Dr Spaceman wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:sp6r=underrated wrote:2. I overestimated the Clippers. The Clippers of 2013 through 2015 were playing championship level basketball but got bad luck with their post-season matchups and injuries. Their offseason acquisitions looked to sure up a weak bench. At the beginning of season I was almost ready to declare them the best team in the NBA.
On this one, to me this is one of those pressure induced implosion things. Talent-wise there's no reason why the Clippers shouldn't be excellent once again this year, but a team with contentious stars that seems to stagnate is something of powder keg.
The interesting thing to me is that I think if you look at the Clippers and some other things going in the league, you can argue the primary "match" lighting the explosion is the sheer existence of the Warriors. Until this year the league franchises thought they were in what could be called an "open" era - albeit with the threat of the Cavs possibly ready to close it soon - but the Warriors now are serving notice that the era is basically "closed" to all but teams firing on absolutely all cylinders, and the Clippers just aren't that.
Zach Lowe wrote:Get lucky with fringe signings, trades and health, and you could find yourself going headband-to-headband with LeBron James in the conference finals. Everyone needs to wait out the Warriors, anyway. (Seriously: Waiting out Golden State's run of dominance is already a topic of conversation among team executives.)
Would also go a long way toward explaining LeBron's new short temper and caring about random November games for the first time in half a decade.
Yup.
It's interesting, the last time I remember feeling like this was after the Lakers won their 2nd Shaq-Kobe title. The rest of the league was prepared to basically just play for 2nd place for years at that point. But of course, the egos blew that one up way prematurely.
What's interesting though of course is that the Warrior core is so young. if they keep up what they are doing and dominate like crazy all through the playoffs with their super-happy-fun vibe, the psychological effect on the rest of the league could be dramatic and I don't know what form it will take.
LeBron is one of the key guys to watch. Up until this point he was still the 600 lb gorilla of the league and even when he didn't win the title, the more rational analysts tended to praise him and speak pretty sincerely about him as a GOAT candidate - and from the perspective of LeBron's psyche, while he wanted those rings he still always felt pretty secure with what he was doing.
The Warriors doing what they are doing right now is the first real thing we're seeing that seems to shout, "LeBron, you're doing it wrong." and may push his legacy to being "always second best" a la Wilt or West. Not saying this is right or wrong, just saying, I think LeBron will feel it to some degree.
The other interesting ego thing other than the Clipper implosion is the Thunder. What we can say is that Kevin Durant really seems to be a loyal guy who doesn't get jealous easily of teammates. As such, it's possible to imagine the Thunder playing a reliable Washington General team to the Golden State Globetrotters without danger of burn out, and possible we'd even see Westbrook sneak in an MVP season. But it's no given. If the Warriors really trounce the whole league this year it will appear to cement the story of the Thunder as a team that blew it. The once-golden boy Sam Presti will go down as a goat rather than a GOAT, and if there is any chink in the morale armor of Durant & co, it will be found.
