Last-place Warriors back on their treadmill

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — ESPN has an ulterior motive, if a very understandable one.

The network wants us to watch. So on the screen for a game that, except for one great player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was of no national interest, it kept listing his team, Milwaukee, as having the best record in the NBA East.

The other team, the Warriors, the opponent, were “No. 15 in the West.” Impressive. Until you realize there are only 15 teams.

Indeed the Dubs are last.

This isn’t, as they used to say, man-bites-dog news, but nearly half way through this very predictable and yet still very distressing season there was a hope the Dubs would be off the treadmill.

However, they’re still going nowhere, at least in terms of results. Well, actually they’ve returned to going nowhere.

There was a four-game win streak a few days back, but the 107-98 loss Wednesday night at Chase Center was their sixth in a row.

At least the Warriors didn’t anger coach Steve Kerr with listless play, as they did two nights earlier at Sacramento when he screamed obscenities at the officials and earned an ejection and a $25,000 fine.

Against the Bucks, Kerr liked the effort, which when a team isn’t any good is about all anyone can wish. The Dubs kept falling behind, as was expected, and then kept battling back, which wasn’t expected.

The Warriors climbed to within five points with a minute, six seconds remaining. Not bad, in relative terms, if you’re not going to win.

The Warriors' games this season, with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson out because of injuries, are comparable to those of the bad old days. The only reason to go — assuming you didn’t put down a king’s ransom for season tickets at the billion-and-a-half-dollar Chase — is to watch the visiting team.

It was like that over the years, first with Bill Russell and the Celtics, then Michael Jordan and the Bulls, then Shaq O’Neal and Kobe Bryant of the Lakers. I skipped Kareem and Magic, but how much pain can one absorb?

Anyway, the star was there but he was on the wrong team, beating the Warriors. The 7-foot Antetokounmpo was last season’s MVP and dreamers think a future Warrior.

Giannis didn’t have his best game, but 30 points, 12 rebounds and four assists isn’t terrible, either.

“Even when he doesn’t shoot well,” said Kerr (Antetokounmpo was 10 for 21, 1 for 7 on 3-pointers), “he has a huge impact. We tried to make him work. We did a good job, but we just couldn’t hang in there.

“We played great defense in the first half against the best team in the league.”

Does that count for something, especially to the home crowd? The people come, but they aren’t very enthusiastic. That the Warriors change uniforms and the court (both read “San Francisco” on Wednesday) doesn’t seem to mean much to fans who watched their team win a record 73 games one year and reach the NBA finals five straight seasons.

They’re spoiled. And they should be. Going back in time doesn’t work. Alec Burks, a journeyman in the most positive sense of the word, did score 19 for the Warriors, and the great hope of the future, Alen Smailagic, had 10 (8 in the first half when he led everyone). Still, there wasn’t a chance the Warriors were going to win.

The Bay Area is sport’s Broadway, not the bushes. The crowd is paying for greatness. It got its money’s worth with Milwaukee. The Warriors? They’re No. 15 in the West. And there only are 15 teams.

Then Draymond came back in

SAN FRANCISCO — Then Draymond came back in. Alec Burks said it. An All-Star is supposed to make a difference, right? And Draymond Green, All-Star, emotional leader, has made a difference, in games that have become so much a part of the Warriors’ legacy.

Or, as on Monday night, in a game less consequential, other than it was responsible for the first two-game win streak of a season now finding itself.

Yes, two in a row, which compared to those glory days a few seasons past, the 24 straight victories early in the 2015 season, seems almost unworthy of being mentioned.

But that was then, and this is now, the tumult and frustration without the departed (and hurt) Kevin Durant and the still present but equally injured Klay Thompson and Steph Curry.

No Kevin, no Steph, no play. But plenty of Draymond. And with the 113-104 triumph over the Minnesota Timberwolves, a second win in a row.

Which most likely is as far as it goes, since next under the tree is the Houston Rockets on Christmas Day.

“We need this regardless of what is coming next,” said Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ coach. “We just needed to win a couple games in a row to get a little momentum and feel good.”

It was the mediocre Timberwolves, having cut a 24-point third-quarter deficit to six points with six minutes to go in the fourth quarter, who had the “mo.”

“Then,” said Burks, “Draymond came back in and got D-Lo (D’Angelo Russell) a shot. We were just playing out of character, and they went on a couple of runs, which allowed them to come back.”

But only so far.

