SLEEP TRAIN ARENA, SACRAMENTO, CA — The new season is upon the Golden State Warriors and more than just one NBA writer, albeit both based out of the Bay Area and so with perhaps at least a tad bit of homerism (if not accusations of such), has predicted the Dubs to be Finals champs for this 2014-15 season.
I think the Warriors can do it, as well.
Of all seasons, this is the season where they can “sneak up” on the NBA’s elite teams. The San Antonio Spurs just so happened to have succeeded in climbing one of the toughest mountains to climb, back from a Game 7 heartbreaker to avenge that loss against the greatest player on the planet, LeBron James.
James himself just so happened to have left his “Super Friends” team to rebuild/reload in his hometown. Even if the Cleveland Cavaliers have grown their own three-headed Hydra with James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, like James’s inaugural run with the Miami Heat, there are bound to be some chemistry issues as their Big Three gets acclimated. This does not take away from the very real possibility that the Cavs are probably Finals contenders for years to come with that trio.
Kevin Durant (and Reggie Jackson) just so happened to have gotten injured and left the Oklahoma City Thunder starting off on the wrong foot. And if last season was any indication, the Thunder may have peaked already. Furthermore, we know that the Warriors can play at the Thunder’s level, based on last season’s epic regular season performances.
Finally, the Chicago Bulls are just about as new to this struggle to become part of the NBA elite as the Warriors are.
So in a league where all of a sudden you have one champion handicapped with the “the only way to go is down” problem and the rest are all on the up-and-up, it’s a golden opportunity (no pun intended) for Golden State to seize the throne while the Gregg Popovich‘s Empire is taking a breath from exhaustion, trying to refortify defenses.
Think about that for a second. The Golden State Warriors. NBA champions. That’s actually not a preposterous statement!
When you talk about the San Francisco Giants, you think three World Series in five years. You talk about “family” and the culture that Larry Baer and Brian Sabean have constructed over the years.
When you talk about the San Francisco 49ers, you don’t necessarily think “Super Bowl” but you know there’s a shot, each and every year. You look at Jim Harbaugh and you think of his “Who’s Got It Better Than Us” culture. It’s a culture of winning, of expectations.
By contrast, when you look at the Oakland Raiders, you see shambles. You see lack of identity. You see guys with no direction, no accountability, no hope, no foundation. “Going through the motions” would almost be a compliment.
Culture is so hard to build, whether you’re a professional franchise, Fortune 500 company, Silicon Valley startup, or volunteering your off-hours at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But once you get there, once you have a belief that you can win, an air of confidence that you really ARE good at what you do, pillars of strength that make your will virtually unbreakable, then you have something that can weather the storm. You have a brand.
And that’s exactly what Mark Jackson did during his tenure with Golden State.
Jackson took a franchise that was the laughingstock of the NBA, that didn’t know how to play defense, that was like a dog chasing a car — what did the Joker say in The Dark Knight? “I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it” — and he made them the predator.
Granted, Jackson rubbed people the wrong way. I remember when general manager Bob Myers had to deal with the media when the Darren Erman tape-recording incident happened. Myers looked so stressed out, probably due to the fact that it was a double-whammy because Jackson had dismissed Brian Scalabrine not too long before that. Plus, Erman was part of the Boston Celtics/Joe Lacob clique. You could see that Myers had had enough of the controversies, regardless of who was right and who was wrong.
I actually don’t have any problem with Jackson’s methods. His cliche’d responses to reporters questions, his proclamations which sometimes worked (“best backcourt in the history of the game”) and sometimes didn’t (“elite defender”), and insistence on late-game isolation defense were all reflections of the culture that he had produced. One where Golden State Warriors players commanded respect, were never pushovers, and were the aggressor.
The Warriors needed that makeover before they could think about becoming elite.
Jackson will never get credit, because as it turns out, Myers was right, even if he was lucky (caveat: I’m a firm believer that you make your own luck) that Steve Kerr didn’t take the New York Knicks job. Kerr is the better fit for the organization, although I admit that I probably would have picked the Warriors to reach the Finals — where anything can happen — if Jackson had remained coach.
And Jackson will continue to get thrashed by the bloggers who insist on making comparisons.
To those people I offer you this. Stephen Curry isn’t looking back on the past and what could have been, so let’s turn the page and move on:
“Honestly, I mean, it’s almost a little unfair to kind of try to base (comparisons) off of right now — really at all — Coach Jackson did a lot of great things. I don’t want to take anything away from what he did in three years and try to make those comparisons because it’s tough, because they’re different. They are different, their mannerisms and their temperament on the court, so far from what I can tell, but X’s and O’s and what buttons he’s going to push on the court this season — I can’t really think about last year or the last three years of Coach Jackson. I’ve just got to talk about how Coach Kerr is and make your judgments.”
And guess what, Coach Kerr is a championship-caliber coach.
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