At the halfway point of the NBA season, nobody is writing off the Golden State Warriors yet.
But with a record of 12 wins and 43 loses, the worst in the 15-team Western Conference and the entire league, the Dubs are projected to be great again next year, not after the All-Star Game in Chicago this weekend.
By necessity, teams in the cellar claw their way to the playoffs after the All-Stars.
The Warriors, however, will be hard pressed to make it to the round of 16 and the postseason after reaching the finals and winning the Larry O’Brien championship trophy in three of their previous five campaigns.
The team fancied by Filipinos in the Bay Area of California and the Dubs nation the world over has fallen on hard times.It is reeling without Stephen Curry. The marksman, a two-time MVP, will reportedly miss at least another month with a broken hand that has caused him to miss all but four games this season.
When it rains, it pours. Already without Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala, who are now playing for other teams, the Warriors are also without Klay Thompson, who tore an ACL in last year’s Finals. Stars Draymond Green, Kevon Looney and D’Angelo Russell, until his trade to Minnesota earlier this week, have also missed time.
If you have been following Golden State lately, you’d say there isn’t much incentive for the franchise to start winning. That’s because it owns the 2020 first round pick and could just laze on the couch waiting for a future star.
“Playoffs or not, we still want to see Steph Curry in action again,” my Sacramento buddy Danny Vivar said on Messenger. “His presence on the court will reenergize the fans. But of course it won’t be much fun if our Dubs were not in action in the postseason.”
There won’t be much fun for punsters either.
Last season, when the Dubs played in the NBA Finals, they eventually lost to the Toronto Raptors. Filipino diehards localized their championship anxiety all in the name of fun.
A doctored video clip starring Curry went viral on social media after the Raptors took a 2-1 lead in the best of 7 Finals.
The producers of the clever video made it look like Curry was speaking in the Ilocano language with a Cordillera twang.
Golden State, said Curry in the video, was outplayed by the North because Durant and Thompson skipped Game 3 to fly to the highlands of Luzon to visit Apo Whang Od, a famous tattoo artist in Tinglayan, Kalinga.