Burks, a guy who’s been tossed around the league — the Warriors are his fourth teams in eight seasons — has been making his points, literally (25 Monday night) and symbolically (his observations). He talks quickly and softly, but his words, like his shots, hit the mark.

“I think my teammates are putting me in the right position,” he said about his ability to score, “and Steve (Kerr) is trusting me to have the ball in my hand and make plays for myself and others.”

One of those others is Russell, who had 30 points. People knew D-Lo could score and, finally healthy, he is proving people correct. The question now is how D-Lo and Curry, who is supposed to be back in late February, will pair together. Maybe not the Splash Brothers redux, but perhaps there will be a lot of water flying and baskets dropping.  

Curry, his left hand in that cast, and Thompson, recovering from the torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left leg, both were at Chase Center with their teammates Monday night, although unable to play.

“Just having their presence, especially for the young guys,” Green said of the contributions from Curry and Thompson at games or practice.

“Those (young) guys haven’t been around as much. I’ve always said when you’re hurt, you’re just not a part of the team. These young guys look up to them. They are legends, superstars, heroes to some of these young guys.”

So too is Green. At the moment, Andre Iguodala, Shawn Livingston and Durant gone, Curry and Thompson rehabbing, Draymond is the only player on the Warriors still active from the teams in five straight NBA finals.

He hectors teammates, yells at officials and keeps believing.

“I think our younger guys are getting some experience,” Green said about the improved defense. “Starting to figure out rotations, and that makes a difference.”

Green was enthusiastic about the inside play of center Willie Cauley-Stein, who had three blocked shots Monday night. “He made several plays tonight at the rim,” Green said of Cauley-Stein, “giving us the spark (on defense) he also gives us on offense. The way he runs the runs the floor, like the play he got the block and then sprinted out and got the dunk.”

So Draymond, how does it feel to win two in a row? “It feels bleeping amazing,” he all but shouted. “I never thought I’d be so excited for two regular season wins in my life.”

Warriors-Knicks: Bad teams but a good game

SAN FRANCISCO — This is what keeps us interested, even when there’s no reason to be. Two bad teams playing a game that was very good, perhaps not technically but very much so emotionally.

The eternal line in sport is “you never know.” You never know when the last-place Knicks, who had lost 10 in a row, and the next-to-last place Warriors would compete as they did Wednesday night and play a game that makes you say, “I wish I was there.”

Especially if you owned one of those high-price Chase Center season tickets and weren’t there.

Yes, it was another Warriors loss, the Knicks winning 124-122, and now Golden State at 5-21 has replaced the 5-20 Knicks as the team with the worst record in the NBA.

So if you were looking for something that might be showing up on ESPN, this wasn’t it.

But for one game out of the 82-game schedule, for a night’s entertainment, it was terrific — the Warriors, looking unenthusiastic, down by 22 points just before half, tying the game on a seemingly impossible, virtually on the sidelines 3-pointer by D’Angelo Russell with 5.5 seconds left in regulation and then losing.

It was so terrible that just before intermission the fans booed, even though they should know, as Warriors coach Steve Kerr reminded that, with Klay Thompson and Steph Curry injured and a ton of kids on the roster, this will be a learning season.

With Russell, 32 points, showing why the Warriors took him in a sign-and-swap deal with the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Durant, fans were celebrating after the fourth-quarter heroics.

The Knicks have been awful for the longest time, weeks, months, years, and only a few days ago in the usual desperation move by an organization that is caught between panic and ineptitude, New York fired head coach David Fizdale. On Wednesday night the new guy, interim coach Mike Miller, got his first win.

“We know there are tough stretches,” was Miller’s analysis of getting off the schneid, “but we are playing the right way, and we are putting ourselves in position to win.”

The Warriors are putting themselves in position to promote. The tenet in advertising is to sell the sizzle if you don’t have the steak. It was Star Wars night Wednesday at Chase. The Force wasn’t with the Dubs.

The Warriors switch uniforms from game to game; among the half dozen is the one that says “The Town,” supposedly honoring the community the Warriors fled after some 70 years to come to Chase. There’s also San Francisco, which was in use before Franklin Mieuli, the late owner, decided to switch to “The City.”

This is the marketing era, but one surmises that if Klay, Steph, Durant and Draymond Green could show up healthy, white T-shirts would be perfect attire.

The thinking was Curry and Russell would provide the offense this season, but Steph is out with that broken hand, and Russell has been limited by a thumb injury, missing numerous games.

