The Warriors Enjoy Moving Chairs on the Titanic

Word out of the Bay Area tonight that Chris Mullin, the onetime golden child of owner Chris Cohan and a franchise great, has been aced out by team president Robert Rowell.

It's hard to see the quality of this move. On the plus side, Mullin did draft Monta Ellis, Andris Biedrins and Anthony Randolph, and it's not like the Warriors lack for talent. On the bad side, he did make the unconscionable decision to pay huge money for Corey Maggette, has no control over the barely caring Don Nelson, and blown first round picks on Patrick O'Bryant and Ike Diogu; there clearly are worse guys having this gig in the Association, and he should probably get another shot at it at some point, preferably with an owner that isn't, well, a toxic piece of sludge.

As for the Warriors, I'm not going to slam them for going with a blank slate. As the Rockets and Thunder have shown, you don't need to be an ex-player to be good at this job -- hell, as Kevin McHale, Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan have shown, it might be a detriment.

But the bigger problem is that Rowell has been there for years, and anyone who (a) willingly spends his life around Cohan, and (b) manages to impress him enough over the years to bury the knife in a reasonable hire is inherently suspect. And even if you can get over the presence of Cohan, so long as the W's are running Nellie on the bench, they'll be, at most, an entertaining sideshow. (Assuming, of course, that Ellis can safely avoid off-season mopeds this year... and that Nellie still gives a damn. Neither is a great bet.)

Three Quick Points

> The Warriors won't punish star young guard Monta Ellis for injury himself in the off-season on a moped, an activity specifically prohibited by his contract.

A few things here... first off, I have no idea how you hurt yourself on a moped to the point where you are going to miss months, unless there's alcohol or severe parkour-ing involved.

Well, OK, maybe there is a way...



I also don't know how you don't want to punish the guy, especially considering that the Warriors in the post-Baron Davis Era are overwhelmingly likely to miss the playoffs, since Ellis becoming an immense star was their only chance to stay relevant in the West. Considering that the 0-8 start from last year (with Stephen Jackson's suspension being the big factor) was a direct cause of missing the dance.

Anyway, here's the money quote from Warrior GM Chris Mullin...

"I think he'll learn a lot about himself. He'll be able to draw back to it. I told him myself, if this could trigger him to really committing to an offseason program, then all of a sudden we've got a guy 24, 25, that's really got it together. We might be able to look back and be OK."

Um, sure, Chris. The same way that your alcoholism turned out to be a big help in your playing days...

> Brett Favre is walking with only a slight limp, and should be good to go next week against the Cardinals.

I am shocked, shocked to discover that Brett Favre generated some additional media coverage that turned out to be a big waste of time. Shocking!

> Reports out of Seattle are that the Mariners, the first team in MLB history to finish with the worst record with a $100 million+ payroll, hate star OF Ichiro Suzuki.

Now, to be fair, Ichiro's OPS this year is the lowest of his career, and he's lost the extra-base power that used to make him good, if never quite the weapon that some people have seen him as. In terms of performance for salary, he's not doing them any favors. But we're still looking at a solid OBA and base runner, a plus defensive player, and a guy that's on pace to get hit #2,000 in his ninth MLB season, next year.

Oh, and there's also this -- he might be the only guy on the team that Mariner Fan actually likes. (With the possible exception of Brandon Morrow.)

So it doesn't really matter who wanted to wring Ichiro's neck, under the idea that he was "selfish" about his hits and stats, rather than winning. Um, not to belabor the point here, but who on this team knows a thing about winning, really? Raul Ibanez? Jarrod Washburn? Adrian Beltre?

Oh, and one final thought... how the hell did they spend over $100 million on this roster, really?

Welcome Back, Warriors

This is Monta Ellis, one of the best guards in the world, who provided the Golden State Warriors with 20, 5 and 4 , along with a 53% (!) shooting percentage and a steal and a half a game in 2007-08. He also gave the team the sense that they really were on a different path, in that five years ago when a second round pick paid off like gangbusters, they watched it walk away to Washington and become Gilbert Arenas.

