on its face because the Mavs did not beat the Warriors once in the regular season. Do I care that the Mavericks went 4-0 against Team A or B? Hell no. Did they beat the team (Warriors) that's in front of them right now? No - even when both teams were at approx full strength (before the Jackson/Harrington Trade which increased the Warriors playoff level potential exponentially) AT DALLAS earlier in the season.

Plus, have you watched Dallas in the playoffs the last couple years? It's all about whining to the refs about calls they didn't get, Nowitzki freaking out on his own teammates, calls that Wade got in the finals, and fines on Mark Cuban for telling it like it is. Please. Teams do not win Championships like that. If Cuban were smart he would sit at home, shut up, and stop being a distraction to his team, his coach, the refs, and everyone trying to watch the game. Cuban needs to realize nobody really cares about him. He's become a Jerry Springer-esque side-show over the past few years. Someone you really could care less about, but that you just can't take your eyes off of and can't help talking about. That's it really. If Cuban were to die tomorrow, nobody would truly care any more about him than if it were the poor transvestite who came out to her/his life-long love last week on Springer. The only difference is that 100 million people have seen Cuban make a fool of himself for 3 years and have become attached to him because the TV cameras have yet to stop rolling. I have not seen the Mavs in a serious situation in the Playoffs and thought to myself, wow, they handle themselves like Champions. Like the Spurs the last decade, like the Bulls did, like Miami last year. Not to mention the fact that once you get passed Nowitski and Howard and you look at that roster, you're telling me that that is a championship team? I just don't see it.

Then you have the Warriors, one of the hottest teams in the league with a young, hungry core of players and some solid vets willing to do whatever it takes to win, as they've shown over the past two months. Plus, they have a saavy, experienced coach whose style exactly fits this late 2000's (meaning 2005-2010) NBA game.

These two teams remind me of a couple of movies. The Mavs are the Peter Jackson's King Kong of the playoffs. Critics love them, it's a long epic designed for the long-haul, but for some reason that you just can't put on paper it comes up short and leaves you feeling a little cheated. The Warriors are the Borat of the playoffs. Nobody gives them enough credit, even the studios don't put them in enough theaters because of the controvery but everyone loves them, they still pull through and make a killing. Plus you have the threat of hookers and lawsuits (see Stephen Jackson) and you know we'll pull out a bag of our own poo if things don't go right.

I rest my case.

-dwyermaker

UPDATE: Thanks to the anonymous poster who informed us that we previously had "late 2000's NBA game." But that meant in the 2005-2010 range. And yes, with some luck, Don Nelson will still be coaching in 2907.