Golden State is really a hard team to figure out. On the hand, obviously just have to respect the fuck out of their rings and just how great Curry is, how smart Kerr is, how classy they both are, and how their system is incomparably beautiful. All that helped by Klay, Wiggins, and Dray being the ultimate complementary players. Yet for a classy (I'm leaving Dray out of that), veteran team that has a great system and is cohesive af after running it for so many years, this year shows a bizarre dysfunction. The Dray punch symbolizes it, but seems to go beyond that. The inability to develop and integrate in very talented young players -- the supposed 2nd timeline players -- the really bad body language on the bench,;the collapse of Poole; the freezing out of other players (where has Kuminga been?); the idiotic whining about the refs without even a single egregiously bad call to use as an example; and just really dumb mental errors from Curry's timeout w/ no timeout to his simply throwing the ball out of bounds, to 2 terrible hero-ball heaves by Klay, to Dray throwing the ball straight to AD on the next to last play (though I guess AD also anticipated well) ....those are just not what you'd expect from a smart organization that is well coached, has veteran leadership, and has generally been together for a long time.
Compare that to the Lakers. A shit-ton of turnover and new players, overall I think less talented, a rookie coach, and an awful start to the season. Not to mention all the Westbrook drama and a roster that was just poorly constructed by Pelinka until he bailed himself out 2/3 of the way through the year -- theoretically too late for a team to cohere. But, all that as a given, at the end of the day we see undrafted Reaves outplaying Wiseman, Kuminga, and Moody; Walker (and Rui and other bench players) not sulking and coming off the bench to give the sort of instant offense Poole is supposed to provide; and, while I'm still puzzled that they won last night (didn't it seem like GS out-played them all game long?), a defense that is just tough as nails; and, lastly, even when down 12 they just stuck to it until they seemed to just wear down a GS team that was either/both mentally and physically tired. That speaks to Ham being a really underrated coach but also, and I know this will get brickbats from the LeBron haters, great veteran leadership.