He's also going to miss the next three months with a high ankle sprain. I should say, at least the next three months. The Warriors will also be without Baron Davis, of course.

So they're going to go to battle next year with a roster that counts Stephen Jackson as its best player, the defensive sieve that is ex-Clipper Corey Maggette, and back ups where they had stars. Add it up, and you can start the clock on Don Nelson making real the ever-present retirement threat... and the Warriors going back to their comfortable cocoon back at the bottom of the West.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Drink With Me, Nellie

Hey Warrior Fan... not to kick you when you're down or anything, but are you still on the Don Nelson Bandwagon now that he's helped to run off Baron Davis with no return on investment?

Gosh, it's almost like I told you all, months ago, when the Warriors renewed his contract despite his team taking off the first month of the season, which eventually cost them a playoff spot and exacerbated Davis' departure... that maybe Nellie wasn't going to take you to the Finals. But hey, why listen to an outside opinion or notice the decades of similar finishes? He's A Legend! Stand by our president!

Having said that, the Warriors can turn this off-season into a net plus if they can transfer the Davis money into the quality big (Elton Brand is the target, like he's not that for everyone) that Nelson always needs and never gets. (Funny, that.) Davis is also bound to fulfill the time-honored role of all Clippers by getting hurt and disappointing their fan base. It's not like we don't know how that movie ends, either.

But I can't see it happening for Clippers North, either. They couldn't bring Gilbert Arenas back, because the franchise is fundamentally flawed at the top with a dipshit owner, flawed in the middle with Nellie, and flawed on the floor with a team that's captained by the ticking time bomb that is Stephen Jackson. (Yes, yes, we all know that they want to turn the team over to Monta Ellis, and prevent the same Arenas Exodus that happened earlier in the decade. But Captain Jack will not be denied.)

Oh, and has anyone checked to see how Wacko Jacko is taking the Davis news? I'm guessing that he might not be the happiest camper in the world, which means that the East Bay cops (and anyone living in the area) might want to curtail their nightclub patronage for the next few months. Or, failing that, get a vest.

Countdown to Letdown

So the Wizards make the first splash in the NBA free agent season by... signing their own guy, Antawn Jamison, to a deal. As a SIxers fan, I'm supposed to care about this, because the Sixers were intersted in going after the one-time Tarheel and Warrior... and, um, yeesh. I realize that the Sixers need more scoring from their bigs, and Jamison can do that... but they do realize that he's primarly a garbage scorer and three-point shooter that, at age 32, isn't going to be getting better, right?

Antwan works hard and that's a tolerable contract as NBA contracts go, but he's also a defensive sieve and black hole. He's never been a part of any team that's gone deep into the playoffs... and maybe I'm just a big lover of young potential, but I'd much rather see Thaddeus Young get major minutes, rather than watch the known quantity of Jamison.

So, is there a free agent on the market that I'd like to see on the Sixers, seeing how they are one of the few teams with cap money to spend? Sure. If they can take the very useful James Posey away from Boston, that helps them and hurts their rival. Mikael Pietrus could be a useful part of the rotation, especially if you think you can work on the holes in his game (and he's still kind of young, I guess). Maybe Shaun Livingston is worth a gamble, depending on where his rehab is; he might also come relatively cheap. Corey Magette could finally give them a 3-point threat, and he's opted out of his deal with the Clips.

But all of that pales beyond the sheer dream that would be Elton Brand, who opted out of his deal with the Clips tonight. Get him, and you can go with Young, Brand and Dalembert up front, with Miller and Iguodala in the backcourt; it's still turnover-prone, but it can score from everywhere inside the three-point line, and it defends and runs. More than that, it lets everyone in the area know that the Sixers are actually serious about getting better and becoming more than just a low seed and first round exit.

