Well, holy shit: my beloved Warriors are back in the Finals, four wins away from winning another chip. It’s wild. We’ve been so unbelievably spoiled: 6 Finals appearances in 8 seasons! We may never see an NBA team go on a run like this again.
At the beginning of the season, I was cautiously optimistic about my Warriors. I thought our ceiling was nabbing a #3 to #6 seed in the depleted Western Conference with the Nuggets and Clippers both mired with injuries to a few of their star players. After we beat the Lakers in the season opener, I was all smiles because it never ever gets old beating the fucking Lakers or LeBron. At the time, most of us thought the Lakers would be title contenders, so I thought, one freaking game into the season, that finishing with a #3 to #6 seed was totally plausible. Back then, I thought a Western Conference Finals run, if lots of things went right, was in play, but I realistically didn’t think we’d be back in the Finals this season. I guess I wasn’t sure if we’d ever make it back to the Finals with Steph and Draymond aging and Klay coming back from two catastrophic injuries on the wrong side of thirty.
So making it back is unbelievably sweet. Reminds me of that charmed feeling I felt when this championship core made their first Finals appearance back in 2015.
The Warriors are a different team now. Back then, Steph, Klay, and Draymond were the youngsters trying to prove to themselves that they could be champions. Now we’re like the last Spurs title teams: the cagey, veteran team with abundant experience and championship poise you can’t fake. Now we’re trying to reclaim title glory, perhaps for a final time, while desperately trying to fend off a young, hungry, battle-tested, and supremely talented team.
What a matchup.
