Last Game at Oracle

My jersey #14 was the first to be retired and hung in the rafters of Oracle arena, so there's some nostalgia I'm dealing with today. On the other hand, I was a San Francisco Warrior of the City Auditorium and Cow Palace era Warriors, so I'm looking forward to seeing games at Chase Center, next season, my team back in The City.

About tonight's final game at Oracle, the Warriors must keep in mind something an old street fighter told me, "He who gets the first punch in, has the first punch in." Great advice if you find yourself in a street brawl, but also good advice for the Warriors as it applies to Defense. The Dubs must be the first to set the defensive tone of the game. The popular word these days is "aggressive" Stay aggressive, always take the fight to your opponent.

I'll spell it out Lots Of Love to Kevin Durant. I'm not sure what all the blather was about KD, should he or shouldn't he? When, why? etc. All pro athletes know that if its the Finals, the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup, the World Series, you're going to do everything you can to play, to make a contribution. KD did, Those early buckets sparked the Warriors, they ignited a will in the Warriors that took them to the final victory in Toronto. Thanks KD, for the inspiration and the guts, but you'd say I'm sure that you were doing what any athlete worth his salt would have done. You couldn't have done anything else but risk it. It's who we are, it's what we do. We couldn't live with ourselves if we didn't give it our best shot.

So let's stop with the media second guessing bullshit and applaud a great professional basketball player.

I remember driving to Live Oak playground (ok, so it's in Berkeley) to play against the best the East Bay had to offer. Here's to them, some I played against, some I didn't: Joe Gardere, Bobby Dold, Bepo Dyer, Don Barksdale, Joe Ellis, Jim Hadnot, Paul Silas, Bill Russell, Jerry Mullin, Joe Barry, Rick Lawless. Just the ones that come to mind, many more great hoopsters I'm forgetting. 

Not a poem but close: 

Live Oak,
The  playground.
The games we played 'till dusk
Came back for more at night
Emblazoned on Warrior jerseys
Last game in The Town
Thanks for the memories. 

One Second Can Make the Difference & etc

When the Warriors are the Warriors at their best, they are always one second ahead of their opponents. One second doesn't sound like much, but add up what it means on each pass and it represents the difference between the ball reaching the hand of the shooter before the opponent can close out efficiently. If a team is one second ahead of its opponent on offense, and the opponent is one second behind on its offensive end, a winning time differential exist that is devoutly to be wished. This is why the passing game is so important, and the  iso game, no matter how skilled the iso player is is not. I love Kawhi Leonard, but he holds on to the ball too long. No way, you say! Not by Kyrie Erving standards, for sure, but still too long, perhaps a second too long, and as the poet Robert Frost says, "that can make all the difference." Winning in the NBA depends on seconds. Every second that does not lead to a basket is a wasted second. A player catches the ball with space to shoot, he hesitates a second. He's lost the advantage. A coach hesitates calling a time out, one second, two seconds. The play he draws up might have worked had he been faster on the draw. The NBA today is two fast gunslingers facing each other on the street of Showdown, U.S.A. The team that clears leather the fastest wins.

Etc:

Got to love Steve Kerr's T-shirt of 60 Minutes: VOTE FOR OUR LIVES. Right on, Coach!

Are the Raiders nuts signing Richie Incoginito? The Sacramento Bee sport page listed Incognito's multitudinous infractions: spitting on opponents, bullying teammates, fighting in practice, willfully attempting to hurt opponents, the beat goes on and on, but what they left out, and to me, what will hurt the Raiders the most is that he  [Incognito] was accused by Yannick Ngakoue, the African-American defensive end of the Jaguars.of using racial slurs, To my way of thinking one racial slur is as good as 100 racial slurs. It mean you are a racist. On a team where 80% of your teammates are African-Americans, this does not bode well for team harmony. Or, perhaps, the Raiders' cocky little coach Jon Gruden, thinks he can make such vile behavior disappear.

Nice baseball poem by Linda Pastan

When you tried to tell me
baseball was a metaphor

for life: the long, dusty travail
around the bases, for instance,

to try to go home again,
the sacrifice for which you win

approval but not applause;
the way the light closes down

in the last days of the season -
I didn't believe you.

It's just a way of passing
the time, I said.

And you said: that's it.
Yes.

A Little of This & A :Little of That

Marcus Smart and Eric Bledsoe instead of Klay Thompson and Draymond Green for All Defense First Team, you gotta be smoking smack.

Let's hear it for the Warrior bench, once again came through in the clutch. And how about Warrior smothering Defense? Assistant Coach Ron Adams get kuddos for that.

My wife was wearing her Lucky Warrior T-shirt for the entire playoff series, so I was never in doubt about the outcome

Kings need to be careful. This mornings sportpage: Making a play for free agent Tobias Harris could be a big mistake. No doubt they need a consistent 3 point shooter at the 3/4. But you can't sacrifice defense for offense. I thought I saw Bageley III beginning to get his 3 ball going by the end of season. I do like Harris, but Bagely is a natural 4. One right move and they're a playoff team. One wrong move and they're in the lottery.

I am seriously tired of all the yap yap yapping about KD. He is a Warrior until he tells us he's not. It's that simple. I personally believe he'd be foolish to leave the Dubs. Whose he going to partner up with and be on a team that has the same energy and intelligence as the Warriors, and coaching, don't forget coaching. Does KD really want to start anew at age 30 when he can remain and be part of a team that will not only be part of NBA History but NBA lore. It is not inconceivable that the Warriors could go on to two or three more NBA Championships. That would put them up there with the Legendary Boston Celtic teams of the Sixties. Don't do it, KD!

