The Daily Dose: Dose: Warriors Win NBA Title
It’s always an empty feeling once the celebration is over – and I’m a Warriors fan that will go on to smoke a few metaphoric cigars and have a few realer-than-real drinks after filing this.
No more basketball for a few months, though there is no offseason for the diehards or media among us.
The NBA Playoffs weren’t great this season, but the Finals were a nice bit of relief considering the circumstances. You know the story by now. LeBron James carried his band of good but not great players as far as they could go. Having just five players that have any business on the floor of an NBA Finals game is simply an unfair task against one of the best teams we’ve seen in recent years.
The Warriors had it all this season. They had the most dynamic offensive player we’ve seen in a very long time in Stephen Curry and parts to surround him that fit like Tetris pieces. They had a coach in Steve Kerr that makes the right call 95 percent of the time and the five percent he doesn’t you still understand what he was trying to do. Going against the King, they had the best assortment of defenders that one could ever expect and the one that worked, Andre Iguodala, went on to win the Finals MVP for the work he did.
There will be some post-mortem on the job that David Blatt did this season, and I could quibble over some playing time issues for Timofey Mozgov and some adjustments he didn’t make in Game 6. But that would ignore the fact that he was actually outcoaching Kerr for the first 3-4 games in the series, trapping the ball out of Curry’s hands and using his big lineup of Mozgov and Tristan Thompson without flinching. All in all he proved a lot in these playoffs.
James himself could have been the MVP of this series, and should have been if we used a strict definition of who was the most valuable player on the court. The league should really give out criteria for awards because the discussion usually devolves into differences along the lines of the definitions folks use. It does keep people talking, however.
As for the King, we still have yet to see peak LeBronning and that’s scary. His reluctance to assert his physical gifts – every play – only to defer to his teammates is the last frontier for him to conquer. I think we’ll see that next year now that he has had a taste of what that feels like.
As for the champs they could easily become the NBA’s next great dynasty, aided by that obscenely team-friendly Stephen Curry contract. Free agents will want to join that core and they are nowhere near their peak in terms of basketball efficiency. They will clean up their turnovers and improve in every aspect of the game and teams around the league will have to bridge a gap that is pretty wide right now.
It has been a pleasure writing for you guys here at Rotoworld and everywhere else this content gets blasted out. Our NBA team here gets stronger every year and it’s a great group of guys to work with and we have all the support in the world to enhance our craft.
I’ll be back at some point here with a review of the Bruski 150, which netted yet another National Fantasy Basketball Championship top-3 finish for me and hopefully it did the same or better for you. Hey, I was named FSWA Basketball writer of the Year too so it had to be a great year! Humblebragging aside, if you want to hear my lovely voice you can subscribe to my podcast, and drop me a line and let me know what you’d like to see us do better next season.
Which after all, just started a few hours ago. Better start working on your game.
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