Golden State Warriors: A Team Of No Excuses

The Golden State Warriors, in winning their first championship and gunning for their second, have become a team where no excuses are accepted.

More from Golden State Warriors

When you’re a team like the Golden State Warriors, you don’t have time for excuses — just like Jesse Ventura didn’t have time to bleed in the movie, Predator. Excuses are not part of a championship teams vocabulary. And the Warriors are fully aware that when you carry the title of “NBA Champions,” excuses are out the door and the “next man up” philosophy is what you live by.

Others teams are afforded the luxury of making excuses. They were missing a key player in their rotation, or their “resting” a star player. These are the different excuses you may hear given to a particular team, on a particular night, after an unexpected loss. Now, of course, when a star player or key rotational player is unavailable, it’s easy to let your guard down as a team and give yourself a built-in excuse, for coming up short on a given night. But that is not the mentality of a champion.

A championship team isn’t built with one or two stars carrying the load. A championship team is built out of 12 individuals who help carry the weight of winning evenly. And when one man goes down, the next man steps up and that weight is just passed on — it’s never dropped. The more daunting the challenge may appear, the more focused and determined a team like the Warriors get.

The Warriors were coming off a humiliating loss up north against a young-dynamic Portland Trailblazers team, whose star player, Damien Lillard, was determined to show the rest of the NBA world what idiots they were, for leaving him off the Western Conference All-Star team. The Trailblazers used Golden State’s sloppy play to help ignite their high-speed offense and run the Warriors out of the Moda Center.

More from Golden Gate Sports

Not only did the Warriors leave Oregon with a bruised psyche, they took some physical hits as well. Andrew Bogut left the game early with a strained right Achilles, which caused him to be unavailable when they squared off against those hated Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers were waiting in Staples Center, just salivating at the chance to get some revenge against the Warriors, after blowing two late game double-digit leads and losing to them earlier in the season.

So the Warriors entered this heated match-up without two of their enforcers down low. Andrew Bogut would join Festus Ezeli on the injury report, leaving the Warriors without about 14 feet of rim protection and inside muscle.

Now other teams led by lesser minds might have panicked, but these are the Warriors so panicking is not an option. Not when you have a Swiss-Army Knife named Draymond Green, who stares down 7- footers, then runs through them, while screaming to everyone what he just did and how he’s going to continue to do it!

While most coaches would panic at the thought of trying to guard a seven-foot jumping bean like DeAndre Jordan, with a 6’6 undersized power-forward. Steve Kerr though, knows Green lives for games like those, and didn’t hesitate going small and forcing the Clippers to adjust to their style.

The Warriors led by Thompson and Green forced the Clippers into a track meet — a style of play that they weren’t prepared for. Green consistently used his speed and high basketball I.Q, to torch Jordan with back-cuts and quick blow-byes. That allowed him to continually make plays for his teammates and achieve his 11th triple-double of the season.

Next: Golden State Warriors: Previewing the Final

This may have seemed like a massive achievement for most teams, but for the Warriors it’s just what they do. Don’t have your top-two centers? No problem. Just thrown in an undersized power-forward to protect the paint, and guard the most athletic big-man in the NBA. So what if your “Mr. World” point guard Stephen Curry has an off game, his Splash-Brother in crime, Klay Thompson, just fills in the gap and smoothly gets 32 points, while Harrison Barnes quietly gets 18 points himself.

See? This is what the Golden State Warriors do, they turn what is supposed to be a difficult situation into just another road victory over a hated rival, primarily because they are the definition of “team.”

Home/Golden State Warriors