Captain Obvious here: Klay can play!

I have had a busy few weeks and missed blogging. When you take a break like that, you would like to come back with a big bang sports story. I can't believe I missed even the Cubs' championship (more on that later). Or the NBA season, the Warriors, and Russell Westbrook. And then there are the great NFL games that I have missed blogging about the last few weeks. But today, Klay Thompson gave us all a great story on a drab late-fall, early-winter Monday night that featured a horrible 41-10 MNF game between the mediocre Colts with a great quarterback and the horrible Jets with a quarterback who can be mediocre at his best. Klay Thompson dropped 60 points in 29 minutes. His average points per minute in this game was almost as high as Wilt Chamberlain's in his 100-point game.

The Warriors are playing great right now and their offense is so fluid and effortless with the addition of Durant to the already lethal shooting combo of Klay and Curry. Things have come together real well, especially on the offensive side and the most surprising thing so far has been how the big 3 have had to sacrifice very little in terms of their shots and points. The big 3 have been close to their average number of shots from last year and that has to be good news for the team's chemistry. But tonight, they all deferred to Klay as he was in one of his zones. It reminded me of the game 6 in the Western Conference Finals last year against Durant's OKC or the regular season game couple of years back when he scored 37 in the third quarter against the Kings. He is as combustible as the other 2 MVPs in his team and I am glad his offense can still shine brightly under the new regime.

The early returns suggest the dubs have absolutely nailed the Durant addition and the offense is working just as they drew it up. This team can only get better, though none of this matters until they get to June. They are the presumptive Western Conference champions and the same goes for the Cavs in the East. The Cavs are playing great to justify such expectations as well. The Clippers and the Spurs are the other impressive teams and as always, the Western conference playoffs are going to be off the chains as kids used to say 15 years back. As for the NBA regular season, the dubs will keep us entertained. There are two other noteworthy individual performances to keep a close eye on. Russell Westbrook just got his 6th straight triple double and he could very well average a triple double for the entire season. That would be amazing to say the least.

The other surprising NBA stat of the young season is James Harden leading the league in assists. Mike D'Antoni has converted him into a point guard and it seems to be working wonderfully so far with Harden scoring a tonne as usual, but also dropping dimes in addition. I am curious to see if Harden can keep the assists going. NBA is going to give us a lot to talk about this winter and spring. Tonight belonged to Klay. Even the 10-2 Raiders who were at the game had to take a picture with Klay after his 60 point performance. East Bay right now has a lot of good sports going on. The Raiders somehow found the time to take in a Warriors game despite their short week leading into the huge Thursday night game in Kansas City. But who can blame them. The Warriors have been must-see TV for a couple of years and are now graduating to can't-miss TV.  The Warriors game at Clippers on Wednesday and the Raiders game against the Chiefs on Thursday are both can't-miss events this week.

I did miss blogging about several events in the last several weeks and can't possibly touch them all to catchup. But I do want to give a shutout to the Chicago Cubs for winning an amazing World Series in 7 games and destroying the curse of the billy goat. There is so much to write about the World Series, but the story for me is the Cubs President of baseball operations, Theo Epstein. It's time to put this guy in the Hall of Fame already. For him to cure almost 100-year curses in 2 major baseball cities and deliver championships to both Boston and Chicago is unbelievable. He did what he was hired to do in Chicago and he did it in exactly 5 years. The dude never has to pay for a drink in both Chicago and Boston ever and deservedly so. How does he top this? May be switch sports and win a championship for the Clippers or Knicks or the Cleveland Browns! And he might just do it.

Dame Dolla on Fire

Stephen Curry was not available for the Warriors this weekend for game 3 in Portland. But there was somebody who looked awfully similar to him on the court who was scoring at will. Unfortunately for the dubs, it was the Blazer's Damian Lillard. I am a big Dame Dolla fan. The kid from Oakland who wears 0 for the O always plays well against his home town team. He is not the shooter that Curry is - nobody is, but when his three is falling like it was in game 3, he is not that different. He has the handles, quickness, and even plays a more traditional point than Curry. And he showed us in this game that he can also take and make long-range, off-the-dribble threes like the MVP. Even Jeff Van Gundy on ESPN was very impressed by his off-the-dribble shooting and was loudly wondering if Lillard and Curry could be traded for each other without either team missing a beat. Thats high praise for Dame. Klay is a good defender and he tried his best to contain Dame, but he had no shot on this day. This is how folks must have felt defending Curry all season. 

