Don't You Dare Tell Klay Thompson The Warriors Dynasty Is Over
The rise and “fall” of the Warriors has really been fascinating to watch as an outside observer. In the early days they were the most fun team to watch in the NBA hands down. We all stayed up way past our bedtimes in order to watch Steph Curry to crazy Steph Curry things and under no circumstances did you want to be the only one on the planet to miss him bombing 35 footers. The way they played revolutionized basketball and changed the NBA forever which was awesome to watch. Then as they became more and more dominant like all successful teams, people started to hate them. Now suddenly those same cocky celebrations that we all loved early on became an issue. Draymond couldn’t stop kicking people in the dick and started embracing his role as a villain.
By the time they blew a 3-1 lead against the Cavs, everyone who wasn’t a Warriors fan was finally able to get their jokes off after getting our collective shit pushed in by a team that seemed unbeatable. It looked as if maybe, just maybe the annoying run by GS was coming to an end. But then they added Durant and fully evolved into a team that almost everyone hated. Yeah we hated them mostly because we were jealous our favorite team didn’t just add one of if not the best players on the planet, and watching them win a couple more rings certainly didn’t help. In my opinion that’s why the internet was so quick to call the dynasty over when they lost last year’s Finals, KD bolted and Klay tore his ACL. I’m not sure how much of that is actually true compared to how much we want it to be true, and if you listen to Klay talk in that clip he does make some good points. It’s not as if everyone left GS, there’s a chance D’Angelo Russell could give GS like 75% of what Klay Thompson does from an offensive standpoint, and Steph and Draymond are still the same beasts they were last season.
The West got tougher, there’s no arguing that. But the more I think about it I feel like this whole season is setting up to be a We Believe Warriors Vol 2 situation. They’ll most likely be a lower seed come next Spring and I can see it already. Klay is going to come back in late March/April, the Warriors will be an 8 seed and be matched up with a 67 win #1 seed (maybe the Lakers, maybe the Clippers) and it’s going to be 2007 all over again. They’ll enter that first playoff series in their new arena and it’s going to be like the GS/DAL series all over again. Remember how fucking fun that was?
It feels weird to say a team that still has the talent GS has will be an underdog just like that scrappy 2007 team, but that’s sort of how it feels. People are talking about teams like LAC/LAL/POR/UTA/HOU as the contenders to come out of the West and that the Warriors don’t still exist or something. All I know is there is going to be a high seed next Spring that has to stomach an early round exit and any hopes and dreams of this Warriors dynasty being over will be dead.