The Games Are Over, Let the Blah Blah Blah Begin

 The Lakers victory over New Orleans was surprising, but Sacramento pummeling the Golden State Warriors was almost shocking.  Depending on who is talking, Sacramento played above their capabilities thanks in large measure to a raucous home crowd and Golden State had a bad night; or, the young Sacramento team beat up on the old Warriors.

So their season is over, and the talk about what changes will be/should be/must be/might be made has already begun.  What a din it's going to be for months and months! 

 In their postgame interviews, Steve Kerr and Draymond were slightly in shock but philosophical, Kerr taking the long view and praising this team for sticking together, while Draymond seemed convinced that the current Warriors could have a better year next year.  There's a case to be made for that, in that the rotations changed so much and so many times during this rocky season, only stablizing in a mostly impressive late season run.  But Steph's slightly shocked postgame response was a little different: "I just want to win," he said repeatedly.  He may love this team as it is, but it sure sounds like he's ready for it to change.

The question everyone is focusing on is the future of free agent Klay Thompson.  That he had the worst shooting game of his long career (the first time in nearly 1000 games that he's played more than 12 minutes and not scored) is not a great last impression, and complicates matters further.  Personally I believe it was fatigue.  When a reporter repeated in the presser after the New Orleans game that Coach Kerr said he was going to rest players for the upcoming Utah game, and asked what Klay thought of that, he welcomed the idea of rest, and noted the end of season heavy travel and back-to-backs.  He was tired, and yet played more than 20 minutes against Utah, carrying the scoring burden without Steph.  The game might have meant something but it turned out to be meaningless: the Warriors would have been in 10th win or lose.  A tired Klay might have been the difference in the play-in, though as Coach Kerr said, the Kings physically dominated.

To be realistic, this loss is of limited consequence for them this year.  The Lakers play Denver in the first round, and if it lasts 4, 5 or even 6 games, they will lose.  I'm not sure the Warriors could beat Oklahoma City in 7, but I really doubt they could beat Denver.  Their chances of coming out of the second round, let alone the first, were always dim.  

The real consequence of this not even close loss is that it's the last impression of the season, and increases pressure on the Warriors front office to make big changes in the off-season.  As Kerr said, the West was very competitive this year--with its 46 wins, the Warriors would have been a playoff team last year.  And it seems the West is only going to get stronger next year.  San Antonio is going to be better, Memphis is likely to be better, Sacramento--though whether they even get into the playoffs this year seems to depend on Zion's health in their upcoming play-in game in New Orleans--is a young team that's likely to be better.  In addition to making next season a steeper mountain to climb, it also may limit the talent available to the Warriors in trades and free agency.

So there may be action in the off-season but there most definitely will be talk, talk, talk.  I hope to avoid it.  On the other hand, it's an election year and so the news will be no refuge.  Well, there's the WNBA.  There will be basketball there.

Play-In Set, Starts Tuesday

 The Golden State Warriors won their last game of the season against Utah, but the help they needed from other teams didn't materialize, and so they start the play-in at the 10 position, meaning they will need to win two elimination games on the road just to get into the first round of the playoffs.

The crucial difference was that even though the Dubs defeated the Lakers last week, they lost to New Orleans at home, while the Lakers defeated the Pelicans on the road on Sunday.  Sacramento also won their final game.  So now the Warriors travel to Sacramento for the first play-in game on Tuesday.  If they win it, they play the loser of the Lakers v. Pelicans.  

The other consequential outcomes on Sunday mean that the Phoenix Suns avoid the play-in after all, and the #1 seed is Oklahoma City, with the Nuggets and Timberwolves behind.  So if the Warriors win the play-in games, they will face the Thunder in the first round of the playoffs.

The Warriors played Utah Sunday at home resting Steph and Draymond, but Klay Thompson, who after the New Orleans game had expressed a desire for a rest day, was left to carry the scoring burden with 25 points.  A banged up Kuminga didn't score at all, though he had the most assists of his career.  With starters and the usual second team getting a bit more than 20 minutes each, Coach Kerr emptied the bench, giving a few players a rare appearance.

So how do things look?  The Warriors are more banged up than they were a month ago, but many other teams have equal or worse injury problems.  That's going to make these play-ins and playoffs less than predictable.  The Warriors had a tough end of season schedule in terms of excessive travel and several back-to-backs, so fatigue may also be a factor.  

