I don’t think the Warriors are getting anywhere near the credit they deserve for what they did.

This is a franchise that has been AWFUL all the way up to fairly recent history. This team went 83-20 this season the 3rd best season/playoff record EVER. They were the best team on both ends of the court. You don’t just become this good because other teams had some injuries.

Now I’m not saying they didn’t have a smooth run, they had a very smooth run all season. It feels like people are making this out as a bad thing though? Or that the Championship doesn’t mean as much because of this. Ridiculous. They had the dream season every team dreams of. They stayed healthy and had no off court problems or distractions. Every player accepted their role nobody whinged or demanded a trade and it paid off.

They also created luck on the way by simply being THAT good and having that much depth. They blew that many sorry teams out on a regular basis that Curry and Thompson were rarely playing 4th Qtr minutes. Iggy was getting a lot of games off all together because he was just not required. They never had to rush any injuries back. Lee missed the start of the season, Bogut and Ezeli sat for weeks at one stage.

Every single season it takes some sort of luck to win a Championship. I think some people might need to have a look back through at Championship winning teams. It’s one team every year that things just fall into place.

On a final note I’ve had to laugh every single time that someone has said that with Kyrie and Love playing Cleveland win. How do you just come up with that for a fact? Would Lebron have been such a factor? How can you prove that the best defensive team wouldn’t have adjusted to them playing? You can’t.

The Warriors are Champions and they deserved it.

We talk about the home ground advantage with the Warriors but they actually haven’t played brilliant at home in the entire playoffs yet. The best/biggest wins have come on the Road. They just seem a lot more settled and relaxed on the road. I think the Oracle crowd actually gets them a little carried away sometimes. Probably why they’ve had so many sloppy starts

Yeah Cleveland missed a big chance today.

Warriors came out very nervous as expected and although Cleveland led most the game they just never really broke away. Lebron was unreal but you can’t leave this GS team just hanging around cause they usually find something to come home straight past you.

Lebron/Shumpert missing the last shot was it for the Cavs. They had absolutely nothing left in the tank for OT.

Now we wait and see how bad that knee is for Kyrie again.

I loved the Bay.

As for the safety thing, was warned to watch out wondering around Oracle Arena late at night but i had no issues. Loved it. What a atmosphere those long suffering Warriors fans bring every night.

Yeah they are both Oakland and San Fran. They do like to claim that they bring the Bay together and it’s about right.

I went to a game last year. The train that i was on from San Fran was packed with Warriors fans to and from the game.

Also the new arena that will be built in the next few years will be in San Francisco.

True.

Sort of forget about the injury problems Cleveland has had to deal with because of the way they walked through the Playoffs. They even worked out they could rest Kyrie for most of the Atlanta series.

I’m not even sure if the Cavs are better or worse off without Love though. Thompson is a beast.

They were fun to watch in a almost unwatchable Eastern Conference this season.

Unfortunately it all just fell apart in the playoffs. They were good enough but not great against Brooklyn and Washington. That ball movement that got them to 60 wins went missing and so did the offense. They lost Korver Game 2 and had Carroll or one leg pretty much the entire series defending Lebron.

Atlanta had a brilliant and surprising season but sometimes you just luck out in the playoffs.

Really? I highly doubt after 9 years of being a terrible shooter he can suddenly become a good one in a summer.

A lot of people tend to defend him a lot but he must be doing something wrong. I don’t know if it’s all Carlisle as well. I mean every coach he has played for he has had problems with. The productivity is the thing though. Boston this season were a better team when he was off court and so were Dallas. Boston went on to make the playoffs and looked pretty impressive, Dallas never improved after the trade.

I don’t think you can compare him to Rose either. He can do a lot more things then Rondo. It was just a matter of getting over those knee injuries. D-Rose could already score he didn’t need to learn how too.

