After a long summer of topless championship parades, free-agency meetings in the Hamptons, Snapchat mishaps, and gold medals, the NBA is finally, truly, really, almost back. The start of training camp marks the beginning of our NBA Preview.
We kicked things off with Warriors Week, an in-depth look at one of the most interesting assemblages of basketball talent ever.
“The Death Star Warriors Are Finally Here — and They’re Delightful,” Jordan Ritter Conn
“Steph will penetrate and kick out and the ball will rotate around the perimeter with dizzying speed. Finally playing in a system suited to his genius, Durant will show layers of his game that we’d previously only begun to see. I don’t know how many games they’ll win. I don’t know if they’ll reclaim the title that they lost to the Cavaliers last season. But watching this team push its own limits will be a stunning and fascinating joy.”
“The NBA Hipster Team Championship Belt,” Jason Concepcion
“A hipster team represents the rarest of NBA experiences: a surprise. These are the teams that burst onto the scene organically; whose on-court chemistry often comes across as pure attitude; who play as if entertaining is just as important as winning, and yet manage to win some games anyway. Just never the big ones.”
“How to Beat the Warriors,” Kevin O’Connor
“Superpowers have been toppled time and time again in sports history. One turned ankle, one ball stuck to the side of a helmet, or one slip in the ring can change the competitive landscape in an instant. Teams don’t want to miss their chance when improbability strikes.”
“The Draymond Green Paradox,” Jonathan Tjarks
“It’s easy to forget how young most of the Warriors are. Green is 26, and he’s only now entering his prime. He just happened to skip the part where he had to overcome years of playoff failure. As soon as Steve Kerr inserted Green into the starting lineup, the Warriors started winning, and they’ve never stopped. He went from bench player to starter to All-Star to Olympian in less than 24 months, all while his team won a championship and broke the regular-season wins record in the following season. It would be hard for anyone to stay grounded in that scenario.”
“Klay Thompson’s Imaginary Sacrifice,” Danny Chau
“So what will it mean to be an alpha in Golden State this season? What will it mean to be a first option? It’ll mean dominating an instant, no more, no less. If all goes according to plan with the Warriors, the concepts we’ve let guide us through the sport might become as transient as the positional designations we’ve placed on Draymond over the years.”
“JaVale McGee Could Totally Help the Warriors,” Jonathan Tjarks
“The Wizards were part NBA team, part carnival, and no one personified that more than JaVale, a 7-foot dunking machine who had somehow gotten it in his head that he was a point guard. Nothing was out of bounds, and no shot or block attempt was too difficult to try. He was always trying to do too much, but on some level you had to admire the ambition. If he were as good as he thought, he would have been one of the best players in the history of the league.”
“Is a Change in Scenery All Harrison Barnes Needed?” Jonathan Tjarks
“[T]here’s no D’Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, or Brandon Ingram in Dallas. There’s not even a Jordan Clarkson. The closest thing the Mavs have to that type of high-upside flier is Barnes. The Mavericks spent the past five years looking for players to complement Dirk. They might have just ended up with the guy who is going to replace him.”
“The Magic of Watching Regular-Season Steph Curry,” Mark Titus
“I hate the unknown because I want a repeat of the 2015–16 campaign, which was the greatest NBA season of my lifetime. I want the Warriors to try to go 82–0. I want to not be able to name a single Nuggets player off the top of my head ... I want Twitter and Reddit to beat the “James Harden doesn’t play defense” jokes to death again. Most importantly, I want Steph Curry to continue his quest to save the NBA regular season.”
“The New Adventures of Old Ayesha Curry,” Allison P. Davis
“So even though firing off a tweet to defend your loved one is perhaps the most relatable thing ever, Curry apologized and returned to normal — a branded normal, a demi-celeb normal, the sort of normal that makes people want to know all about her, and not just because she’s married to Steph.”
“Golden State’s (Other) Fresh Faces,” Kevin O’Connor
“The Warriors have enough star talent to win 60-plus games even if Kerr were coaching with a blindfold on. But depth is what brings teams to a special level; it’s what will allow the Warriors to give their stars nights off so they can sustain their stamina deep into the postseason.”
“Steph Curry Is Still a Solitary Genius,” Jordan Ritter Conn
“But for at least these first few days, Curry seemed like just another superstar on a team full of superstars. He’s still arguably the best player in the world, sure, but now that the Warriors have added Durant, there’s more hype surrounding Golden State’s collective than there is around its two-time reigning MVP.”
“Don’t Call David West a Ring Chaser,” Jordan Ritter Conn
“So what do we do with David West? What do we do with someone who sacrifices money in pursuit of something else? Someone whose decision would have been widely praised in decades past, a perfect adherent to values that feel antiquated today?”
