In Bill Simmons' Book Of Basketball, there's a passage where he's talking about the Bulls playing the Celtics in Boston in the 95-96 season. The Bulls were on their way to 72 and the Celtics were awful. Simmons said this:
This was like watching Andre the Giant in his prime, when he’d com out smiling for a battle royal as the crowd went bonkers, then disdainfully tossed jabronies out of the ring for the next twenty minutes. By the fourth quarter, two-thirds of the crowd was rooting for Chicago under the rarely seen and entirely defensible “not only is our team reprehensible, but we used to root for a great team, we know greatness, we understand greatness, and this is greatness” corollary.
That last part is kind of how I feel watching this Warriors team. Those Celtics fans had seen the Bird-McHale-Parish Celtics and, if they were old enough, the Russell Celtics too. They knew greatness when they saw it. As a fanbase, those of us who were around back in the day were fortunate enough to see greatness for the better part of a decade with the dynasty Bulls in the 90s.
And I'm not just talking about MJ/Steph. There are transcendent individuals who exhibit individual greatness, but their teams don't always exhibit greatness as a team.
For me, the pinnacle of team greatness is when it seems like every single decision being made on the court is the right one, and when the players don't seem to have to think about those decisions they're making. That's when a team is playing as one.
Last year and this year, I watched a couple Bulls/Warriors game and the difference was obvious, even in the close games. When the Warriors had the ball, it moved so fast. Every time a player got the ball, they immediately acted, whether that meant passing it, shooting it, driving, whatever. Off-ball, players were always moving to the right spot, setting the right screens, etc. And all of it happened so fast that it looked completely instinctual, natural, like they were at a level where they didn't have to think about any of this stuff, they just did it.
In contrast, when the Bulls got the ball, you could practically see the thought process going on in their heads. Derrick gets the ball. Do I drive, do I have enough space to take the three, should I give it to Jimmy and let him iso, should I throw into Pau and let him try to make something happen on the inside? Etc. You could see players considering the options and sometimes not being sure which way to go.
Many, many teams play the way the Bulls played. Very, very few teams play the way the Warriors played and are playing. There is no formula for putting a team together that plays like that. You can draft the right players, sign the right players, make the right trades, hire a good coach, and still not have everything click to this degree, still not have this kind of chemistry form, still not catch this kind of lightning in a bottle. I don't even think the Big 3 Heat played like that or that the current Cavs play like that. It just doesn't happen that often.
Which is why I can't hate them. And which is why I would tell Warriors fans, enjoy this, savor this while you can, because you never know when it will be over, and you never know how many years, how many decades, you'll be waiting, dreaming of being able to root for a team like this again.









.....nah































Finally in 2018! 16 year wait!