The 2015 NBA Finals Game Thread AKA Battle Of The Australian Institute Of Sport
- Thread starter DeJesus Built My Hotrod
- Start date
shawnrbu said:
Yep. Both teams are toast. All of the points have come on Curry drawing body contact on jump shots.
What percentage of the fans in Oracle right now started following the Warriors in the last year? 40%? 60%? More?
I do.DeJesus Built My Hotrod said:
The dirty little secret that I've said all year was how much of a shell Bogut is of his former self (that's being kind.....he's sucked this year individually) and Green is undersized going up against either player in the paint.
Grin&MartyBarret said:
Probably 50% hard-core fans and 50% who don't understand the game at all and are there so they can post to Snapchat, the 'Gram and their Facebook pages.
This is wrong. Bogut is a man mountain on D and a good passer and screener on O.HomeRunBaker said:
Poor performance tonight though.
HomeRunBaker said:
I know your Bogut theory but its not accurate. He has been dominant in spots. Green has been superb except tonight. We shall see which one of us is correct going forward. On thing I know Tristan Thompson is very good.
PC Drunken Friar said:
They are this year's bandwagon team. This forum may as well have been a Warriors forum. It makes sense, as they're fun as hell to watch, but this isn't just your typical "team got good" bandwagon thing.
Warriors win final period 12-2. Using Ezeli early in OT was a masterstroke. Iguodala was brilliant.
I don't know who's in the arena tonight, but they've had a great fan base for years. Thick and thin, mostly thin.Grin&MartyBarret said:
If this Golden State team doesn't win this year, they never going to win. No guaranty they stay healthy next time around and Cleveland should be better and healthier next year. Which makes for an interesting question. How does this series play out with a healthy Love and Kyrie?
Their attendance figures were god awful under the Cowens, Montgomery, and Musselman eras as they would be with most teams when they win 19 games a year. Once Nellie took over and got them back to respectability they have been a Top-10 attendance team for the past decade. All things considered they do have one of the leagues stronger fan bases and not "pink haters" as some as claiming. That isn't a fair characterization of the fan base as a whole.Al Zarilla said:
Edit: Pink Hatters.....we are all pink haters.
- Kyrie looked healthy for most of the game obviously, and he probably had the best defensive game of his career tonight. He did the absolute best he could on defense and did everything that was asked for him on offense, really sucks to see him go. Sometimes sports just aren't fair.
- I don't know how much credit/blame Blatt is going to get for Cleveland's success/failure, but I thought he did a pretty good job leading up to this game making sure all of his players were ready to play. Cleveland came out with a good strategy for defending Curry pick and rolls, and he got the most out of limited players. Mozgov in particular was huge, I would say he outplayed Bogut tonight.
- This was a vintage JR Smith game. He was hot in the beginning helping Cleveland get out to a great start but turned into a pumpkin in the second half and overtime, when they really could have used his offense.
- LeBron was brilliant tonight, a complete master of the game on offense, for the most part he knew what his team needed from him and he gave it to them. That being said, I thought he was pretty bad in the OT. He had success all night getting the ball on the left elbow, backing down his defender and finishing with a jump hook or a mini-fall away. In the OT he tried it once on the very first possession and then never went back to it again.
- Harrison Barnes is Jeff Green if Green came to play every day. I think in the right offense he could score 20 points a game, he has a lot of different ways to score.
- You got to love Draymond Green's energy, but he picks up some really dumb fouls. You don't want him to tone down his energy, but he needs to understand how important he is to the team and he can't be doing that on the bench.
- After 67 regular season wins and a hell of a start to the playoffs, it's hard to criticize GS's style of play, but especially in the first half they took some bad shots. I love Klay Thompson, but those catch-and-shoot leaning threes with 20 seconds left still on the shot clock or cringeworthy. They are such an efficient team in the half-court that I feel like they can get better shots off than that pretty much every time down.
- I don't know how much credit/blame Blatt is going to get for Cleveland's success/failure, but I thought he did a pretty good job leading up to this game making sure all of his players were ready to play. Cleveland came out with a good strategy for defending Curry pick and rolls, and he got the most out of limited players. Mozgov in particular was huge, I would say he outplayed Bogut tonight.
