I’m usually reticent to write down my positivity, still, because certain toxic people always love to put my stuff up as bulletin board material to trigger the outraged crowd and continue their character assassinations of me, but I’m slowly getting over that, starting to greatly reduce the bitterness (obviously there’s still some of it present — one of my media colleagues did also call Twitter a “barf faucet” recently so let me enjoy that with my negative energy before I flip it 100% to positive), and quite frankly I have found a safe haven of like-minded individuals on our gameday livestreams on our YouTube channel, so I’m not in a rush to write. I’m still figuring out how to fill in the content in between my five-hour “sermons”, though. Those are tiring, but have been worth the energy given from the light side of the Force.
Besides, I already posted this on our private Discord server so it’s just a copy/paste and it’s worth getting this out to the newsletter and Interwebs types, in case there’s any more of us/you out there that like to share positivity. After all, isn’t the joy of when the Golden State Warriors win and the fashion by which they do it — “Weaponized Joy”, as coined by Daniel Hardee — the reason why people are so passionate about the team in the first place? So then why is it so difficult to preach positivity when the going gets rough?
So, on the topic of Draymond Green, before I do the copy/paste:
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Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported on live TV yesterday that he’s hearing Green will return in 7-20 days. Draymond had said 3-4 weeks to the TNT crew during the All-Star Game broadcast.
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I wasn’t able to get confirmation of such exact timing from Draymond’s camp but I was told that he’s just “getting back in shape and getting his timing back”.
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Dray’s camp basically agrees with me on the stuff below. In due time I’ll make a YouTube video explaining the points below and then some in further detail.
From our Discord server:
Klay Thompson is coming back from 2 major surgeries and 2 full seasons away. It will take time for him to find his groove. The whole team right now is in a major funk. If we simply made free throws we would be in more of these games and playing from a better position.
Draymond alone won’t solve the teams issues. Unless he’s also the placebo pill they all mentally need to fix bad habits.
They are in the head big time for 4th quarters now.
— Measured take from Ricky Padilla, one of our Discord members, in response to another member who had “let go of the rope”
These are all valid points but imo if everyone played to their maximum ability, we would be closer to .500 than whatever percentage it is with Draymond, if Dray never came back.
Dray is really that great of a player. I said on the chat that it’s like Showtime Lakers not having Magic Johnson. What’s their record with a different point guard to lead Byron Scott, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? They might actually lose four straight. Then again maybe it’s a bad example due to the era. All you really need to do is dump it down to Kareem and you have a fighting chance. But anyways I hope this example shows the importance of Draymond especially for the transition 3 game.
So if everyone on this team played to their full capabilities (unrealistic), LeBron James or Luka Doncic still might break the first point of penetration and still find Carmelo Anthony in the corner. Can these guys rotate and close out better? Yes. But it’s marginal. And there’s just no rim protection with this roster. But you can’t do anything about the roster because all signs are pointing towards Dray and James Wiseman coming back for playoffs.
So yeah I do think Draymond has that affect on a team, and it’s not just placebo; placebo is gonna be helpful though in the first couple games back when Dray is still rusty, chemistry-wise. So it’s an actual Hall of Fame effect. Fixing bad habits might not have stopped LeBron and Luka and we’d be 2-2 last four games instead of 0-4.
This roster right now without Dray and Wise and Andre Iguodala too, is not that good. As I’ve said in the livestream, if you had Doctor Strange powers and take two weeks out of the timeline to go have training camp with just these guys, we could devise something for the stagnant offense or maybe new rotations or Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga would just be two weeks better players, but without that ability of a magical training camp, there’s not much you can do with so many NBA games coming at you right now.
/end