Dub Nation Speaks

• Klon on May 29

  I'd prefer Utah, but only because they have a better chance of going further and my Anyone but LA/LeBron/L...Harden approach needs it. I got nothing but love for the Grit'n'Grind teams, beating them was a highly underrated step on becoming the team we'd become. I'd go so far as to say had we not faced and conquered them, the dynasty would've never happened.

• Freddie on May 29

  I pick Utah. I picked Utah even against The Jordan Bulls.

• Goofus on May 30

  Was already going to root for the Mavs, but the Clippers tanking out of that other bracket was utter bullshit and they deserve to lose based on karma alone.

  Oh, and I’m really not interested in Kawhi. As an SDSU alum, I want to like him, but he just kind of leaves a path of destruction. Our entire team is home grown except for Wiggins, and he seems like such a part of things.

Utah Jazz 

Ex-Warriors

• None that I noticed.

Friends

• Donovan Mitchell and Eric Paschall have been close friends since childhood. 

Warriors Villains 

• I don’t think there are any?

Petty Rivalries

• Rudy Gobert will likely beat out Draymond Green as Defensive Player of the Year this year. And he did almost infect all those reporters with COVID with the mic touching. And The French Rejection did face off against the Warriors in the 2017 Playoffs, but even though the series was closer than the score, the Jazz never truly threatened. Also Steph did this to him:

• So I don’t know if Dub Nation really has any particular bad feelings about The Stifle Tower. 

• Mike Conley was a key player in the Grit and Grind Memphis Grizzlies that faced GSW in the 2015 title run. But Mike seems like an upright, hard working, talented player. It’s not his fault that trolls use his face injury to de-legitimize Steph Curry and the entire 2015 championship.

Team Grudges and Stories

• The Utah Jazz did end up thwarting the We Believe Warriors with some too extra drama involving Derek Fisher and other hype. But after all the years, it did give us the series’s most memorable moment:

• Despite MEM getting bounced by UTA, the father of Grizzlies guard Ja Morant is rooting for the Jazz, because of the supportive way the players responded to the racist fans incidents.

LA Clippers

Ex-Warriors

• DeMarcus Cousins. Honorary Warrior, but not quite Honorary Warrior For Life in the last election.

Warriors Villains (and Friends)

• Patrick Beverley. Brash, chirpy, hard-nosed defender who has had lots of moments on-court mocking the Warriors and, well, everyone else. He irritated the Warriors in the playoffs both as a Rocket (through 2017) and the Clippers. Even villains can have a soft side, as he is also a good friend of Stephen Curry.

Petty Rivalries

• 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.

• Serge Ibaka. We just keep on running into this guy. A strong defender with a good jumper, he’s been a tough matchup for years, starting from the Durant-Westbrook-Harden OKC to the 2019 Raptors.

• 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.

• Patrick Patterson. Some minor snitching on Steph.

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.

• Goofus reminds me that LAC blatantly tanked the end of the season to avoid matching up with the Lakers, so it would definitely be funny as hell if they lost in the first round.

… so, who are you rooting for?

Yeah, give me the tolerable Jazz over distantly second favorite team in LA Super Team Jr.

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