- This was a vintage JR Smith game. He was hot in the beginning helping Cleveland get out to a great start but turned into a pumpkin in the second half and overtime, when they really could have used his offense.
- LeBron was brilliant tonight, a complete master of the game on offense, for the most part he knew what his team needed from him and he gave it to them. That being said, I thought he was pretty bad in the OT. He had success all night getting the ball on the left elbow, backing down his defender and finishing with a jump hook or a mini-fall away. In the OT he tried it once on the very first possession and then never went back to it again.
- Harrison Barnes is Jeff Green if Green came to play every day. I think in the right offense he could score 20 points a game, he has a lot of different ways to score.
- You got to love Draymond Green's energy, but he picks up some really dumb fouls. You don't want him to tone down his energy, but he needs to understand how important he is to the team and he can't be doing that on the bench.
- After 67 regular season wins and a hell of a start to the playoffs, it's hard to criticize GS's style of play, but especially in the first half they took some bad shots. I love Klay Thompson, but those catch-and-shoot leaning threes with 20 seconds left still on the shot clock or cringeworthy. They are such an efficient team in the half-court that I feel like they can get better shots off than that pretty much every time down.
HomeRunBaker said:
There are a lot of pink-haters there for the playoffs. There are hardcore season-ticketholders for years there too. But a lot of the regular season folks sold their playoff tix for a huge premium to those who are there so they can post it to social media and probably weren't familiar with who is on the team as recently as March. In general, they are a very passionate and knowledgable fan-base.
Devizier said:
I think the C's, Lakers and Knicks have pretty dedicated fan bases who show up no matter what. HRB is certainly correct that over the past 10-15 years, the Warriors have joined that group.
edit: that doesn't mean that they sell out those games in the cold, dog days of February and March but they each have a core who shows up.
The difference here is that in the Bay Area, there is so much money flowing around that the people working in tech have no problem paying up to attend "events" just because its something to do. Season ticket holders would be silly not to, at least, consider, selling one game here and there if it pays for most of their season's cost.
The Knicks for sure. They are the obvious who come to mind with the Raptors probably next on the list. You can include the Lakers as they still get the numbers but not sure if showing up for show really falls under the sticking with their team theme.Devizier said:
Lakers ratings still double the Clippers and Laker talk dominates the sports talk radio in LA.HomeRunBaker said:
Al Zarilla said:
DeJesus Built My Hotrod said:
http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2015/story/_/id/13013455/golden-state-warriors-longest-season-ticket-holder-sells-nba-finals-game-1-seats
That's every arena though. Not sure why the Warriors fans are being singled out.Grin&MartyBarret said:
Front row is the money/there to be seen, the nosebleeds are to have a good time, while your hard core is in the middle rows. They generally want to be close enough to have good seats/view but can't afford to sit between the head coach and scorers table.
HomeRunBaker said:
There is no denying that the Warriors this year have become a hugely popular bandwagon team. Does that happen to every good team? Yes, to some degree. Is it particularly obnoxious when it's VC and tech money? Yes. Just as it's particularly obnoxious in New York when it's all finance bros.
BigSoxFan said:
You don't have to care. It's a minor annoyance I've noticed, emphasized by the fact that a ton of my clients at work are folks in tech companies in the Bay Area who suddenly want to talk Warriors basketball on every call and don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about.
Not only the Celtics......how about the Red Sox during the Damon years? Fenway was the place to be for the mid-20 female. Patriots are similar although it's now more of a New England vs the World phenomenon that has taken place to make it unique.BigSoxFan said:
Preach! Look, no tears here but its comical to go to some of the games and watch people there who are more concerned with getting the right selfie angle than what is going on in the game.Grin&MartyBarret said:
HRB is right in that every successful team has their share of bandwagon fans.
DrewDawg said:
Yep, and they all got priced out for the playoffs by bandwagoners. Sucks, although pretty much inevitable in a huge, rich market like the Bay Area.
It seems that my context was not clear. I was referring to the core fanbases of the Knicks, Celtics, Lakers and Warriors during the lean years and was trying to point out that while they dont sell out all their games, they still get good crowds and viewership.DrewDawg said:
12.9 overnight rating. New high for NBA on ABC. World series game one did a 8.0 last year for reference.