A Quick Note from an Old Warrior to the Dubs

Without trying to complicate matters by over analyzing a six point loss, its worth keeping in mind and taking to heart a basketball principal that transcends all levels of the game: high school, college, and professional: Defense and boards - everything else will work itself out. Good Luck tonight. I'll be at Orcacle cheering you on.

Here's a terrific basketball poem for the Dubs and Dubs coaches and other basketball junkies that read my blog written by Carl Linder. I may have used this poem before, but it's been a while and worth repeating.

First Love

Before sixteen
I was fast
enough to fake
my shadow out
and I could read
every crack and ripple
in that catch of asphalt.
I owned
the slanted rim
knew
the dead spot in the backboard.
Always the ball
came back.

Every day I loved
to sharpen
my shooting eye,
waiting
for the touch.
Set shot, jump shot,
layup, hook - 
after a while
I could feel
the ball hunger-
ing to clear
the lip of the rim,
the two of us
falling through. 

First Game of the Playoffs

I'll keep this one short and to the point. The Warriors will win the Western Conference Finals. I will not predict in how many games because it's up to the players to answer that question. The Warriors will win because they are tougher mentally than the Thunder. This has nothing to do with intelligence. Mental toughness is about soul-strength to overcome those moments of adversity that are bound to occur at regular intervals throughout each game. (and life) Soul, because that is what defines all of us as individual human beings, not the mind, not the body, not the heart, but that undefinable other.

Here is a Haiku I wrote for the series for the Warriors.

Defense is Power
Who flexes his muscles harder
Warriors or Thunder