Aside from the Oakland angle, Damian also has the "all-star snub" chip on his shoulder, especially against Curry and Klay who were both western all-stars ahead of him.  That explains the Blazers faithful yelling "over-rated" at Klay during the game. Dame and CJ are also in the running for the best back-court in the league crown that firmly belongs to Curry and Klay today. Mix in the narrative of Klay being a 2-way star and shutting Dame down in game 2, you had a potent cocktail that probably drove Dame sky high in game 3. He showed up, stepped up, and locked up a win. Now the Curry injury saga is back again on the front-burner. It's amazing how good the Warriors are that they can stage manage their best player's return even in the second round of the western conference playoffs. With each win, people assume Curry will be rested one more game and with each loss, people wonder if Curry will be inserted into the next game. Lets see if we finally see the MP3 in game 4. 

Curry-Klay versus Dame-CJ is going to be a fascinating rivalry for years to come. But then again, such projections about future greatness are always a hit or miss. Reminds me of a game in 2003 between the dubs and Suns featuring a young Gilbert Arenas, Jason Richardon, and Antawn Jamison on one-side and a young Amare Stoudemire,  Stephon Marbury, and Shawn Marion on the other. Everybody was talking about how this might be the two young, fast, fun teams of the future. The dubs couldn't retain Arenas and that was the end of that short-lived era. The Suns let go for Marbury too, but they did improve with Nash. But a rivalry, it was not.  I was salivating about a LeBron-Wade rivalry before LeBron killed it and became Wade's Scottie Pippen for 4 prime years. Ironically, they might renew their rivalry in the senior citizen mode in the next round if Miami wins against Toronto - a big IF. The Cavs have looked really impressive after 2 straight sweeps. Their 3-point shooting has become more of a news in the playoffs than even the Warriors, who are without Curry's threes so far. 

It's going to be an interesting matchup if the Cavs and dubs meet in the finals again. The Cavs are a very different team from last year and both teams are going to be shooting threes all night. You would think nobody can beat the dubs in that game, though the Cavs are becoming a trendy pick for the championship. They have definitely looked good and the big-3 are finally playing with some confidence and chemistry. Ironically, LeBron is shooting bricks, but the rest of the team is shooting lights out. Plus LeBron does so many other things, he still is the king. The Spurs-Thunder series seems headed to 7 games with the Thunder winning tonight behind Durant's 41. I still don't trust the Thunder to win the series, but they have enough talent to stretch the Spurs. It pains me to say I don't trust Westbrook. How can an incredible athlete who plays that hard inspire so little confidence? Two words - decision making. Westbrook is hard-headed and a bad decision maker. Him and Durant have not really learned to play together after all these years, not to mention all the other talent on the roster. It's a weird style the Thunder play built around those 2 super-stars and I don't see it surviving past his round.

Will the 20-year old record survive the next 30 games?

The most amazing and crazy thing about the Bulls all-time record of 72-10 that MJ and the boys engineered back in 1995-1996 is that a team like this year's Warriors could be at a ridiculous 48-4 and we still can't be 100% sure that they will break the Bulls' record. That's how special that season was. It is probably one of the most underrated record in all of sports. Playing .878 ball over a 82 game season is near impossible. The Warriors are currently ahead of that pace and are winning at a blistering .923 pace. They have to go 25-5 rest of the way to break the record or 24-6 to tie it. It would have to be a robust .833 or .800 ball respectively in case you are scoring at home. Thats what it's going to take even after playing .923 ball for the first 50+ games. These are just ungodly numbers. Will the Warriors break the record this season? I think they will and it's a tribute to how good this team is that it doesn't even sound like I am going out on a limb to say this. Some folks may actually be surprised if they don't make it happen because, suddenly, the Bulls record doesn't even sound that difficult to these fans given the dubs impressive run so far.

But there are a couple of potential roadblocks for the dubs. Key injures are of course the obvious one. Also, their schedule has some tough stretches like the 6 game roadie they are starting this week post all-star break. Nothing fazes this team, but @Clippers, @Hawks, @Heat, and @Thunder can be a challenging stretch even for them. Their schedule is back-loaded and more than half of their remaining games are against the 7 teams right behind them in the brutal Western conference playoffs standings today. Of course more than half of those teams are no match for the dubs, but they also play the Thunder and Spurs 5 times rest of the way. You can't put anything past a team that's 48-4 and they are definitely not scared of anybody. With all that said, nobody will be shocked if they miss the 72-10 mark. It's easier to win a championship than going 72-10. That was definitely true at the beginning of the season and even today, I will still give the record a slight edge over winning the championship on the difficulty scale.

This Warriors chase will actually keep us entertained and carry the second half of the season. It is a big deal. We will hear about it a lot and rightfully so. Some people have blamed the Warriors' excellence for taking some of the drama out of this NBA season. That may be true in some NBA towns, but the chasing of the record will put the Warriors and the NBA increasingly under the spotlight come March 10th or so. Should be a fun second half after a great All-star weekend. I meant All-star Saturday because the actual game on Sunday was garbage. Something has to be done to make the All-star game watchable.  As stupid as the MLB's idea to award home field in the World Series to the winning side of the All-star game was, it is looking better and better with every inane Pro Bowl and All-star game in other leagues. The 3-point contest and the dunk contest on Saturday night were both great. Thanks to the star power of the splash brothers, the 3-point contest seemed like the headliner the last couple of years. But Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine walked in right after and put on a dunk show for the ages. They brought back the dunk contest to relevancy. It was real fun and good luck to those 2 youngsters in their careers.