Rondo can probably contribute on a team next season, nothing like the early days though. I’d be surprised if it was Sacramento, they got enough problems and non efficient players without adding another one. Although saying that the Kings probably do sign him lol

As a Warriors fan I’ll be going for the Clippers. No disrespect to them they have had a pretty good season but come on. Have we all seen the Spurs the last 2 months? Just completely dominate. Kahwi in early playoff mode have had a lot of of people thinking here we go again.

I question the Clippers depth. Very good starting 5 but besides Crawford they have very little off the bench. The Spurs will have no fear having to travel to LA. I mean do we count the Clippers support as home ground advantage? Blake Griffin wasn’t even sure about that

Are we ready for Jordan to be at the free throw line 50 times a game? Pop has probably already hacked DJ in his dreams

Wiggins will probably win ROY but Mirotic has been pretty impressive for the Bulls. He got plenty of playing time due to injuries as well.

As for the MVP. What a debate this has caused. A few weeks ago i thought Westbrook with triple doubles every night was coming to steal it but it will come down to Curry/Harden.

I can’t believe people count the Warriors record and roster against Curry winning MVP. Why can’t the best player on the best team win? 67 wins, best team on offence, best team on defence and the most entertaining player in the NBA leading them every night. I thought some of the plays he was coming up with were going to break Twitter at times this seasons.

I don’t agree that you have to carry your team to win MVP.

Lebron didn’t make it cause he is Lebron he made it cause he is still the best player in the NBA.

I’m surprised at the level of criticism he has copped this season. Has he been that bad? Sure it might not be the ‘Miami MVP Level’ but he is still pretty damn good.

I can agree he looked off before he sat out 2 weeks. Go have a look at what he has done since he has returned though. Cleveland are now rolling.

As for someone like Noah being ahead. Yeah…Noah has been pretty bad this season.

They need to find room for the starting 5 of Atlanta though. Brilliant.

Both trades so far have been panic trades.

I know they needed to remove Waiters because he doesn’t fit and was unhappy and what not but for JR Smith? Really? A dude that will bring the exact same thing on and off the court. The Cavs were keen on Shumpert but had to take Smith to get him. The Knicks won that little battle for sure.

I knew they were going aggressive for a C and Mozgov is decent and will do a job but 2 first rounders? Denver were always taking that.

2 trades down and they haven’t made any ground on Chicago, Atlanta, Toronto and Washington

Great read.

Growing up I was always the kid to support the underdog when picking teams. So making the decision to support to Warriors as a kid it’s been a tough ride.

Long Playoff droughts, consistently bad draft picks, bad players on horrible contracts. It was all part of the fun of supporting the Dubs.

This current Warriors team is exactly what the long suffering fans deserve. I got the privilege of watching a Warriors game live at Oracle in November, won’t be forgetting that anytime soon.

As for Steph Curry. Just an absolute joy to watch. Now that he seems to have got those injury problems under control he is only getting better which is scary. The way the Warriors are playing the MVP award is not out of the question this season for him.

Yeah he is probably going to retire but honestly for entertainment value he would have to go to the Warriors? Right?

You got the Splash Brothers with Allen who would be like a Splash Father? That just looks like so much fun already

The Spurs always have you wondering when they are going to fade.

This season is no different. Pop trying to juggle injury with a resting policy and they are finding it a little tougher against this Western Conference that just gets better and better.

Saying that though I would still prefer to avoid a first round match up with them even if they don’t get home advantage.

Don’t forget the Thunder. Durant and Westbrook have missed large chunks of the season.

They’ve survived with a decent enough record and now can start to building something. We all know if they make it to the playoffs healthy and finish around 5-8th they are going to be a scary match up for the top 4 West teams.

I dunno if their are stats suggesting long term injurers are up this year but every season it seems to hit a bunch of teams. It’s part of the 82 game grind i suppose. Good teams will survive and bad teams will happily shut players down and head towards the draft.

The Cavs will take a little time.

Was good to see Delly getting plenty of minutes on Saturday vs Chicago. Blatt went with him over Waiters in the backcourt with Kyrie for large parts of the game.

