DNHQ Rooting Guide: (4) LA Clippers vs. (5) Dallas; plus open thread

I wonder if there will be free throws

See the master index at Dub Nation HQ Rooting Guide For Other Teams

LA Clippers

Ex-Warriors

• None.

Unrequited Love

• Some in Dub Nation really want LAC to lose so they will trade Paul George to GSW.

• Back in his younger days, Dub Nation pined for the ultimate 3-and-D guy P.J. Tucker.

Warriors Villains

• James Harden. We covered Harden’s case in detail before. in his election as Warriors Villain For Life. Rival and MVP obsessive, he blends supreme skill with the cheapest possible tactics, with his absurd talents getting overshadowed by dangerous hooks and constant foul-baiting and the general sense that he constantly exploits loopholes in the rulebook.
  
  But, he also lost constantly to the Warriors providing them with many of their greatest victories. He also

  • forced his way out of HOU to BRK in a very ugly fashion, virtually putting on a fat suit and partying in COVID clubs to tank his value as much as possible. And though it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving owner, it was damn disrespectful to his coach and teammates who seem to be pretty upright characters;

  • then forced his way out of BRK to PHI even though he was on the leading title favorite superteam with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving;

  • then forced his way out of PHI to LAC, turning on his former muse and biggest fan/enabler Daryl Morey.

• So, I’m not sure even a championship would restore his general reputation as a grifting team-killer.

Petty Rivalries

• Russell Westbrook. He was voted Warriors Villain, but not Villain For Life. Ah, remember the days of the media blitz to give Westbrook an MVP for his combination of talent, box score stuffing, stat padding, and in order to punish Steph Curry and Kevin Durant for teaming up? His star has fallen so far, with multiple teams trading a bunch of assets for him and then having their team crater. So I can’t even list him as a Warriors Villain any more. And frankly, he did the Warriors a huge favor by undoing that LeBron James - Anthony Davis superteam. But just for old time’s sake, here is an old writeup about Russ.

Westbrook has an incredible engine and uses his athleticism to grab rebounds and force layups and generally drive an offense. But to my knowledge, he has never complimented an opposing player except the passive-aggressive, cover-my-ass “he made tough shots”. And he definitely loves his statistics, chasing triple-doubles hard, to the point where his OKC bigs boxed out for him to allow him to get easy rebounds.

And the media exalted his 2016-17 season as a cross between a bride abandoned at the altar, a modern-day Oscar Robertson, and one man standing against the zombies with no help in sight. All this in direct opposition to Kevin Durant’s first Warriors season. And Russ played up the martyr image all the way to an MVP and many dramatic cupcake-themed grudge matches between OKC and GSW.

Russ had plenty of chirps at KD, but also threatened to revenge-injure Zaza Pachulia, and even got happy-go-lucky Nick Young enraged at him.

So there are plenty of reasons for Dub Nation to be annoyed with Russ. But I suspect the chill really began with this smug press conference with OKC up 3-2, where Russ mocks and laughs at the idea that Stephen Curry had underrated defense. Then Steph proceeded to help put the clamps on Mr. Westbrook as the Warriors completed the epic series comeback.

CGN @ClippersGotNext

Never forget that Westbrook & Durant poked fun at Stephen Curry's defense after a gutsy G5 elimination win by the Warriors to push the series back to OKC for a G6.

• Kawhi Leonard. In our polling, Kawhi didn’t register as a Warriors Villain or really anything at all. People overwhelming didn’t care, even after his role whacking the dregs of the 2019 Finals team. After the 2019 Finals, Kawhi was used by LeBron fans / media to flog Stephen Curry. He was held up as an example of a star who can really carry teams
  
  As I wrote:

Kawhi Leonard may be the greatest player to have no Stans. Everyone respects the abilities and talent. To me, the most absurd part has been his ability to steadily and majorly upgrade his capabilities each year.

Now you would think Warriors fans would have a strong opinion about him. After all he and the Spurs tortured the Warriors from 2011-2015 (yes I included the championship year). In 2015-16, Steph evolved to beyond Kawhi’s domination, but he threw a scare into everyone in the 2017 Playoffs until his injury. And of course, he helped put the Raptors over the Warriors in the 2019 Finals.

Despite all the negative things Kawhi has been party to, he never smack-talks. He gives amusingly literal responses to questions and seems to care not a little bit about the Fame lifestyle.

More importantly, he has unintentionally crippled multiple GSW-rival franchises. He kneecapped the unkillable-zombie Spurs out of nowhere and seems to have permanently torpedoed them into second-tier status. He then helped the Raptors but immediately left before anyone could really start to feel one way or the other about him. Then he forced a trade to the Clippers while apparently leading on the Lakers as long as possible to sabotage their free agency plans.

If that wasn’t enough to make you think he was a sleeper agent for Dub Nation, then he forced the Thunder to trade Paul George and triggered the demolition of Russell Westbrook’s Cupcake Commandos which then caused the hilarity of Westbrook joining James Harden, two players whose peculiar fan bases had just spent years keyboard-slaughtering the other; and also forcing the trade of Chris Paul, one of the most gifted and obnoxious players in the world, to basketball Siberia.

So… you can’t be blamed for loving, hating or not caring about the fellow. And so perhaps it is no surprise that the poll results are really really neutral.

• Eric Gordon. He played a major role in the Houston Rockets team that challenged the mid-stage Warriors Dynasty. But he seemed relatively mature next to blinding light of the grifter ball of Chris Paul and James Harden.

• Owner Steve Ballmer. Irritating, but in the end the guy does shell out the bucks for a competitive team (who can forget the awful Donald Sterling who somehow got rewarded for his awfultude with a massive payday on selling the team).

• Coach Tyrone Lue. The coach of the LeBron CLE Finals teams (except 2015), he held together a tricky mess of a Cavs team featuring LeBron’s corporate juggernaut, Kyrie Irving’s intense ultra-wandering spirit and Kevin Love’s sacrificing reputation and dignity to let the other two thrive. He also gave props to Steph Curry as the “Head of the Snake” in a time when most of the media was crediting Kevin Durant for carrying Steph and teaching him how to brush his teeth.

Team Grudges

• Once the principal rival of the up and coming Warriors, the Lob City Clippers ended up being a punching bag for years and then scattered to the winds. Kawhi tried to assemble a super team in LAC, recruiting Paul George. But will those two have the nerve to go Full LeBron on LAC and ditch them when they start to age out of contender status? Well, given Kawhi’s record, maybe that’s 100% certain.

---

Dallas Mavericks

Ex-Warriors

• Tim Hardaway Jr is the son of Warriors great… wait for it… Tim Hardaway.

Friends

• For completeness, I will list Coach Jason Kidd’s local connection to Cal basketball and growing up in Oakland.

Warriors Villains 

• None, yet.

Petty Rivalries

• Luka Doncic was hailed as the successor and supplanter of Steph and everyone else for MVP consideration. Despite eye-popping box scores, somehow his teams have never gotten over the hump to the Finals. Luka’s flopping game seems to be getting more prominent as he gets to play more important games.

• Kyrie Irving. Hit the Finals-winning shot in 2016, then

  • forced his way out of Cleveland to get away from all the LeBron-stan reporters wanting him to appreciate LeBron’s being his father figure(?!?!),

  • got more of a reputation as a team-killer by joining a strong Celtics team and dragging it down,

  • perplexed everyone with his dedication/trolling about flat-earth crackpotism,

  • conspired with KD to form a superteam with the Nets,

  • endangered the public by publicly being anti-vaccination while torpedoing the Nets season by not getting shots,

  • was so unprofessional and annoying that he triggered James Harden into blowing up the superteam,

  • and dragged down the 2023 DAL team out of the playoffs.

  
  So on balance, even though KI has been a public menace, basketball-wise, Kyrie has done huge amounts for the GSW cause by sabotaging outstanding rival teams. There is an argument about whether Kyrie, Harden of Kawhi deserves the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend prize.

• Mark Cuban has had some back and forth with Draymond and others, but it doesn’t seem specifically about the Warriors. He even said KD joining the Warriors was good for the NBA.

Team Grudges

• If anyone should have a grudge, it’s DAL. After all, GSW most recently beat DAL in the 2022 WCF.

• And before that of course, GSW We-Believed them out of the 2007 playoffs and ruined Dirk Nowitzki’s MVP season.

---