Toronto vs Milwaukee: As a Warrior fan, I hoping his series goes to 7 games. More Warrior healing and rest time. But irony always manages to rear its head in first game when the team that's tired coming off a grueling 7 games, wins. So Dubs better be prepared for Mr. Irony.


Fishing season is on in, so in honor of my two fly-fishing son-in-laws, this terrific fishing poem:

Catch   by Ethna McKeirnan   

I imagine us dancing, a Mexican ballroom somewhere

(anything instead of fishing)

In faded, pre-war elegance, tropically flowered wallpaper

(jigs, flies, speckled lures and mr. twisters)

Drooping lushly like the evening sea-breeze

(damn the wind, they won’t bite now)

And you in sailor whites – tuxedo, if I blur my eyes

(black, shiny, slimy leeches, grubs, chubs, fathead. . . )

The band plays 40’s swing, a dark man croons “Darling”

(I’m a rapid oxidizer,” you announce, sweat streaming down your nose)

“Darling, Take My Heart. . . “

(walleye, pike, sunstroke, crappies)

And my red dress spins faster as you lift me off he floor

9jesus Christ, a four pounder!)

Its ruffled hem streaming round my knees

(landed)

Like a school of tiny iridescent fish

(darling, take my heart)

You sing at last.

             

Good Stuff and Bad Stuff

Let's start with the GOOD STUFF: CJ McCullum of the Portland Blazers has proven like Klay Thompson of the Flash Brothers, that his presence is essential for the success of his team.Whereas Dame's drives to the basket are usually straight line bursts, C.J. is bustro phedonic, albeit much swifter than the ox, able to break down defenses.

It requires saying that the Blazers lucked out signing Enes Kantor a month before their young and talented center Notic broke his leg. Let is also be noted that Kantor, a devote Muslim, played the game in Denver on a dawn to dusk fast as part of his religious tradition. Might be a good idea to consider the decent and positive qualities of Islam and not all the negative crap the Trump White House is chucking around like turds.

Now, how about that five bounce K Leonard jump shot from the corner for the Toronto Raptors' win!

Note: Raptors are lucky to have acquired Marc Gasol. Like a second coach on the floor. I don't hold out much hope for our northern cousins against the Bucks. I just don't feel comfortable with the Raptor's guards. Yeah, Lowry is OK, but as the recent AT&T commercials on TV ask us, is OK good enough?

I'm still knocked out by Golden States performance to win the series against the Rockets. The Warriors' offense might be described as a motion offense, but how do you describe the Rockets' offense: It's dribble, dribble, pass at the last second and sometimes a skip pass or pass around the horn for an open corner shot, but maybe not but back to Harden to dribble, dribble, dribble or to Chris Paull to dribble, dribble, dribble, pull up fade away jumper. They have all the skilled players they need to beat our Dubs, but couldn't do it because they lack one component: for lack of a better term: TEAM FLOW. 

The BAD STUFF: It broke my heart to see Tiger Woods accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. How can an African American, I don't care how many previous projects he's been a part of with the Trump Organization in the past, or his recent designing of the Trump World Golf Course in Dubai (which, by the way, will turn out to be a financial loser like Trump's golf course in Scotland) to associate himself with a RACIST like Trump, speaks to Wood's shallowness of spirit. I thought he didn't look particularly happy, but he did bend his neck when the time came for Trump to place the medal over his head. What a sight, arguably the greatest golfer in the world being honored by a guy who cheats at golf.

I love this basketball prose poem that I've used before, but it's worth repeating.

Basketball   by Louis Jenkins

A huge summer afternoon with no sign of rain. . . Elm trees
in the farm yard bend and creak in the wind. The leaves are
dry and gray. In the driveway a boy shoots a basketball as ta
goal above the garage door. Wind makes shooting difficult
and time after time he chasesthe loose ball. He shoots, re-
bounds, turns shoots. . . on into the afternoon. In the silence
between the gust of wind the only sounds are the thump of
the ball on the ground and the rattle of the bared steel rim of
the goal. The gate hangs in the wind, the dog in the yard yawns,
stretches and goes back to sleep. A film of dust cover he
water in the trough. Great clouds of dust rise from open fields
and stretch a thousand miles beyond the horizon. 

Holy Curry!

Holy Cow, Holy Curry! The second half of last night's game against the Rockets was his transcendent basketball moment in along list of Steph Curry's spectacular performances. There has never been an All Star player in a playoff series who has scored 0 points in a first half, and scored 30 points in a second half of the same game. Watching Curry in the second half was like watching a miracle. Thus I way, "Holy Curry!" with a slight nod in the direction of the Holy Universe. 

Missing a few of the bench from the first Dubs, this was the team that won the Championship against the Cavs in Cleveland in six. So let's not be overly surprised.

The Splash Brothers rule. Without Klay's first half, the Dubs lose.

Loony has discovered his "mean streak." I am totally stoked the way he's ripping the boards.

Draymond turns into the mythological dragon come playoffs.

Igudala, according to Coach Kerr, is the "the adult in the room."

The bench that has been mostly absent this season stepped up big time. Coach Kerr praised them and rightly so.

Perfect poem for Steph Curry

When I Got It Right   by Carl Lindner

The ball would lift
light as a wish,
gliding like a blessing
over the rim, pure,
or kissing off glass
into the skirt of net.
Once it began
I couldn't miss.
Even in the falling dark,
the ball, before it left
my hand. was sure