The Golden State Warriors managed to survive the worst part of their schedule, the first 24 games or so, with numerous back-to-backs and road games. But barely. They had two shocking and brilliant wins over San Antonio on the road--in the same week. And they ended this phase with two remarkable wins, on the road against Cleveland and Chicago, both without injured Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Al Horford and (for one game) Jimmy Butler. But they came out of it having won just one more game than they lost.
After their first real break of a few days (thanks to their failure to move on in the in-season tournament), they started what some observers are calling the most crucial part of their season--a long stretch of mostly home games. They need to do well during this stretch to become competitive with the best teams in a loaded conference, they say.
The first two games did not go well. Steph Curry returned and scored 39 points against Minnesota and 48 in Portland--and the Dubs lost both games, falling behind in closely fought games with cold shooting and defensive lapses in the fourth quarters.
After the Minnesota game Coach Kerr questioned the defense, and after the Portland game he questioned the effectiveness of his own coaching. The You Tube and podcast coaches came out in droves to tell him what he was doing wrong. Many probably pointed to moving away from Pat Spencer, the sudden star of those last road wins.
Meanwhile Jonathan Kuminga has disappeared from the rotation, and the sense that come trade time in mid-January he will no longer be on the team is becoming for many a near certainty. That was easy to defend after wins.
The Warriors are a puzzle. They can look brilliant and surprising, and they can look bad and overmatched. The league has become more athletic than they are, and sometimes their smarts and skills are good enough to win. But so far, only about half the time.
Meanwhile OKC is flying high in an historic season, and it seemed no one could defeat them until San Antonio did, to deny them the in-season tournament championship. But they seem built for this moment the way the Dubs were in 2015. Still, injuries to key players continue to be an almost absurdly regular feature of the NBA, to the point that it is useless to even speculate how teams will end up.
In the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers are seemingly overcoming their continued bad luck injuries with a series of wins. They looked particularly strong on both sides of the ball against Tampa Bay, to win their 10th game. The Pittsburgh Steelers are almost as mystifying as the Warriors. They seemed pretty much done until they came up with a pretty dominant win against their closest rivals, the Baltimore Ravens. But a bizarre injury to their key defensive player again puts their season in doubt.
The story that interested me in college football was Notre Dame, having been denied a chance to compete for a championship in a highly controversial decision, pulled the plug on a Bowl game. Too many of their star players would sit it out for fear of injuries before the NFL draft. I watched several Notre Dame games during their 10 game winning streak, and much of the time they looked like an NFL team competing against college boys.
That it's becoming all about money is understandable to me from the players' point of view--it's their chance for financial security they could probably never attain in any other way. But the role of money in the big time colleges is something else again, and it would not surprise me that this has something to do with why Notre Dame got locked out.
Injuries because of greedy NBA owners, the violence, brutality and devastating injuries of NFL and now college football, and the greed associated with them all, really requires enough denial to further inhibit my enjoyment of these sports.
