Curry and Co. set for a dream date with NBA destiny
OAKLAND — The Warriors — after a brief 40-year pause, during which time man learned to walk upright and create fire — are back in the NBA Finals.
If it seems like a dream, it is, sort of.
One year ago, the Warriors hired Steve Kerr, and he had a dream. The rookie coach would take a great group of players, give them new tools to work with, infuse them with a gradeschool-level cornball team spirit, and see where that road might lead.
So this, the Warriors team that beat the Rockets 104-90 on Wednesday at Oracle Arena, is a dream team for real.
A big part of Kerr’s dream was that the Warriors would not only have stars, like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, but that the stars would blend beautifully with the other guys, and vice versa, and wherever they went, they’d get there in one big bus, not in two limos and 10 taxis.
Many didn’t see this coming until fairly recently, but it’s no surprise to some insiders, including the Stephen Curry fellow.
Back in 2009 he tweeted, “Promise to all the Warrior fans… we will figure this thing out… if it’s the last thing we do will figure it out.”
There was a ton of figuring between then and now, but consider Curry’s promise, and Kerr’s dream, uh, almost fulfilled. One more step ahead, a huge one, but no longer a looming Mt. Everest of a climb.
Kerr couldn’t have scripted Wednesday’s close-out game any better. Curry was a star, of course, with 26 points, and Thompson bailed the boys out in the second quarter when they were reeling.
But oh, that supporting cast. And oh, how they played as a team.
This is no time to bore you with stats, but chew on this one for a second, then tweet it over to your friends who say there’s no team ball in the NBA. The Warriors had 135 assists in the four-game series, to 100 for the Rockets.
Everybody on the Warriors gets a check on their report card under “Works and plays well with others.” Including Kerr, whose ego allowed him to trust in, and lean on, his assistant coaches.
And this might be a good time to dig out a story posted a couple of years ago, when the Warriors were trying to land free agent Dwight Howard.
The analyst for Bleacher Report, who was not alone in his belief, wrote, “It’s obvious that the team as it is currently built isn’t going to win anything. … The Golden State Warriors have to do something, and they know it.”
They didn’t get Howard, but they got their mojo working. They rearranged the parts and turned their going-nowhere machine into a rocket to the moon.
The Warriors’ closeout performance wasn’t flawless. At times this was as ragged as a noon-time pickup game at the YMCA. That’s because the Rockets are a really good team that scrapped and clawed its way to the conference finals.
But the Warriors were better. They played like a dream team. With more dreaming ahead.