Dub Nation celebrates another NBA Championship
The Golden State Warriors celebrated another NBA Championship season this past summer with a parade in Downtown Oakland.
October 30, 2018
The Golden State Warriors, who were considered one of the laughing stocks of the league not too long ago, have won three of the last four NBA Finals and are the back-to-back world champions.
Something Warriors fans have not experienced much of in the last four years is two things: One, the Warriors not being the number one seed in the Western Conference, and the Warriors facing elimination in the playoffs. Last season, they experienced both.
The Warriors finished with a record of 58-24, seven games behind a Houston Rocket squad led by the league’s eventual MVP James Harden and the newly acquired Chris Paul.
The injury bug hit the Warriors hard last season, as all four of the Warriors all-stars missed time. They went into the playoffs without Stephen Curry, who was recovering from a grade two MCL sprain.
The Warriors had no problem in the first two rounds of the playoffs, beating a San Antonio Spurs team without Kawhi Leonard in five games in the first round, and defeating Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans in five games in the second round.
In the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors had their biggest challenge in the Western Conference since the 2016 Oklahoma City Thunder team with Kevin Durant.
After splitting the first four games in the series, the Rockets won a pivotal Game 5 in Houston to go up 3-2 in the series.
Irman Arcibal, art teacher, said, “I was very concerned when the Warriors fell behind in the Houston series. If Chris Paul is healthy, Houston probably wins. The Warriors really caught a break with that one, but then again, Chris Paul rarely goes a full season without injury.”
In Games 6 and 7, the Rockets played without their All-Star point guard Chris Paul, and those games also saw the Rockets take substantial leads in the first half of both games.
The Warriors, who outscored opponents by a whopping 524 points in the third quarter in 2018, were fueled by comebacks led by Klay Thompson in Game 6, Durant and Curry in Game 7, and went on to win the series 4-3 to reach their fourth straight NBA Finals.
In the East, Lebron James led a depleted Cavaliers roster to their fourth straight finals, over a Boston Celtics team without their two best players Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. For the fourth straight year, it was the Cavaliers vs. the Warriors in the finals.
Arcibal said, “I was really looking forward to the Warriors facing a new opponent in the finals. I would have liked to see Boston or Philadelphia. The Celtics are like a younger version of Golden State, and the Sixers would have been a fun match up. There would have been a nice historical footnote with Philadelphia, since it was the Warriors’ city before they relocated to the Bay.”
Despite a valiant effort by James, the Cavaliers were overmatched by the Warriors, who swept the Cavs 4-0 to become back-to-back NBA champions. Durant became the back-to-back Finals MVP.
The winning did not stop there for the Warriors. They arguably won the offseason, when All-Star center Demarcus Cousins, who tore his achilles in January, had no offers and agreed to take the Mid-Level Exception of $5.3 million.
Arcibal said, “I was very surprised that Cousins signed with Golden State. But I’m more surprised at all of the haters. It’s not the Warriors’ fault that no one made him an offer. Blame the rest of the league.”
The Warriors $1 billion dollar project for their new arena, the Chase Center, will be ready for the 2019-20 NBA season.
The Warriors are going to move from the Oracle Arena, adjacent to the Oakland Coliseum, to Mission Bay, which is just a half- mile from AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants.