Phoenix Suns

Ex-Warriors

• None.

Friends

• PHX mis-developed Marquess Chriss and let him go to GSW, so that was very helpful. (GSW also tried to re-habilitate mis-developed PHX draft picks Dragan Bender and Andrew Harrison, but with less success.)

Warriors Villains

• Chris Paul. We covered the feud between Chris Paul and the Warriors, Dub Nation and most people in extremely vivid detail previously. In short, King Obnoxious with the Lob City Clippers, then Knight Obnoxious in the court of James Harden’s Rockets, he’s just continually getting in the way of the Warriors. He also brought out the best of the Warriors and Steph in particular. From the feud story:

  What does Steph in Maximum Tryhard Mode look like? Between the Game 7 loss in May 2014 and January 6 2018, the Warriors went 13-1 against LAC, dropping only the traditional Warriors dud in Los Angeles on Christmas Day 2014.

  Many of Stephen Curry’s most famous highlights came in that stretch against Chris Paul’s team.

  
  He was elected Warriors Villain For Life, but unfortunately he was not able to dethrone James Harden as the most despised player in Dub Nation. Most recently, CP3’s 2021 MVP campaign irritated a lot of commenters here.

Petty Rivalries

• Cameron Payne was a role player for the KD OKC team that almost took out GSW in 2016.

Team Grudges

• Well, PHX has been horrible since the 2010 last gasp of the Seven Seconds Or Less Suns. When you’re horrible, you get a zillion high draft picks and now they’ve drafted themselves into being a promising team. It also means there’s no way to develop a team rivalry since PHX has been irrelevant for so long.

L.A. Lakers

Ex-Warriors

• Alfonzo McKinnie. Elected an Honorary Warrior, though not For Life.

Friends

• None.

Warriors Villains

• LeBron James. LeBron pioneered the age of players assembling as mercenary super squads at resource-rich franchises and then leaving when they’ve strip-mined everything for maximum short-term gain.

  LeBron combines all-time genius level play and athleticism (explosiveness plus invulnerability) with petty crap. One sequence that sums it up: His 2018 Finals Game 1 regulation performance was one of the best games I’ve ever seen; he then follows that with a mental meltdown after J.R. Smith’s meltdown; then smashes a whiteboard in the locker room after and breaks his hand and ruins any chance of an upset; then shows up to the post-Finals press conference in a “oh you mean this?” hand cast so that people would ask him the story.

• Anthony Davis. AD pioneered the age of players having multiple years left on their contract forcing themselves off the team via PR tricks, sudden injury issues and generally abandoning their team and contract.
  
  AD forced a trade to the Lakers by sieging the Pelicans well before his contract expired to team up with LeBron, though NOP took an amusingly long time to call his bluff. He recently won no fans in Dub Nation when the heavy favorite Lakers got a ref-colored win in the Play-In and he followed it with giddy trash talk.

  

  Bleacher Report @BleacherReport

  Jae Crowder. Ouch 😬

  

  2:10 AM ∙ May 26, 2021

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  6,773Likes764Retweets

Petty Rivalries

• Kyle Kuzma. Outraged Dub Nation and many others with his Tweet on Klay’s injury: “This was karma from the spurs series when kawhi got hurt vs the warriors. Sucks to say.”

  

  Warriors on NBCS @NBCSWarriors

  The Warriors' bench after the air ball 💀 💀 💀

  

  3:35 AM ∙ Mar 16, 2021

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  7,479Likes755Retweets

• Montrezl Harrell. Part of playoff battles vs GSW with Harden’s annoying Rockets team (2015-2017) and then the annoying Clippers (2017-2019).

• Marc Gasol. Wish we had this guy, but he chased a surer ring in LAL and rode the bench for his trouble. He was part of the Grit and Grind Grizzlies that nearly took out the 2015 Warriors, part of the 2019 Raptors that took out the remains of the Dynasty Warriors, and part of the 2021 LAL team that won the 2021 Play-In.

Team Grudges

• Most of Dub Nation wished ill on the Lakers franchise before LeBron and AD showed up to strip-mine. Now that they’re together, it is a recipe for Dub Nation disgust. That doesn’t even bring in the recent ref-fueled Play-In loss.

… so, who are you rooting for?

Lakers + strip-mining mercenary squad = LET’S GO PHOENIX CLAP CLAP clap clap CLAP

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