Bucks stop heroes: Streak is over
Tired Warriors lose in Milwaukee
Shed a tear, if you must, for the end of the Warriors’ glorious win streak. But don’t forget all the laughs.
Many times during the Warriors’ 24-game win streak (28 in a row, counting four at the end of last regular season), which ended Saturday night in Milwaukee — when they would crank up their game to a higher level and get it humming like a nuclear-powered Swiss watch — all you could do was throw back your head and laugh.
The Bucks put the laughs on temporary hold Saturday with a 108-95 win.
Pat Riley, a valuable bench player on the ’71-’72 Lakers team that won a record 33 in a row, said after watching Ste-
phen Curry in a recent game, “He put up 20 points in a row and I just laughed. It’s humorous, greatness like that.”
Riley was talking about Curry, but you can’t separate Curry from the rest of this team with a crowbar. That’s the beauty of what we’re seeing, the electric, flowing team ball. It’s hilariously beautiful.
The Warriors laughed, too. They enjoyed every second. Their bench became the unhinged studio audience at a falldown-laughing game show.
Confession: Even this veteran sportswriter, trained to observe sporting events with a non-cheering detachment, did his share of amazed laughing in the privacy of his living room.
For eight weeks the Warriors won and won and won, a scorchedearth march across America and Canada. Almost all the wins were by double-digit margins, but for variety, the Warriors threw in an overtime win, a double-overtime win and a comeback from 23 points down (against the Clippers).
Now the streak is over. The Bucks snapped it in the final game of the Warriors’ seven-game road trip. Welcome back to Planet Earth, Warriors, and a heroes’ welit’s come back to the Bay Area.
The Warriors did not go quietly into that great good Saturday night. Down 14 at one point, cold-shooting and dead tired, they kept clawing back.
But they lost, and now time, brothers and sisters of Warriordom, to be strong and resist temptation.
First, to resist the temptation to mourn the streak.
The Warriors will not be mourning. They relished every second of their run, and now they’ll rest three days and get back to business. To the Warriors, the streak is something they’ll carry with them proudly the rest of the season.
Even though their ultimate goal is another championship, this streak was far from meaningless in the grand scheme. The streak gave the Warriors two important gifts.
First, it punctuated and validated their NBA championship. Anyone who belittled, minimized or qualified the Warriors’ title run has been laughed into the background. No sane person can deny the heart and hardness of this group.
Second, the streak strengthened the Warriors. In winning 24 in a row to start the season, the players, fighting at playoff-level intensity to maintain their streak, became battle-hardened and even more confident. They got stronger as a unit, bonding tighter as brothers, just as the ’71’72 Lakers said they did.
During their streak, the Warriors set the game of basketball back 30 years and advanced it 10 years. They set it back because grizzled old basketball coaches with crew cuts and canvas sneakers, who bemoan the current state of the game, have been dewyeyed watching the Warriors exhume an oldschool style of teamwork and movement and defense.
At the same time, the Warriors advanced the sport because they did their old-school thing in a new and stunningly different way, beautifully executing the plan put into place by coach Steve Kerr, who has yet to be on the court for a game, driven to the background by post-back-surgery headaches.
Fans, while resisting that temptation to mope over Saturday’s loss, also resist the temptation to look too far ahead, to a time when this group will be beyond its prime, scattered to the wind. Someday a gray-goateed Stephen Curry will watch his jersey be hoisted to the rafters of the Warriors’ arena, the glory of this current team a distant memory.
The thing to do now, fans, is to Zen up. Don’t look ahead or behind, but appreciate what you’re watching right now, because the rest of the hoops world is.
Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs, recently said he hates the three-point shot, saying that the Warriors’ main offensive weapon is a circus gimmick. He wasn’t bagging on the Warriors at all, but in a worldwide vote of basketball fans, Popovich has been outvoted, 5 billion to 1. No one denies the legitimacy of the Warriors.
This team is not a gimmick. The Warriors are the new truth in basketball, and their streak was not lucky or fluky. It was freaking glorious.
We now return you to the long, grinding NBA season in progress. Enjoy. Laugh.