Not that I'm, you know, getting my hopes up... and as I'm writing this, Baron Davis has announced that he's opting out of the Warriors, too. Last one out of Oaktown, please turn out the lights...

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.)

Epic Drop: Top 10 Signs Chris Webber's Comeback Wasn't Working Out

Your link is here, and all rancor from his Sixers dog show and buyout aside, he was one of the best passing big men in NBA history. Having said that, he still didn't defend in the clutch, and seemed more interested in getting paid than anything else -- even back to his college days, of course. What the Warriors were thinking in this re-run, I have no idea, unless Nellie just wanted to be the one to tell him it was over. (Hmm...)

Epic Drop: Top 12 Reasons Why The Warriors Renewed Don Nelson

The link is here, and for the record, I like NellieBall -- it's fun to watch, rewards passing and moving without the ball, and is extremely good for fantasy league players. But in the real world, where it's kind of nice to have the team you root for threaten to win a championship... well, um, Nellie doesn't get you there. Ever.

Because even in an era that favors the smaller players and encourages up-tempo, you still need to get defensive stops and key rebounds, and in 28 seasons and 18 trips to the post-season, he's never even gotten to the Finals. In only 4 of those seasons has he even gotten to the Final Four.

If you want to revive a moribund franchise, Nellie's your guy. If you don't have the bigs to compete and want to make sure your franchise sells some tickets, there's no better coach on the planet. Honestly. But if you want to win when it matters? Um, not so much. Sorry...

The Prodigal Nellie Big Man Returns

Word in the blogosphere is that Chris Webber, currently collecting a ridiculous amount of money in the final year of that Maloofian Monstrosity of a contract that Billy King just had to have on the Sixers, may sign with the Don Nelson Warriors.

No, seriously. (Yes, I know, it took me a while to stop giggling, too.)

From the Contra Costa Times, which sounds like a minor paper to Eastern eyes, but is actually something of a leader out in the Bay Area, especially when it comes to sports...

Two team officials confirmed that the Warriors are in discussions with Webber, who played his rookie season with the Warriors in 1993-94. There is some belief the two parties are close to an agreement.

A different source confirmed that Webber and Warriors coach Don Nelson, who separated on bad terms in 1994, have talked in an attempt to put the past behind them. Warriors executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin has said a big man is on his wish list.

So let's get this straight... two guys that more or less destroyed the franchise nearly 15 years ago are going to reunite. They both have outsized egos, questionable commitments to the defensive skills or commitment that actually wins basketball games, and a need to be seen as The Reason Why The Team Is Winning. We're going to add that to a mixture that has Baron Davis, who's great but fragile, and the legitimate insanity that is Stephen Jackson.

By bringing C-Webb in, we'll also retard the development of Andris Biedrins, the W's current big man who might actually have some interest in playing defense. We'll also mess with the head of Al Harrington, who has given them some decent bench production against strong odds that he'd pout, and utterly destroy them defensively, just as he did to the Pistons last year. And these are the Nellie Warriors, so it's not like there is defense to burn here.

Finally, there is this -- um, Webb would be a fine basketball player in a wheelchair league. With slow chairs. He can not run. He can not jump. His playoff record is nearly as bad as Nellie's. Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

I realize this just sounds like the bitterness of an ex-Sixers fan here, but didn't they trade Jason Richardson for Brandan Wright, and draft Patrick O'Bryant in the first round, for some kind of actual reason? Or is Nellie just trying to orchestrate the exact same screw job as 1994, so he can feel young again?

NBA Potpourri

Just to show that this blog still covers more than the NFL, and the Patriots... here's where we are after two weeks in the NBA.

1) The Celtics own November. I kind of expected that the team would get off to a good start from the talent infusion, but they are also doing something that they have to do, given their short bench and star reliance -- they are blowing people out. With a point differential of 16.6 points per game, they're leading the NBA, and should be able to keep the heavy stress down... but note, please, that Pierce, Allen and Garnett are averaging over 39 minutes per game. Doc Rivers isn't, um, smart, and that's going to cost them in the long run.

2) Detroit's back with a vengeance. When we last saw the Pistons, they were looking old and spent in gagging up a playoff series to LeBron James and the Cavs. They've answered the bell with a 5-1 start and a 10-point differential. They are getting great production out of their second unit, with Hayes, Maxiell, and Murray giving them solid minutes and defense. Here's another positive: Sheed doesn't have a technical yet, but he does have 15 points a game, with efficient three-point shooting (44%). Plus, when your big man is doing that, it opens up lots of things for other players. (This is one of the reasons why the Mavs have won so many games with Dirk.)

3) The Southeast is horrible right now. With Washington and Miami combining to go 2-10, and the Hawks squandering big early wins en route to a 2-4 start, it's Orlando or nothing... and the Magic really aren't that good, either. With Boston, New Jersey and Toronto all looking competent or better, the torch of Worst Division in the NBA has clearly passed.

4) Kevin Durant will not win the Rookie of the Year. Simply because the voters will not pull the trigger for a low percentage gunner on a 20-win team that's going to spend the entire season doing the Lame Duck Wiggle, even if he's the only one with 20 points per game. There's some talent here, but with Durant shooting 39% from the forward position and the team dropping 5 points every game from no one getting to the free throw line, don't expect this to get better soon. Welcome back to the big boy seat, PJ Carlesimo!

5) Phoenix should be fine... but while I made fun of this idea in preseason, they really might miss Kurt Thomas, of all people. Boris Diaw has shown no signs of being the supremely useful player he was in 2005, Amare Stoudemire has been banged up, and Brian Skinner fits in here about as well as, well, he fits in anywhere. Any team that's giving Sean Marks minutes has issues with its big men, and it's all leading to too many minutes for Grant Hill... and we all know what happens next, right?

6) Houston (shh!) may be better than the Spurs. Not by the numbers (both teams are 5-1, and the Spurs have a higher point differential), but consider this -- the Rockets are doing this with a new coach (Rick Adelman, who is already making Yao Ming look like a good passing big man again), new frontcourt rotation (Luis Scola gives them quality minutes and a non-Dikembe option for when Yao sits), and a dramatically different situation at point guard, where Mikes James and Rafer Alston are giving them 17.5 points, 6.6 assists and nearly 3 three-pointers a game.

The ceiling might be higher here, assuming, of course, that McGrady and Ming finally stay healthy -- and if both teams are at full strength in a playoff, Gregg Popovich will get them past Adelman. I'm just not thinking the Spurs will be healthy.

7) Does Don Nelson does know that the year started and he hasn't retired? Last year's fun-time first-round playoff story, your Golden State Warriors, are 0-5 after a brutal stretch against the Jazz, Cavs and Mavs. They'll get back gun-toting captain Stephen Jackson soon, and they've been fighting flu and other maladies... but if they don't start winning soon, they could be out of this early, with a big long East Coast road trip coming up at the end of the month.

They give up 12 more rebounds than they get per game, shoot a lot worse than the opposition (.506 to .463), don't defend (um, see .506) and are giving up an incredible 46% on three-pointers. Andris Biedrins may be the only decent big man on the roster, which you kind of expect from Nellie Ball, but this is ridiculous. Also telling: they shoot 67% from the line, with nobody on the team over 76%. So if you're behind, foul 'em with impunity, really. Last year's playoff run could be fool's gold (en state), especially if Jackson decides to exercise his Second Amendment rights again...

Warrior Eulogy

Start with the name – Golden State. Not Oakland, or Bay Area, or San Francisco or San Jose (and yes, I know they don’t play there, but that doesn’t stop the East Rutherford Giants or Jets or the Not Detroit Pistons or the Arlington Rangers and I’ll just stop it and move on).

It is, in the top three of North American sports leagues, the only marketing moment involved in the name of the team. You don’t hear about the Orange State Heat, the Keystone State Steelers, or the Peach State Braves. Only the Warriors are so, well, mysterious.

As a child learning about the NBA for the first time, with the usual childhood fascination with maps and places, the name intrigued me. What made the team Golden? Did the team have a Golden player? Was the floor gold? Where the hell is the Golden State, anyway? My map had no Golden listed on it.

Then, I finally saw them play against the mid-‘70s Sixers of Julius Erving, Bobby Jones and Henry Bibby, the first team of my NBA consciousness. Their uniforms were weird, they only had one player that anyone would ever remember (Purvis Short, a scoring small forward who shot jumpers with such a pronounced arc, it was like he was trying to hit the ceiling), and the Sixers crushed them like bugs. Next. Portland is where? What’s a Port?

Time passed, and my basketball consciousness formed in the range war that was Sixers-Celtics. The Warriors were of no real concern. Then, suddenly, Run TMC. A frantically paced, wildly entertaining team, especially if you haven’t seen it all before in Don Nelson’s previous incarnation as the ringleader of the Milwaukee Bucks (though, to be fair, Tim Hardaway was always more fun to watch than Sidney Moncrief). They did what Nellie’s teams always do – entertain, intrigue, inspire a fan base, scare the hell out of teams in playoff matchups, then fail due to their lack of quality big man. Same as it ever was.

It all ended spectacularly badly, as life usually does. You can blame Chris Webber, Nelson, PJ Carlessimo, Latrell Sprewell, or Chris Cohan, the Warriors’ secretive and mostly useless owner. None of it really matters, because the simple fact of the matter is that Nelson wasn’t going to win in Golden State, even if everyone involved ate the happy pills and loved each other. Those Warriors weren’t the Magic Lakers, or even the Hakeem Rockets. No championships were harmed in the destruction of the franchise. Chris Webber is going to end his career without a ring. (Yes, I like the West in the finals. Big surprise.)

Time went on. I discovered, up close and personal, what the destruction of a franchise looked like, as a Sixers season ticket holder. (It looked like Doug Moe and Harold Katz – which is to say, it looks a lot like the down market version of Nelson and Cohan.) Then I moved to the Bay Area for work, and got to know the Warriors and their fans, and discovered what an underdog attitude (Oakland is to San Francisco as Newark is to Manhattan) looked like when it was tempered with a fantastic and ludicrously expensive place to live – nice, but with an edge. I started watching Warriors games.

Believe it or not, they always had talent. Gilbert Arenas was a joy. Antawn Jamison was flawed as all get out and far from a plus on defense, but you always got the feeling that he was a coach away from being an asset, since he could score without being the focus. Larry Hughes can do some things; the Warriors, in a classic bad organization move, forced him to play point, exposing everything he couldn’t do. Erick Dampier was, like many NBA big men, a heart away from wreaking havoc.

In other words, they were just intriguing enough to keep an eye on. And that’s what over 15,000 people did, on average, for years. They didn’t even really grumble all that much about it. They just came, sat on their hands for a club that was beneath them. After about 50 games every season, the debilitating “injuries” would start piling up, the team would roll off a 3-30 type finish, and the coach would get ran out of town. The next season, the team would make some mildly intriguing high draft pick (J-Rich... hmm... and Troy Murphy looks like he cares about winning... maybe), and 15K+ people would show up all over again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’d point out the crowds to out-of-towners, and we’d all wonder how they were doing it. It must be the marketing – the multi-game packages, the strong numbers of people in the Bay Area who aren’t originally from there coming to watch their team, the Sacramento sellouts of RVing Kings fans, the strong Laker numbers, etc. But it really wasn’t that. It was, simply, this – the Bay Area likes basketball. It gets basketball, more than baseball or even football. Cal and Stanford draw, too. And finally, this year, they got some.

Some people have talked about how the Oaktown crowd that took out the Mavericks benefited from an organization that Gets It – that there is less artificial noise and nonsense then in many NBA arenas, and that this is the way that things used to be, dammit, when the world was young and better. Well, perhaps – I haven’t been in so many arenas as to know – but the Whiff Of Bullshit is strong here.

Others have congratulated the Warriors for having the courage to roll the dice with hardened playoff performer and well-known lunatic Stephen Jackson. Well, OK – it’s not like the team gave up much for him. (If nothing else, getting Mike Dunleavy Jr. off your roster alone should be worth five more wins a year.) But that trade wasn’t canny or brave. That trade was about two teams dumping their problems on each other, and the Warriors making out better in the short run. In the long run, none of the four players involved inspires a ton of confidence. And besides, this is a team that paid Adonal Foyle – Adonal Foyle! – to seven years and $41 million, mostly on the strength of his media interviews.

Nelson, to his credit, took a good hard look at Adonal and pretty much put him in the NBDL. He did similar surgery with Patrick O'Bryant and Ike Diogu, then gave earned minutes to Andris Biedrins, Monta Ellis and Mikael Pietrus. Baron Davis decided not to be injured this year, and voila – an actual team, lightning in a bottle, the rebirth of basketball in an area that had been crying out for it for 15 years.

But – and this is a huge but – the current cast of characters won’t do it. Harrington has no defensive position. Davis can’t stay healthy. Richardson isn’t really a franchise player. Biedrins is going to get a contract and stop developing (and the reason why I’m down on him is simple – there is no way that an NBA player should still be shooting free throws like that 100+ games into his career). Jackson is, well, Stephen Jackson. Say this for them – at least they go down fighting.

After 1-2 more years of the same level, Nelson will move on, and Mullin will keep trying to recapture this false spring – with big men that aren’t quite good enough, with remarkable athletes that don’t know / won’t learn how to play the kind of eat your vegetables defense that inevitably wins in the NBA.

And the crowd will go fallow once more, the lushest field in the Association, just waiting for another Golden Spring.

Can The Warriors Save The NBA?

The first round of NBA playoff telecasts on broadcast and cable have produced mixed ratings results. Cable coverage is faring better than broadcast, so far. What's interesting, though, is that overall, more older viewers are defecting than younger ones.

Combined, broadcast and cable viewership is down 7 percent to 2.6 million viewers from 2.8 million last season.

John Consoli, MediaWeek

In other news, there is no truth to the rumor that David Stern is going to force the Knicks and Warriors to trade personnel next year...

Because Matt Barnes Is A Weapon

We have friends who are Warrior fans, and any rap single that (a) hypes Matt Barnes and (b) riffs off one of our favorite B-movies...

well, it gets a link, and a spin. (Warning: Sound, plays right from link.)

http://www.myspace.com/thetrackrunners

Props for even giving Al Harrington some love, but where's the verse for Adonal Foyle?

Why You Probably Aren't Watching Mavs-Warriors

In doing the usual spin through the sports blogosphere today, it is striking to see the number of entries and storylines on the Mavs-Warriors series. It's not surprising, given that:

> Dirk Nowitzki might have saved his career from KG-level irrelevance with his fourth-quarter explosion last night

> Stephen Jackson has eyes that are so crazy, The Runaway Bride gets the willies

> Don Nelson was born to steal this series (and, of course, get stomped in the next one)

> Mark Cuban's temper tantrum, if the Mavs lose, could be sold for $49.99 on PPV

> Between Cuban and Dirk, the Mavs somehow make a team with Stephen Jackson the good guys

> Oakland has the best home court in the NBA -- these people make Detroit look calm

> Baron Davis remembered who he was

Etc., etc. There are a dozen more just like this. But then there's this.

