Warriors 16-17 Season

[Bubba_s]

Holy Hell I would love a total domination sweep, two games where Steph and Durant are sitting the 4th quarter cuz it's a blow out in their favor.

ME TOO!!

I don't have a great idea of how this will actually turn out, but an all out obliteration would be awesome.

 

[Kestrel]

Talk about short sighted.... Sure, a sweep is great for your team. Woo, rah rah another trophy for the mighty elite white tech people of San Francisco! How fantastic!

... but apparently you fail to see what the Dubs winning every game by 40 would do to the league as a whole. And you know? The teams from two cities won't support the entirety of the NBA; if there isn't competition, basketball as a whole dies.

The repeated super-team finals over and over and over isn't good for basketball. No competition removes the incentive for the country to watch. I can tell you first hand that if you get outside of the bubble of SFO and Cleveland, that other folks really aren't excited to watch these finals.

 

[Bowling4Bikes]

Talk about short sighted.... Sure, a sweep is great for your team. Woo, rah rah another trophy for the mighty elite white tech people of San Francisco! How fantastic!

... but apparently you fail to see what the Dubs winning every game by 40 would do to the league as a whole. And you know? The teams from two cities won't support the entirety of the NBA; if there isn't competition, basketball as a whole dies.

The repeated super-team finals over and over and over isn't good for basketball. No competition removes the incentive for the country to watch. I can tell you first hand that if you get outside of the bubble of SFO and Cleveland, that other folks really aren't excited to watch these finals.

agreed. James has been in 7 straight finals now. teams in the east must be so sick of him, lol

 

[jdhu]

Talk about short sighted.... Sure, a sweep is great for your team. Woo, rah rah another trophy for the mighty elite white tech people of San Francisco! How fantastic!

Maybe the future will be 3-5 "super" teams in the league, if stars really do gravitate toward each other. Then again, Lebron is kind of a transcendent talent. You don't get his type very often, who can completely control and dominate one side of the league (he's arguably ruined parity more than anything else).

Can't really think of solutions if stars are willing to take pay cuts to play together (which in a way is kind of cool).

Call me fair weather, but it is kind of hard to root for a team like...the Kings. Poor record, stuck in that shit part where you don't get high lottery picks, and management seems clueless at times.

 

[Bay Arean]

Always with the class warfare. Geez.

 

[Kestrel]

I'm just being real, man... Do you think people from Oakland actually get to attend the games anymore? Think they'll have better chances of attending after the stadium move? That stadium in the bay is going to cost some serious bank; the gentrification of the Warriors is a real thing, and that kind of sucks.

Lebron is definitely once-in-a-generation talent; I don't think he'll be in Cleveland forever, and I bet he's going to take a retirement gig somewhere with a few other players.

How do you solve the super team problem? I don't know. Yes - the Cavs are part of the problem, too. I'm absolutely admitting that. Non GSW/CLE fans are pretty dejected, as are a lot of other players in the league. I mean... How many teams have gotten killed by Lebron in the East? All of them. Seven years running of Lebron making the finals and eliminating so many other big market teams. People absolutely hate him, just like similar western conference hate is growing for GSW. Dominating teams reduce excitement for the sport outside of their respective markets if it keeps happening over and over and over. (And in this case, three years running... unprecedented!)

Tricky situation... I'm sure bean counters are looking at the numbers, and if the revenues get impacted enough, you can bet the NBA will take some sort of steps to break up the big teams and attempt to 'rebalance.'

 

[Bay Arean]

I'm just being real, man... Do you think people from Oakland actually get to attend the games anymore? Think they'll have better chances of attending after the stadium move? That stadium in the bay is going to cost some serious bank; the gentrification of the Warriors is a real thing, and that kind of sucks.

There is being real, then there is playing the Rust Belt song. Which is partisan not real.

Yeah, Cleveland has mean streets so its therefore more the people, man. Well I got news for ya. The past and present of Warrior reality is rooted deeper in Oakland than SF. I guess you didn't grow up here, but I still consider them an Oakland-based team and am sad about the move, but it indicated the overall plutocratic thinking around the whole country in terms of team owners and stadium deals. But even in SF, there are plenty of fans who are not part of the tech bubble. Probaby open hostile to it for that matter.

I have a sense of dread about what success and the move to SF mean ultimately but right now, there are a lot of non-rich and non-white fans who are enjoying the moment for as long as it may last. If it was only about money, the Dodgers would be in the series every year. We have no idea about the Warriors future even next year, so I will enjoy this, as I have the last three seasons, without tripping on who has a grittier hometown and trying to infer some universal reality out of it.

But you are right about the resentment. Man, it has changed for the Dubs around the country. I don't know how long the current ownership cycle will last, but they are a first-class organization not just because of money. It's a bunch of good hires from top to bottom, and it's a huge component in their success. If I was an NBA player, I sure as hell would want such an organization no matter where they played.

 

[Bowling4Bikes]

I don't really see much of a problem. small-market teams have about the same shot as they've always had. I loved watching Celtics/Lakers, then Lakers/Pistons, then Bulls/whoever. sometimes the Suns made it, sometimes the Mavs, Pacers, etc. I do agree it's a tricky situation to legislate it out. They've done well with the salary cap, but it's not perfect.

 

[Kestrel]

There is being real, then there is playing the Rust Belt song. Which is partisan not real.

Yeah, Cleveland has mean streets so its therefore more the people, man. Well I got news for ya. The past and present of Warrior reality is rooted deeper in Oakland than SF. I guess you didn't grow up here, but I still consider them an Oakland-based team and am sad about the move, but it indicated the overall plutocratic thinking around the whole country in terms of team owners and stadium deals. But even in SF, there are plenty of fans who are not part of the tech bubble. Probaby open hostile to it for that matter.

I have a sense of dread about what success and the move to SF mean ultimately but right now, there are a lot of non-rich and non-white fans who are enjoying the moment for as long as it may last. If it was only about money, the Dodgers would be in the series every year. We have no idea about the Warriors future even next year, so I will enjoy this, as I have the last three seasons, without tripping on who has a grittier hometown and trying to infer some universal reality out of it.

But you are right about the resentment. Man, it has changed for the Dubs around the country. I don't know how long the current ownership cycle will last, but they are a first-class organization not just because of money. It's a bunch of good hires from top to bottom, and it's a huge component in their success. If I was an NBA player, I sure as hell would want such an organization no matter where they played.

Then we'll agree it sucks. I don't think the Warriors' move would have been possible without the recent success of the team, but was the success a reasonable price to pay for the change of team culture? It's hard to say. If anything can be monetized, somebody is (unfortunately) going to find a way to do that. And while ultimately the NBA wouldn't exist if it weren't a money making proposition, at the same time you can't help but feel the driving push for more cash to be such a dangerously corrupting force.

I don't know what future the bay stadium holds for the team. I do know first hand what it's like to see a team get killed for the sake of profits, a la Art Modell.

There's a balance between home team pride, and knowing that owners are often doing anything and everything they can to take advantage of team loyalty in order to extract the maximum amount of cash from any market. Investors want money; does altruism and team loyalty really mean more to ownership than a profit? That's a tough philosophical pill to swallow, no matter what market you live in.

Tough questions for sure.

 

[Dubbington]

Basketball and Football with salary caps are designed so each team theoretically has a fair chance to win the following year. It comes down to ownership, wise drafting, lucky drafting, and injuries to determine the success of your team.

Lakers continually paid the luxury tax to maintain their players. Basketball I believe requires contractually that 51% of the $$ goes to the players. Half the league is above the salary cap, some (Cavs and Clippers) are far above the cap.

Baseball is the only sport where owners can spend whatever they want AND it often means championships or perennial playoffs. No guarantee though as the Dodgers have a $245mil payroll and can't win.

Small market teams typically mean teams with owners that refused to spend their money from others businesses on the team OR like the Raiders, they don't have other $$$ coming in aside from the Team.

The Oakland A's have lots of money (Gap heir is their owner) but for years their minority owner was running the show. He was real estate guy and refused to pay because a stadium couldn't be built in San Jose. So they collected $30 mil from the top 10 teams in the league and only spent $70 mil roughly for years. Well revenue sharing will be shut off in another season and guess what, they A's are starting to spend, that miser owner sold his portion and promise of a new stadium is Oakland has been made.


Point is 95% of all these teams can do what the other teams are doing, it just depends on several factors that are out of many players/owners control. Warriors are getting lucky with two years of spikes in the salary cap. If they win this year, they will be a destination team for veterans and team friendly contracts for years.

 

[Bay Arean]

Then we'll agree it sucks. .

Yeah. The only thing I don't like about Rick Welts is how excited he is about moving that venue to SF. He should at least pretend and be humble about how disappointing it is to East Bay fans. They seem to have taken the tack of making Chase "just like Oracle, but better." That's their story anyway.

It's not like Oakland is so far away, or that gentrification and new wealth isn't spreading there. By the time the thing is built, I think you will see enough money on the east side to have made everyone wonder why they didn't make their deal in a lower land value venue. I just don't understand what they have really gained other than "new."

To me, it's a huge step backward in terms of living in gridlock land. Farther from an airport, farther from the freeway. Crazy.

 

[Kestrel]

You make some great points; if the area has 'turned' anyway, as the Bay Area money continues to sprawl outward, then what did you really gain anyway by moving? Why not let the sprawl come to you, and reap the benefits? But I guess they think there's more money to be made at the Chase. When in doubt, it's usually safe to assume that any and every business decision of that scale has been number crunched to death to determine what will maximize profit.

I still have trouble wrestling with the idea of home town loyalty when it's so easy to go out and purchase a mercenary player from anywhere in the world who can bring that team a championship. In the face of that, what does home town loyalty even mean anymore? I'm fortunate to cheer for Lebron because he's from Akron. That's cool. But what about everyone else?

Do I keep the illusion going? Or think more about the deeper meaning of all of this, while possibly ruining the enjoyment of 'sports'? Maybe it's best to stay ignorant!

 

[Bay Arean]

I still have trouble wrestling with the idea of home town loyalty when it's so easy to go out and purchase a mercenary player from anywhere in the world who can bring that team a championship. In the face of that, what does home town loyalty even mean anymore? I'm fortunate to cheer for Lebron because he's from Akron. That's cool. But what about everyone else?

On several occasions, I imagine opening the morning sports section and reading that Steph is going to the Charlotte Hornets to be home, honor his local college, revive a team with his superstariness and find a more wholesome place to raise the kids. Wouldn't that be amusing? We Dubs fans would have to SUCK IT UP.

As for the sprawl thing, I keep wondering if the decision to build Levi's in Santa Clara was made when SF was having some business vacancy issues, because I remember some years back that it was a great concern. But in the time it took to move down to tech-land, it would seem tech-land moved up to SF. I dunno, maybe I got it wrong. It takes years for these things to play out, is my point.

 

[MotoCat]

I think we should be resentful of cities like Boston, where all their pro teams are always in the playoffs, if not championship winners.

It wouldn't be too far off for the Patriots to repeat, the Celtics to emerge as a superteam (through free agency and draft), and the Red Sox and Bruins pull off some miraculous upsets. I don't want to say they'll win 4 titles in a year but that's a scary thought.

 

[jdhu]

I think we should be resentful of cities like Boston, where all their pro teams are always in the playoffs, if not championship winners.

It wouldn't be too far off for the Patriots to repeat, the Celtics to emerge as a superteam (through free agency and draft), and the Red Sox and Bruins pull off some miraculous upsets. I don't want to say they'll win 4 titles in a year but that's a scary thought.

Plus, the people...

 

[Kestrel]

Boston wants to be the winning-est city in all of sports, while simultaneously still claiming to be suffering from The Bambino's Curse. Insufferable fans if there ever were any....

If we can agree on anything, then let's at least agree that we hate Boston... and especially the Patriots ;D

 

[Mike95060]

If we can agree on anything, then let's at least agree that we hate Boston... and especially the Patriots ;D

I approve of this message.


Go Dubs!

 

[Bay Arean]

Irrationality is the MO for most fanatics. While I was kind of rooting for the Celtics just as the underdog, I now realize that it would have the effect mentioned above...

 

[2strokeYardSale]

I don't know how long the current ownership cycle will last, but they are a first-class organization not just because of money. It's a bunch of good hires from top to bottom, and it's a huge component in their success. If I was an NBA player, I sure as hell would want such an organization no matter where they played.

I think the Ws have made every attempt to be Spurs 2.0 and want to be playoff contenders every year for the next 20 years.


Meanwhile back in Cleveland....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfzAoAL3dmw

 

[Bubba_s]

Wait, the NBA is a business? And the owners want... maximum profits???

wow.....man