San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Joy at essence of everything Warriors do
The Golden State Warriors face many challenges this season.
Contract uncertainty. Kids needing to learn on the fly. Vets needing to stay healthy and hungry. Too few minutes for too many guys.
The Warriors’ biggest challenge?
Joy.
Attaining it. Sustaining it. It’s a big deal. Skeptics, scoffers and un-fans of the Warriors surely smirk when head coach Steve Kerr talks about the concept of joy, but to the Warriors, it’s a real deal.
Joy is a core concept for this team, and has been since Kerr showed up in 2014. It’s not just how the Warriors play, it’s how they practice, how they prepare and how they slog through airports and winter snowstorms in the seemingly endless trek of the NBA season.
The recipe for joy is a secret, much more complicated than Colonel Sanders’ secret blend of 11 herbs and spices; not as crispy but much more cosmic.
Kerr and Stephen Curry, the foremost exponents of the concept, could probably break it down, but why bother? That would be like trying to define “love” by its chemical elements. Joy? It is what it is.
It’s more than simply chestbumping, shimmying and night-night-ing. Those are outward manifestations of the inner feeling needed to pull off what the Warriors pulled off last season, a crazy and unexpected championship.
It’s a chicken-and-egg deal. Does the joy lead to winning, or vice versa? The Warriors will tell you the joy comes first.
Style of play is important. The Warriors’ free-flowing, fast-tempo offense demands creativity and allows for freedom, two vital ingredients in joy.
It’s infectious. We’ve watched new Warriors sucked into it. Getting Andrew Wiggins to crack a smile in the heat of battle was a notable achievement.
One guy can be the leader. Magic Johnson infused the dour, workmanlike Lakers with joy four decades ago. But one player can’t do it alone.
Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala. Each player has his own style of joy, but they all buy in and they all contribute.
Will the new guys get it? Will they grasp the concept, understand that joy is more than acting goofy when you’re hot, when you win?
Will the old guys maintain it, resisting the forces that erode it?
An old song went, “Across my dreams, with nets of wonder, I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love.”
Joy is an elusive butterfly. Training camp opened Saturday morning. Gentlemen, grab your nets.
Deep shots, cheap thoughts and bon mots ...
Speaking of joy: Let’s talk Jimmy Garoppolo, who isn’t Kyle Shanahan’s ideal quarterback, and isn’t the chosen quarterback of many fans, but ...
What if he is more than a lot of us give him credit for being? What if he is a different kind of QB. Doesn’t kill himself studying the playbook and watching film. Disappears from football for a couple months every year to do whatever a rich, handsome bachelor does.
No coach will ever be comfortable with that, but a good coach adjusts.
What if Garoppolo doesn’t Omaha the opposing defense to death, but he brings some joy to the party, making up for not being Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? His San Francisco 49ers teammates weren’t faking it last week when they mobbed him, were they?
What if the casual swash and buckle Garoppolo rocks helps take the edge of the brutal seriousness of the game for him and his teammates?
Garoppolo isn’t going to be Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen. But he’s still fairly inexperienced, still got that new-car smell, so what if he develops from a B quarterback into a B-plus or A-minus?
Could happen. Garoppolo seemed to take a step forward this week, casually expressing a wish to open up the offense a bit, let ’er rip. Shanahan didn’t seem to know (or care) what that meant, but it doesn’t matter, it rang bold, and positive.
Say this about Jimmy G: He makes it hard to root against him. Buster Olney, I can’t carry his jock as a baseball analyst, nor do I aspire to. But: Aaron Judge is “having the greatest singleseason performance by any hitter in the history of baseball”?
Olney reasons that Judge’s stats are astounding, not by pure comparison to past feats, but because of how difficult hitting has become.
But hitting has become harder for all hitters, and Judge is not dominating the field the way Babe Ruth dominated the other hitters of his day.
Through Friday, Judge had 60 homers, and the next closest hitter had 40. In 1921, Ruth hit 59 homers and the next guy hit 24.
Judge had 87 extra-base hits, the next closest was 77. Ruth had 119 extra-base hits in 1921, the next guy had 83. Judge began Saturday as the RBI leader by seven. Ruth won the 1921 RBI title by 32. And so on. This week’s sign that there is a God: Beer Nuts are glutenfree.