Fox’s Saturday, April 21 window of two regional telecasts—Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox, and St. Louis Cardinals vs. Chicago Cubs—drew a combined 3.2 household rating and 4.7 million viewers. Those numbers topped both NBA playoff telecasts on ABC on April 21 and 22.

- MediaWeek

I don't normally care about ratings; it's not the game. But imagine an NFL or MLB series with this many sub-plots flying under the radar like this. (And don't tell me it's because it's a first-round series. Once you are in elimination mode, the round doesn't matter that much.)

But with the NBA, the combination of the late starting times, the niche appeal of the league, and the regionalization is going to make this one a treasured memory for relatively few people.

As a Sixers fan, I've never been more emotionally involved in a playoff run than the AI 2000 season, when the team scraped every knuckle through back-to-back 7-game exhaust-a-thons against the Raptors and Bucks. (And Vince? Thanks again for getting the diploma. And missing at the end of Game 7. You're aces in our book.)

Despite being on the West Coast, which meant some games happened during actual work hours, I could have had an open gunshot wound during those games and still watched. (Thankfully, my manager was a sports fan and indulged my need for flex time.)

Whereas these Mavs-Warriors games... no. (And vice versa, for any Mavs or Warriors fans reading this.)

They're completely great, you watch and get sucked in, but I'm not a fan of either team. I'm not living and dying with them.

If something important turns up, I'm missing Game 6. Maybe even Game 7. Now, compare that to the NFL.

Simply put, there's no way in hell you are missing the next Super Bowl.

Or maybe even the next 10 Super Bowls.

It could be the Bengals vs. the Cardinals in the first ever 6 seed vs. 6 seed game, where the winner will be the first team ever with a losing regular season record.

The day after the NFC and AFC conference games, both teams could have lost a half-dozen starters to rioting.

Your announcers could be Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller and Joe Thiesmann.

It wouldn't matter. We'd watch. Maybe on mute, but we’d watch. (Not sure? Did you watch the Giants-Ravens Super Bowl? Yes, you did. I'm still trying to wash the memory of that snore-fest out of my brain.)

MLB and NBA? Not so much.

And that's why, in a nutshell, there's really only one major league right now, then two also-rans.

Whether we want to admit it or not.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Item: The Golden State Warriors, who have not made the playoffs since 1994, are very close to clinching a spot.

Truly, I write today of things which must shortly come to pass;

And I beheld when the Prodigal Nellie had returned to the State of Gold, and, lo, there was a great earthquake named Biedrins; and the sun became as black as the hopes of those who rooted for either Spree or PJ,

and the moon became as dumb as the contract that Adonal doth signed

And the stars of other teams fell unto their knees, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, though to be honest, there's just not that much call for figs anymore

And the Pacific Division departed from sense and reason when it is rolled together, and the ancient Northwestern powers fell into such stupidity and disrepair that there had to be copious amounts of Paul Allen

The first angel sounded, and gave them an actual point guard, albeit one who could be injured in the stiffeth of breezes;

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and threw down hard, and spoke thusly, saying I am J-Rich, and this is what I doeth;

and the third angel shot his guns in the air like he just don't care, because, verily, this is what SJax doeth,

and the fourth angel poured out his array of ball-hogging shots, and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire, because Harrington is, verily, a Streaketh Shootereth,

and gamblers were scorched with great heat.

And the fifth angel, Montaeth, is but a babe, and knows not that this isn't going to work out for him here, but that he will wind up being Gilbert Arenas Two, Apocalytpic Boogaloo

And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake, such as not since people like Kurt Cobain and Nicole Brown Simpson trod the earth

and the East Bay rose as one voice in a sound not unliketh a group shrug of "Huh. Finally."

And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found

And then there fell upon these minor angels a great hail out of Phoenix or Dallas, every contest bitter, as this minor miracle was swepeth from thine eyes, ending an overly long and ultimately pointless exercise, be-eth the season oreth this Posteth.

The grace of this blog be with you all. Amen.