Still, the Warriors will be expected to win in Sacramento.  Their likely opponent then will be the Lakers, despite LA's big win against New Orleans Sunday, especially if Anthony Davis is out with the injury he apparently suffered at the end of Sunday's game (he led all scorers with 30.) Also, Le Bron played heavy minutes.

  Either of the 9/8 teams is beatable, though both have defeated the Dubs at least once this season.  Can the Dubs handle the Lakers with both Le Bron and Anthony Davis on the floor?  They haven't in their past two victories over LA.  The Dubs go into the play-ins with some momentum (while Sacramento does not), but so do New Orleans and LA when their stars are on the floor. On the other hand, if the Warriors win both games, they won't have to face Denver in the first round, with those match-up problems.

But first they have to get past the Kings.  They may not have Gary Payton II available, Kuminga may not be fully healthy, and Podz continues his puzzling lack of scoring, putting more of a burden on a weary Klay Thompson.  Still, Kerr has a lot of faith in the Draymond/Jackson-Davis combination to augment Steph and hopefully Klay, and in general Kerr expressed a lot of optimism about the team peaking now.  Andrew Wiggins has been playing well lately, even after his ankle injury (he had 19 points Sunday.) Defense has stepped up a lot, but the Dubs still haven't conquered their propensity for turnovers.  So it's Tuesday, game on for the play-in.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who hit his 300th career home run on Sunday.  The former National League Most Valuable Player joins such revered Pirates greats as Willie Stargell and Ralph Kiner on the 300 dingers roll, though unlike them, Andrew didn't hit them all while playing for Pittsburgh. Still, he hit 216 as a Pirate, placing him just behind Roberto Clemente on the all time list.  I've seen him play in both the Pirates and SF Giants uniform.  He was one of the few real stars for the Pirates in the decades after the Barry Bonds era in Pittsburgh, with a lot of joy and charisma as well as the skills that made him an exciting player.  

He remained a fan favorite in Pittsburgh and a fixture in the city, especially when he married a Pittsburgh girl and maintained a home there.  He returned to the Pirates this season by his own choice as well as the club's, and he seems destined to retire there as a player and perhaps remain with the Pirates organization.  This too is in an older tradition of Pittsburgh sports, when it wasn't unusual to see a couple of former Pirates managers sitting together in the ballpark stands.

That Iowa Season, Warriors at the Wire

 I had just a semester in the Iowa Writers Workshop graduate program back in the prior century but enough for me to be an Iowa alum, and call Caitlin Clark's team my own.  I've been watching all season, learning the other members of the team as well as the amazing CC.  They sold out games everywhere they went and during the NCAA tournament kept breaking TV viewing records.  Their Final Four victory over UConn had the biggest audience on ESPN, not only of any women's game, but of any basketball game, period.  

Caitlin Clark was the chief reason.  A deep three point shooter in the mold of Steph Curry (Clark made "logo three" part of the language), she also has Curry's ethics and solid, smiling demeanor.  That she's a role model is a very good thing.  But she was also surrounded by good teammates, like the tenacious Gabbie Marshall, a great defensive player who could also reliably hit the three.  

Iowa played in the championship game two years in a row, and this year met the undefeated South Carolina team, possessed of a much deeper bench.  Iowa won the first quarter and lost the other three.  It can be argued that it wasn't quite a fair fight, since the four best teams in the tourney were Iowa, South Carolina, Louisiana and UConn.  To get to the title game, Iowa had to play two of them.  South Carolina played none. 

For all that Clark and Iowa and other breakout stars for other teams did this year to rocket attention to their sport, the upcoming WNBA draft tells a different story about college womens basketball.  While the NBA has 30 teams, drafting deep into college teams and recruiting high school players and even younger prospects, the WNBA has 12 teams, fewer than half as many.  So while Caitlin Clark will almost certainly be chosen with the first draft pick, her excellent teammate, fifth year senior Gabbie Marshall expects never to play another competitive basketball game in her life.  She plans to get some more education and a professional job in the health field.    

Also on Sunday, the Golden State Warriors defeated a Utah Jazz team of mostly young prospects.  Houston had already lost its game, meaning that the Warriors had clinched the 10th spot and a play-in opportunity.  They lost to a Luka-less Dallas by 2 points on Friday, but the Los Angeles Lakers also won one and lost one, so the Dubs are still a game and a half back of the ninth place Lakers, a less vulnerable play-in spot.  They will very likely need to defeat the Lakers on Tuesday to have a chance to move up.  After that, the Warriors play Portland, New Orleans and Utah, while the Lakers have only Memphis and New Orleans.  New Orleans is the wild card in both scenarios.

The Lakers were playing well but are now facing injury issues with their two stars, Le Bron James and Anthony Davis.  As of Sunday, it's not clear whether either will play against the Warriors.  

Down to the Wire

 While the Warriors were wobbling towards the finish line of the season, the Houston Rockets were soaring.  So what had started out to be Golden State's challenge to get into a guaranteed playoff position has become a fight to live as even a play-in team.

Even with new lineups and no real duds on the team, the Warriors continued to struggle to stay with the game long enough to win it, and especially to win at home.  Losses to Indiana, New York and Minnesota were with nearly a fully healthy roster, and then injuries started to mount up.  Back on the road they eventually roughed up a depleted Miami Heat team, and the next day faced the Orlando Magic, with Jonathan Kuminga hurt and a banged-up Jackson-Davis on the court.  As if that wasn't handicap enough, Draymond got himself two tech and an ejection in the first quarter, and Steph Curry almost lost it.  The despair brought him to the verge of tears.

But the Warriors responded.  They protected an early lead until once again they lost it late, but this time responded with just enough to win a low scoring game by 9.  Klay Thompson was again outstanding as a starter, playing heavy minutes two days in a row.  Andrew Wiggins stepped up with the aggressiveness usually supplied by JK, and bench players picked up on the competitive energy.  (Although for the second game in a row Chris Paul seemed less than sure-handed.)  

But Houston also won, beating the better OKC team in overtime. The night before, the Lakers without Le Bron won in overtime.

 It's not just the Warriors who are beat up--practically every team is--so all bets are off for any given game.  On paper, Houston has a tougher schedule to finish but they have momentum, and the Warriors seem to have fewer games with a clear advantage.  They've got two with Dallas, one with the Lakers, New Orleans and now a potentially crucial one with Houston.  They can afford to take lightly exactly nobody.

Unless Houston goes on as impressive a losing streak as their current winning streak, and/or the Warriors practically win out,  Golden State's status as even a play-in team let alone a play-off team could be in doubt until the end of the Utah game on April 14, the end of the regular season. 

The Dukes (Was It The Shoes?)

It was big sports news earlier this week when the Duquesne University Dukes made the cut to participate in the NCAA men's basketball tournament for the first time in decades.  It was even bigger news when they won their first round game, upsetting 6-seeded BYU.  It was the first Dukes victory in the NCAA tourney since 1969.  

But when I was growing up in western Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 60s, and learning the game, the Dukes were the very definition of the best college basketball.  They participated in the NCAA tourney six times in the 1950s, and won the national championship in 1955. This was a whole different era, with set shots and some players still shooting foul shots underhanded. The dunk was not even a distant dream, let alone the three pointer.  From the time I could read headlines in the sports section of the local paper to later when I could read the stories, Duquesne was dominant.

On Thursday, the Dukes ran at the BYU team with athleticism and a 9-0 run to begin the game, and even after BYU took a brief lead, the Dukes went on another run and were up by 12, and maintained that lead throughout the first half.  They kept the pressure on with steals, a characteristic of their game (so of course they've been called the Pittsburgh Stealers.)  BYU came back but the Dukes edged ahead again and held on for the victory.  

Before the game (as ESPN reported Friday), the Dukes team received new shoes from LeBron James, because the Dukes' coach had previously coached LeBron for two years in high school.  So...was it the shoes?

Duquesne University was founded as a Catholic college in Pittsburgh in 1878, and became the first Catholic university in Pennsylvania.  It's a peculiarly Pittsburgh name, going back to the time before the French and Indian War when France claimed the city, guarded at the point of its three rivers by Fort Duquesne (renamed Fort Pitt when the English took over.)  A number of towns and townships in Western Pennsylvania still have their French names, though no one from France would recognize how they are locally pronounced.  Back in those 1950s, sports events on radio and TV were sponsored by both Duquesne Beer (Have a Duke, Have a Duke, Have a Duquesne Beer) and Fort Pitt Beer (Fort Pitt--That's It!)

The beers are gone (though the Duquesne brand was revived) but the Dukes still have a strong sports program for a relatively small school.  Now there must be many wondering "the what Dukes?"  They've already made a national splash.  Perhaps there's more to come.  

Reality Check

 The night of my last post, Steph Curry went down with an ankle injury towards the end of a game against the Chicago Bulls that the Golden State Warriors then narrowly lost.  He was out three games, and the Warriors lost two of them.  With Curry back and scoring 31 points in 3 quarters, they looked good beating the Lakers in LA, though the fairly early exit of Anthony Davis with a nasty eye injury might have been the key.  

Then they lost at home to the surging New York Knicks, which combined with the Lakers convincing beat down of Atlanta, dropped them into 10th place.  It was the Knicks' fifth win in a row on the road, but notably Coach Kerr and especially Steph Curry did not emphasize this momentum in their postgame comments.  Kerr said the Warriors had simply been outplayed.  Curry expanded on that idea, noting that a week or so ago he was talking about the Warriors moving up to the sixth slot for the playoffs, but now it didn't seem to matter what slot they got, if they played in the playoffs as they did against the Knicks, they wouldn't get very far.

It was a sobering reality check.  The Dubs have a physical disadvantage against particular teams but  the quality of their play is in their own hands.  So even if it was an off night, there can't be too many of those for the rest of the season or the playoffs.

Meanwhile, Kerr continues to play his depth.  Nobody cracked 30 minutes on the floor against New York but Curry and Green, and both of them barely.  In that game only Jackson-Davis was truly impressive, with 19 points and 10 boards in his twenty-some minutes.  The other bright spot is Klay Thompson, who had great games (though in slightly different ways) against both the Lakers and the Knicks.  He continues to thrive off the bench. Draymond Green may be hampered by injury, and Moses Moody is also questionable.  Obviously Dray is a big factor, and in particular matchups Moody could be. 

Now the Dubs have a chance to improve their doleful record at home with two more games this week, against Memphis and Indiana.

Stretch

 After another successful road trip and a 35 point victory over the Bucks at home (with the Bulls coming in on yet another back to back), the Golden State Warriors look game by game at the stretch run of the regular season: 21 more games.

At this point the schedule is potentially better but full of unknowns.  For example, the Dubs play Dallas and San Antonio three times each.  Of course it matters almost as much when you play a team as what team you play.  But right now, Minnesota and New Orleans look to be the only top tier teams they'll face.

Can they get to the sixth seed and out of the play-in?  It's possible, though Phoenix would seemingly have to drop down beyond that slot, and that team is hard to figure.  So far they've certainly been the disappointment of the West.  

But do they really want to?  Because as a six seed they'd probably draw Denver.  The great unknown of any playoff is how teams will perform against each other in a seven game series.  The Warriors' depth favors them in most cases, and Steve Kerr seems to be coaching not only to win the remaining games, but to prepare the entire roster for playing in the playoffs, and the roles they might fill.  But if a team has a decisive advantage, that depth may not help.  And right now the Denver Nuggets look like they have that kind of advantage over the Dubs. (Phoenix may actually match up better with Denver.)  So it's probably better for the Warriors not to face Denver in the first round. 

But then, lurking in the East there's the Boston Celtics.  Their 50 point beatdown of the Dubs at the end of a short but torturous East Coast trip was partly a product of those circumstances, and the absence of Wiggins.  But in general they do appear to be another team for which the Dubs don't have an answer.  Anything can happen before and during the playoffs--key injuries prominently.  But right now the Finals look foreordained: Denver v. Boston, with the Celtics likely to emerge at the end.

So it's best to enjoy the basketball ahead on this stretch run.  The victory over the Bucks was so much fun to watch, from lightning offence to incredible defense, including massive blocks by Jackson-Davis, J.K. and Draymond.  The Warriors scored 32 points in the fourth quarter, and the Bucks scored 9.  

 Though it may be a stretch to consider the Warriors as championship contenders, stranger things have happened.  Beyond team dynamics, skills, experience, match-ups and the will to win, the three elements of winning in the playoffs are health, momentum and luck.  They happen or they don't.  Still, getting there may be all the fun.