Being a Warriors Fan Must Be Interesting
Is it still fun to be a fan of a team that’s expected to crush everyone?
The Golden State Warriors took a 2–0 series lead over the Utah Jazz with a 115–104 victory on Thursday. Game 2 was certainly closer of a contest than the first match up with Utah, but Golden State hasn’t been in trouble at all in these playoffs. They are 6–0 in this year’s postseason, and I don’t think they’re losing a game anytime soon.
When you think about the team you root for, you have reservations about winning the championship this year because of the Warriors. So what about Warriors fans? It must be interesting, or even boring to root for this extremely dominant basketball team.
Golden State has the best defensive rating in the NBA this postseason, and the third-best offensive rating. Their net rating of 16.4 is far our in front of anyone else in the league, with second-placed Cleveland at 9.2.
This comes after a regular season in which the Warriors were first in offense, second in defense, and first in net rating by a substantial margin as well.
The addition of Kevin Durant has certainly been the cause of this. Adding one of the best players in the world to a 73-win team is something we have never seen before. Imagine putting David Robinson, the runner up to Michael Jordan in 1996 for MVP ,to the 72 win Bulls.
Not only do the Warriors have the most talent on their team, but they play the best possible style of basketball. They move the ball on offense like no team in the NBA. The ball moves so fast up and down the floor with deadly perimeter shooting, which makes it nearly impossible to stop. It seems that when the Warriors get a lay up, it’s because they decided not to make a three that time down.
On defense, Golden State closes out on shooters extremely fast, and since they run small ball lineups, the Warriors are able to recover on drives. Every time this team loses, it’s very surprising.
So how do you root for this team? Sure, when you blow a playoff team out by thirty points or so, it’s cool to show the league who’s boss. But when does winning so easily get old as a fan? I believe that it’s more fun to be the underdog. Nobody expects you to win, so when it happens it’s extra sweet.
The Warriors are not only the favorite, they’re the overwhelming favorite. If they win the championship this year, do they even celebrate? Are the fans over taken with joy because their favorite team did what they were supposed to do all along? I don’t really know, which makes it pretty interesting.
Then what happens when they win two or three straight titles? Do they break things up because Adam Silver writes them a strongly worded letter? There are a bunch of different outcomes that could happen with this Warriors team.
The main point is that Golden State is very different than the other 29 teams in the league. Not only are they different in the level at which they compete, but they are different in the way they’ll deal with success, failure and, at some point, divorce.