Hats off to him for chasing a dream and he’s right that if he ever wants to have a crack he has to go now.

Does he make it? Probably not.

It looks pretty exciting on paper but in reality it’s going to be extremely difficult for him to make a roster.

I thought about this most the day and came up with only two positions. WR or Special Teams as a Kick Returner. He’s too big for RB and too small for TE.

So i think he has positions where he could succeed but to become a elite WR in 12 months and beat just as athletic guys for a roster spot that have played for years? I don’t know. Just hope he can score a KR spot and go from there. It’s just so cut throat, you just take what you can get in any sport over there.

Again but credit to him for chasing a dream and watching him today I honestly think he understands how hard it’s going to be. He’s just gotta go over and absolutely work.

Great news!

Instantly i have some sort of interest in the NBL again.

I’m interested to see some details. Who’s taking on the franchise? Venue? Name?

But this is a step in the right direction for the NBL after the last few seasons

I’m not completely over Rabs yet, i think he’s still got a year or two left.

Vossy is great. I’ve really enjoyed watching Warriors games this season and a large part is because of Voss

Unless Channel 9 do get Vossy they are in trouble though cause they have absolutely nothing beyond Rabs.

The Channel 9 commentary team is not even in the same ball park as the Fox Sports League team. This is highlighted every year around now when Fox Sports continue with their own commentary in the finals on delayed coverage.

No matter how much it looks like they tanked and that it’s impossible to play that bad against Angola are they actually going to be able prove that Australia lost on purpose? Unless they find hard facts and recorded audio of the coaching staff telling them to throw the game can they really punish Australia just for not beating Angola?

I was reading that FIBA are not so worried about Australia resting players it’s more so were they using in-game tactics to lose. See i find that very hard to prove. Maybe we actually just have very poor coaching staff?

Winning a medal was always going to be a tough ask. To be honest this is about as far as i thought they would get. Not nearly enough depth at this point to be challenging the very good nations.

Coaching was poor. I’ve been very critical of them refusing to play Exum. He might only be 19 but he is a NBA talent 19 year old, he needed to play. Offence was poor, i suspected at the start of the tournament that we would struggle to generate enough points to win big games. Baynes was outstanding but i would have love to have seen Joe Ingles given permission to be a lot more aggressive on offence. The same goes for Broekhoff. The dude looks like an outstanding shooting talent, should have been running plenty more plays for him. I would have also loved to have seen Dante with permission to be more selfish on offence as well. He was getting to the rim however he liked in his limited minutes.

Not all bad though. This team has plenty of young talent and more on it’s way. We will only get better to go with Bogut and Mills to comeback in as well. Realistic chances for medals are not too far away

Only saw the last 10 or so minutes and the highlights of goals which gave me a quick reminder of how disappointing we can be defensively.

Anyone got a quick recap on how Smith and Herd played?

Oh i hate the term ‘un-Australian’. What does it even mean? It’s absolutely flogged in sport these days and it makes my cringe every time i read or hear it.

As for this whole tanking thing I’m undecided. Does anyone think that they wanted to give some guys a bit of a rest before the real games start?

I thought Goran Dragic was a bit quick to fire off his match fixing rubbish on twitter.

Yeah you can probably rip into them for not naming a full strength team to belt Angola in a nothing game but i was actually pleased that we gave some of the starters a rest. These guys have played what? 5 games in 6 days? That’s a pretty tough ask. Baynes had ice on his knee most the game so you could clearly see the tournament has taken some sort of toll.

They were not going to make people happy either way last night.

We whinge that they should be flogging the starters and making them play 30mins every night but do we also fire up when in the final 16 we run out of legs because of the heavy minutes on the starters?

But hey I dunno, I’m not inside the Boomers squad but even if they did rest starters because it was ‘ok’ if they didn’t win i highly doubt the Boomers were the only team that looked ahead in the tournament. How to avoid the US has been all the talk since it started.