Refs Galvanizing Already Peaking Warriors Team
The idea of professional athletes at the absolute peak of their craft, paid to win games and fill the seats with a singular goal of winning a fourth championship in five years and cement themselves as one of the great dynasties of all time, would need any extra motivation is abstract and hard to grasp at best.
But then again, so is the idea of one of the five greatest offensive players of all time, a two-time MVP and someone who has completely changed the way the game of basketball is being played being given the same respect as a G-Leaguer on a 10-day contract by the referees (that is a whole other discussion for a whole other day).
But this is what the NBA has given the Golden State Warriors: You have a team starting five all-stars, two of the greatest offensive players of all time, two of the best defensive players in the NBA, and a Finals MVP coming off the bench, who collectively are vying for the first three-peat since the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, what's the one thing you don’t want?
For them to get any more motivation, which the NBA Officials gave them on Friday night and then again on Saturday with the Last Two Minutes report and then again on Tuesday night with a quick whistle and short leash on Kevin Durant.
The end of the Minnesota game was a shipwreck. A huge missed call on Stephen Curry in transition, followed by an even bigger missed call on a Durant three that would have essentially ended the game, followed by a rarely-made call against Durant that completely ended the game left the players and fans with a sense of shock more than anything. You could see that with the Warriors’ reaction, which was mostly laughter and flabbergastation.
What on the surface for many looks like a third-quarter blow-up against an inconsistent and bumbling Minnesota Timberwolves team and a privileged Warriors team senselessly complaining may internally be a galvanizing moment heading into the final five games of the regular season and the beginning of the postseason.
For a team that looks to be going through the motions more so than ever before, and whose stars have said before that they are bored by the monotony and unimportance of the regular season, something like a slight from the referees, and by extension the league itself, is just the thing to not only engage the team but bring it together.
Steve Kerr said in the pregame availability before the 47-point win against the Hornets that they were “frustrated together,” and that it “could be used in a positive way.”
What does that mean for a team that is glossed with a sense of invincibility and which has only lost one playoff series by four points in Game 7, since 2014?
The same thing it has for so many teams before struggling with the Atlassian task of standing at the top of the mountain and holding up the NBA: a death wish for the rest of the NBA.
They have already taken the league to task, thumping the Hornets and Nuggets by a combined 61 points, all but locking up home court throughout the West playoffs and making yet another statement against one of the better teams in the NBA this season.
Its amazing that at this point, the best rivalry in the NBA is the Warriors vs the referees, and in essence the league itself.
They have transcended the game to the point that they are only competing against the league.
But this, all of this, the entire season of ups and downs, infighting, injuries, globs of technical fouls and ejections, stretches of vulnerability, represents a larger point: this is what surviving at the top of the food chain looks like in today’s NBA.
After a certain amount of time, it becomes tedious. Just like anything else, winning can become annoying and challenging and becomes harder and harder to maintain.
People take for granted how challenging it is for a team to be the top bill for this long, or to win at all.
There is a reason only four teams (1960s Celtics, 1991-93 and 1996-98 Bulls and 2000-02 Lakers) have ever completed a three-peat, and only one has won four in five seasons (the Celtics, who won eight straight): not only it is physically exhausting playing eight months of basketball year after year, but it is emotionally and mentally draining to contend and play for titles for as long as the Golden State Warriors have been, all while getting every team’s best shot, especially in today’s 24-hour news cycle and need to consistently harp on the same three or four storylines for years at a time.
Every team runs out of gas, or fire, or luck at some point. Not every version of a great team can bring home the Larry O’Brien.
It's why Jerry West, Bill Russell, Magic and Kareem, Larry Bird, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, Tim Duncan and LeBron are held in such high regard (albeit with scrutiny and caveats): because they played more high-intensity minutes than anyone else. Most players aren’t made for those moments.
And there is certainly a motley crew of players on these Warriors that are cut from that proverbial cloth (championship banner cloth).
But surviving at the top takes its toll.
Even Michael Jordan had to take two years off of basketball (coupled with the murder of his father and potential gambling scandal) before he refound his love for the game.
We assume that just putting supreme talent together on the court guarantees a title (or titles), despite seeing time and again that this is not the case (Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, Kareem and Big O, Stockton and Malone, the 2000s Mavericks, Durant, Harden and Westbrook, 2010-11 Heat and 73-win Warriors).
Most title teams get there and win with some combination of talent, timing, chemistry and injury luck – the 1983 76ers, 2016 Cavs, 1994-95 Rockets and 2004 Detroit Pistons are all prime examples.
And with the excessive talent in the NBA right now – I estimate eight players (Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Paul George, Curry, Durant, Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard) that you could make a legitimate case for why they are the MVP – it is even harder to have continued success.
But even surrounded by all of that, giving a team with this much talent, this much championship experience any more reason or desire to decimate its competition is like throwing a Molotov cocktail on a gasoline-doused building.
And after a five-year stretch during which they have only been beaten by a three-game stretch of what in retrospect seems like divine intervention, what is there left to challenge but the league itself?