This is probably Jermaine O’Neal‘s last hurrah in a storied 18-year NBA career. He’s been around the block, from being under-utilized early in his career with the Portland Trailblazers to being the centerpiece of a franchise routinely predicted as a championship-contending team on the Indiana Pacers. And he thinks this year’s Golden State Warriors can also be championship-contending.
“We’re a work-in-progress, but we are a championship-caliber team,” O’Neal said Wednesday, after the Warriors blew out the Los Angeles Lakers on Opening Night at Oracle.
“This team doesn’t have a lot of guys that have backgrounds of making it far in the playoffs,” added O’Neal, “So I do my best to talk to them and help them understand that I’ve been to the Conference Finals three times. One of the most difficult things to do. To get to the NBA Finals and actually winning it? That’s even more difficult.”
The motto for the Warriors inside the locker room is, “Just us.” It’s a culture that Coach Mark Jackson has had even before O’Neal arrived. And it’s an environment that, after nearly two decades of service in the NBA, O’Neal completely buys into.
“When you understand what your role is,” said O’Neal, “(Jackson’s) not a coach that’s going to put you in a position to fail. He’s going to put you in a position to succeed and he’s one of the best coaches I’ve seen.”
After the two losses to close out the preseason schedule last Thursday against the Sacramento Kings and Friday against the Portland Trailblazers, Jackson said last Saturday after practice that he needed to reiterate to the team everyone’s roles.
“We’ve got to understand everybody’s role, which will be made plain and simple where everybody understands it. We’ll know who’s on board and who’s not,” Jackson stated, “I think those are things that we have to strive for looking towards Wednesday (Opening Night).”
According to O’Neal, Jackson went over each player’s role, one by one, in front of the entire team at Tuesday’s practice.
“Coach did a great job yesterday on just sitting us down for like 45 minutes and telling every player what his role was, what he expected,” O’Neal said, “and that’s huge.”
O’Neal added:
We just had to understand who were are, what our goals are, play with a purpose any time we step on the court. We’re going to be a really good team and we’ve got to believe we’re a really good team, and not only believe but we’ve got to play like we’re a really good team, and that’s something that we needed to understand. This is an opportunity you don’t get every year for whatever reason: injury, trades, firing of the coach, whatever it may be. I’m a true believer of that because I’ve lived it in Indiana. We were built to win and had every opportunity to win, came up short in the (Eastern) Conference Finals and then the brawl happened, and basically we just dismantled the team, and I got hurt. So you gotta take an opportunity when it’s given, understand who you are, and play with a force.
The Warriors are sure to be tested this year on how the team absorbs being contested and challenged by a opponent’s best run. O’Neal thinks that staying focused and playing for each other, every single night, is the only way to win in the NBA.
“I told the guys to remember this statement,” O’Neal said, “We are all we got; we are all we need.”
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