Remember November

During the great FTT Brownout of a week ago, when we were faced with the complete loss of our archives... well, if you ever have a need to torture a writer for information, it'll be a short interrogation. Just threaten them with the loss of their archives, and they'll give up faster than the Hawks in Game 7 in Boston. Seriously, we're helpless when it comes to this stuff.

Anyway, when the site came back up, I spent an unfortunate amount of time just looking at the old material, making sure it was all still there and safe. It also made me realize the following...

For anyone who wants to dismiss the first few months of the season as essentially meaningless, consider this: the Warriors went 0-7 to start the year, mostly because they were unable to adjust to life without the Yosemite Sam-like Stephen Jackson. If Captain Jacks doesn't decide to shoot his guns in the air like he just don't care, and the Ws have a merely .500 start after eight games, that pushes them to 52 wins and a 7 seed, and probably pushes Dallas out (since one of the wins probably comes at their expense).

You might also have had a few more wins over the course of the season, since the biggest problem for the Ws this season was the slow erosion of Baron Davis due to minutes fatigue. (Which actually isn't very likely to have helped them if they would have gotten the Spurs or Jazz, since Don Nelson's playoff magic only works when he's against a coach that isn't experienced enough to play his own game. But I digress.)

Finally, you'd have an infinitely more entertaining first-round series in Bugs-Ws, rather than the final nail in Jason Kidd and Avery Johnson's coffin.

Would the Warriors beat the Hornets in a seven game series? Well, you'd have Baron Davis against his old team. You'd have the Oaktown crowd to give the underdog a much bigger home court advantage than the Mavs' dead-enders. (But still, no. As the first two games of the Spurs' series show us, this Bug team is the shiznit.)