Suns' own Devin Booker made it to the final round of the 3-point contest with the splash brothers. This kid is special and hope he keeps getting better and saves the franchise. Protect the shield, Devin!

Pivotal Game

NBA playoffs go on for a long time. So you better get used to a lot of cliches during this time. The one I like is, "a series does not started until a road team wins a game." The other over-used concept is that of a "pivotal game." Once you get past game 1, the experts start calling every game pivotal. It's hard to say if game five is more pivotal than game six, but one thing we can all agree on is, no game is more pivotal than game seven. But putting the two concepts together, I have come to the conclusion that game three is the pivotal one if and only if the teams split the first two games - which is exactly what has happened in the conference semis this year. All four series saw the road team steal a game from among the first two. After Westbrook's injury, Memphis has become the fancy pick to win the west. So it was not surprising to see them steal game two in Oklahoma City. In the East, the Pacers are pretty good and the Knicks are over-rated. So Pacers' win in NY was not a surprise to me either. But Chicago shocked Miami in game one raising hopes for an enormous upset. You had to wonder if that will last given the talent differential between the two rosters, but one can only hope the Heat gets tamed at some point this season. The real surprise was the Warriors not only winning game two in San Antonio, but dominating game one as well before losing it in spectacular fashion.

The Warriors are fun to watch with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson shooting lights out. Coach Mark Jackson recently said they are the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game. That shocked many people and sounded like total hyperbole, but nobody has been able to come up with an alternate back-court to match these two in terms of pure shooting accuracy. Of course, we have heard the "best back-court ever" tag many times, but Jackson was talking about just shooting skills and he is probably right. The only thing that I don't like about it is, these guys are too young for us to start bestowing such accolades on them. I would like some level of consistency before calling them the "best ever" anything. It's not worth talking about if they end up being the best shooting back-court just over a two week or two month period. But they sure have been that. Curry is very special and unique himself. I can't think of anybody who shoots and can also drive like Curry. And Klay has an even better stroke than Curry and between the two of them, I can see where Jackson is making this claim. He is not too far off. The Warriors are fun to watch and they dominated seven out of the eight quarters in San Antonio, but only won one game. They blew a sixteen point lead in four minutes in game one to lose in double overtime. They could have come back home up 2-0, which would have been shockingly amazing. The Warriors made the Spurs look old and lucky. 

Thats why game three was critical. Had the warriors won it, they would have retained and expanded on the momentum coming out of those two games in Texas. And it was the one and final shot for the Spurs to grab momentum and home court back and get the series on an even footing. Thats exactly what they did. They made sure they didn't fall into a big hole at the beginning of the game. Tony Parker and Tim Duncan took care of the rest. They were both unstoppable and they showed us the difference between true superstars and just good shooters like Klay and Curry, who could not get anything going in game three. The home crowd was crushed as the Spurs won the game to set the series back on course. The warriors can still win the series, but the spurs are the favorites now. They have two more home games and they are not going to lose at home anymore. Disappointing pivotal game three for the warriors and their fans. They are a fun team to watch, but the spurs are in the driver seat now and the fun might be over in seven. In the East, Miami did the same thing San Antonio did as they went into Chicago and wrested control right away. The Bulls had no shot with all the injuries, but they are a tough team and they had high hopes after stealing game one. LeBron killed those hopes and the heat can now win game four to really derail the bulls or they can take it easy and win game 5 and 7 at home to wrap things up. I say they win one more road game and wrap this series up in 6.

The story was different with Memphis and Indiana. These teams are legitimately better than their opponents and they didn't just "steal" one road game. They came back home and won game three to establish their superiority. So get ready for a Spurs-Memphis and Miami-Indiana slug-fests in the conference finals. Warriors will be a lot more fun, thunder will have more star power in the form of Durant, and the Knicks will be great for TV ratings in the big city. But neither us nor the NBA offices can always get what we want. Commissioner Stern has to deal with a playoffs soon without the Lakers, Durant, or the Knicks. It will still be fun to watch, but the question for the league and TV "suits" is about how many will watch. At least the NBA office has better things to worry about than the major League Baseball offices right now, The latest issue with MLB is the officiating. The umpires missed a home-run call even after watching the replay one day and they didn't know the rules on another call the next day. No league gets our attention for all the wrong reasons quite like MLB. It's still early days in the baseball season and we should cut MLB some slack. We will start focussing on the action on the field sooner than later as the season heats up, but not yet.