There’s a shoe that has to drop at some point in this Golden State Warrior season, there just has to be. Neither basketball nor anything else is designed to set this high a bar of stimulus so often, to amaze and amuse with such regularity.
This isn’t a wish, mind you. It’s just the law of big numbers talking. Everything reverts to the mean, and it is to the Warriors’ credit that their mean happens to be about seven wins and 18-point win margins better than anyone else’s.
Klay Thompson’s crypt-bursting breakout game Monday night in Chicago is merely the latest in a series of jaw-slackening performances in the first tenth of the season, and reminds us that the Warriors deal in amazement and fright simultaneously. Amazement that they can seize games and then distribute them among themselves at will. One night, it is Stephen Curry's 51 against Washington. Another, it is Kevin Durant's 41 against New York. Another still, Thompson, with his 14 threes and 52 points in 27 minutes to end a seven-game shooting slumplet.
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The ridiculous part is that each of those games completely blanketed outstanding performances from teammates. On Curry’s 51-point night, Durant’s 31 on 18 shots in 31 minutes was forgotten. On Durant’s 41-pointer in New York, Curry’s 29 in 33 minutes was shaded. And on Thompson’s, Durant (plus-45), Curry (23 on nine shots) and Alfonzo McKinnie (the new kid in the rotation, with 19 points and 10 rebounds in 27 minutes) all got relegated to opening acts.
That’s the frightening part. To beat the Warriors now, a team must (a) play nearly flawless basketball and (b) hope several Warriors play spectacularly poorly simultaneously. They seem to have combined the joy of 2015 with the inevitability of 2017 to create an all-devouring 2019.
And when we say all-devouring, we mean that Monday’s amazement renders the one from two days ago forgettable, and the one five days ago has no chance at all. The Warriors are Warrioring at a frightening pace, circling closer and closer to the sun and laughing through every parsec.
It makes a body wonder, then, how much more fun can these guys eat?
In fairness, the teams they have played are either poor or are starting poorly. They have played two difficult games at altitude against good teams (at 4-2 Utah, a one-point win, and at 5-2 Denver, a two-point loss) and six not-so-much before injury ravaged/talent-deficient teams with a combined record of 9-29 – average score, 128-111.
But as the team eases into its expensive contract negotiation phase (Thompson, Durant and Draymond Green), their best selling point, other than “We win all the time and we pay handsomely,” is “how can you pass up all this fun?” They root gleefully for each other as they gorge, which remains the best and most obvious way to avoid team-rending agendas and resentments over who takes the last shot. They have taken to heart Steve Kerr’s message to smell the roses as they are in full bloom, and have weaponized basketball happiness.
Caution is in the air, though. It is October, and there are 74 more games before the regular season ends and the real regular season begins. This ease of achievement will not always be available – and if for some reason it is, then they really have destroyed the league, and there is nothing left to do but start your 2022 mock draft analysis.
But let’s say Curry won’t alternate 51-point nights with Durant 41-point nights and Thompson 52-point nights. Let’s say there will be nights when Draymond Green has to be the one at the heavy end of the piano, or Andre Iguodala, or McKinnie, or in time DeMarcus Cousins. Let’s say there will be nights when it won’t be the lady doing pop-a-shot/arm-wrestling at the arcade
Let’s say this third consecutive ring thing really will be harder than it looks, despite the preposterous early returns.
That’s when we find out how the Warriors truly are at the most elemental level – when 40 points from a different guy each night isn’t the norm, and Kerr has to remind them about protecting possessions and rebounding and not getting caught in pick-and-rolls and the tedious stuff that helps makes the carnival nights possible. What we’ve gotten the last week is the cartoon, and the cartoon has been hilarious fun, from the Fergie anthem to the orbital ring around Thompson’s head.
But the movie is about to start. And while it seems impossible to imagine now, the movie will be the best part.
And when you least expect it, it will be Green’s turn to go 28/19/13 in 27 minutes, or some such statistical laugh riot. Even in the dead of the early December roadie to Toronto, Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland and Milwaukee, there is always the possibility of that.
Why, it’s almost as good a selling point as a super max deal. Almost.