But he was there against the Knicks, and if nothing else his 3-pointer will become part of Warriors history in a quite unhistorical season.

Asked how he created space for the shot, pinched between a defender and the sideline, Russell said, “Honestly, I feel like if I dribbled I would be helping him guard me. I was just trying to be as crafty as I can and get a shot up.”

Kerr was asked what if anything the Warriors learned from the game in this learning season.

“I think they learned it’s a long game," he said, "and there is lots of time to comeback. At halftime we were down 18, and we were sort of lifeless. We got back into the game petty quickly in the third quarter. That’s a good lesson for young players.”

The lesson for everyone is that any game can turn out to be a memorable one.

Struggling Warriors are the poster kids for Raiders’ Jon Gruden

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They have become the poster kids. For another sport.

Whenever Jon Gruden wants to make a comparison of all the ills that have beset his Raiders football team, as he did the other night, he refers to the Warriors basketball team.

Not that in anything beyond misery there are any true comparisons between an NBA franchise that was on top of the sporting world and, for one reason or another has tumbled to the bottom, and an NFL team still trying to get out of its own way.

The Raiders have been overwhelmed by injuries, needing to rely on new players. ”The Warriors,” said Gruden, “have been going through the same processes.”

What the Raiders went through Sunday at the Oakland Coliseum was a 42-21 pummeling by the Tennessee Titans. Then a few miles and a few hours away, at Chase Center, the Warriors were defeated 110-102 on Monday night by another team from Tennessee, the Grizzlies.

Tough times. Maybe everywhere, except in the 49er camp. Tom Brady, of all people, was booed at home. Who cares about what a man or team did last season or over the many seasons? What have you done lately?

And why have you done it?

“It’s just the nature of sports,” said Steve Kerr, the Warriors' coach. “People expect that if you’ve won, you’re going to win forever. It doesn’t work that way. A team tries to do its best, set realistic goals and tries to avoid the expectations and outside noise.”

Which, of course, is impossible.

That noise, the ranting on TV and radio, the grumbling of the fans, the complaints of a tormented coach, is what sports is all about. Always has been what sports were about.

Even limited success, then, should be cherished. Washington won the World Series. After years in the wilderness that should be enough, but it won’t. More, more, more.          

What the Patriots are dealing with, what the Raiders are dealing with, what the Warriors are dealing with, what the New York Giants — who Monday night lost their ninth in a row — are dealing with is losing.

Look what the Warriors had. And what they have. For five seasons, they were playing for championships. This season, they’re playing to get better so maybe someday in the future, with the big guys back, again they’ll be playing for championships.

“We faced an unprecedented situation,” reminded Kerr, who rarely reviews the damage. “Losing two All-Stars (the now departed Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson) to season-ending injuries within two games of the NBA finals. Something that’s never happened before.

“Then this season starts and whatever, it was, three, four games, Steph (Curry) goes down with a broken hand, and your team is decimated by injury. It changed the outlook of the entire season.”

From being a contender to being ignored.

A year ago, the Warriors were never off TV. Now they’re never on, at least on the national networks. Already two Warriors games have been pulled from prime time. 

One day you’re famous, the next you’re virtually nonexistent. Like the line about a tree falling in the forest, does an NBA game count if nobody knows it was played?

Tickets are expensive, especially in new arenas like Chase. As Kerr pointed out, expectations are big, even when that’s unrealistic. After the loss to a bad Memphis team Monday night, the Warriors are 5-20, the worst record in the league.

Will a fan base accustomed to winning and having purchased season tickets that run into the thousands be willing to support a lot of kids still learning pro basketball? It’s sort of like going to a Broadway show and getting a cast of backups.

Kerr has implied it was acceptable. Until Monday night.

“This was a disappointing game,” said Kerr. “I thought the energy was pretty good early, but the execution was really poor. Often it was carelessness... We have such great fans, and they are dying to cheer for us. We’ve had games here this year where the fans have loved the effort. Tonight, I didn’t think we responded well enough.”

At least there were no boos.

Warriors experiencing richness of the ‘taste of defeat

By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

SAN FRANCISCO — Bill Bradley knew about winning. He played for the championship Knicks, then was a U.S. Senator. And about losing, failing in bids to become a candidate for president.

”The taste of defeat,” Bradley wrote of his career, “has a richness of experience all its own.”

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven