At this point in the NBA season, the Golden State Warriors find themselves tied for the first seed in the Western conference with the Phoenix Suns and the OKC Thunder with a 7-1 record; for much of the NBA media and for the vast majority of fans
including the peeps over in the bay
this is a very surprising development. To add to the surprise, this incredibly winning record also puts them in second place in the league, surpassed only by... Cleveland?!
It's not that people expected the Cavaliers to be a bad team; on the contrary, many talking heads and fans alike expected them to be a solid team
some few hopefuls even selected them as championship contenders this season, expecting the Mitchell-Garland connection to improve and Mobley to finally take his much anticipated offensive jump
but nobody (other than perhaps-not-so-delusional-after-all Cavs fans) thought to put them in the undisputed number one position in the league, brilliantly undefeated after 9 games.
Something that people get to hold against the Warriors is their schedule, which was actually the easiest in the league up until their game with Boston.
Of course they have such a great record, they're beating up on the bottom feeders!
I'd debate how "weak" the Pelicans (currently sitting at a dreadful 3-6) and the Rockets (5-3) really are, but this sort of criticism isn't unfounded; truth be told, they weren't facing contenders, or even teams people expected to make some noise in the playoffs. After their sound defeat of the Boston Celtics, however, the noise started to quiet down. There were still some justifications, some flags to be waived
sure, the Celtics were missing two of their best players, and it was just one game, but the Warriors beat them without hitch and, might I add, they are sitting pretty near the top of the league on both offence and defence.
Still, the Cavs don't even have that. Their early-season matchups included the Bucks, the Knicks, and the Lakers. All three of those teams do happen to be underperforming expectations, but the point stands: they didn't get their pristine record by beating up on scum and fluking out the championship favourites; they got it by being better than everyone else.
As tonight approaches, the Warriors come face to face with reckoning; a scintillating clash or low-sample-size NBA narratives coagulates under the bright lights of... Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse? Dumbass name for an arena, geez, I wish I didn't know that... Regardless, fans will scream and shout and something's about to happen.
There are no ties, and the only draws will be chalk outlines of a team, dead on the floor.
I'm an unapologetic Warriors fan; I don't hide my affiliations. I want my pookie-bear Curry to win and my sweetie-pie Hield to hold his hand as they gleefully skip towards NBA greatness. I want the Cavs undefeated streak to shatter into a million pieces and I want to bask in the scattering light they'll reflect.
However, anxiety haunts me and weighs on my breath and my heart...
The Cavs are missing three meaningless pieces and their players are coming off incredible performances, save for Evan Mobley who fouled out of their matchup with the Pelicans.
The Warriors, on the other hand, are missing THREE HUGE PIECES. Draymond, Melton, and Podz are all expected to be out for tonight. Green and Podz might make it, and Melton has been out most of the season so it's hard to say if he'd've made a difference anyway, but still. Undermanned, away game in the middle of a long road-trip, facing a confident and undefeated juggernaut... Lord have mercy.
On the good side, the Warriors actually had a pretty decent outing against the Celtics: Curry and Hield balled out, Trayce and Looney showed up, Moody as well, Wiggins did OK, and Dray did his thing as well; all this facing the Celtics, the championship favourites, tied for 2nd in the East, and posting top 10 in the league in both offence and defence.
How can they beat the Cavs? I don't know.
Looking at Cleveland's stats, I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly the Dubs can do. The Cavs are absurdly efficient from everywhere on the floor and defend incredibly well. The one thing I can see is that they haven't faced a three-point juggernaut just yet, so maybe that's a way to exploit their defence. On the other end of the court, though, the Warriors are giga-supremely-super-mega-absurdly-fucking screwed and it's not even funny. The only (only) person in the whole roster with a snowflake's chance in the deepest burning caves of solar hell of stopping Mobley and Allen is TJD, which means nobody on the roster has a fucking chance. The Cavs are gonna abuse the Warriors size mismatch until they go back limping to SanFran; except, of course, they'll actually go limping to fucking OKC to fight the 2nd in championship odds this season, because of course they would.
Here's my projection for tonight's game: Cavs win.
I want to bet Warriors, but I just can't. The Cavs have too good a defence and too mismatched an offence for the Dubs to actually match them. The only way Curry and Co. get away with the win is if Kenny Atkinson doesn't know how to guard the line and somehow Lindy Waters turns into Prime Curry and Kuminga turns into Giannis. Weirder things have happened (looking at you, Malachi Flynn).
We shall see.