The Golden State Warriors felt the Milwaukee Bucks — the only team to beat them this season — didn’t win with class at home on the night of Dec. 12.
Less than a week later, in a return engagement staged in Oakland, this is how the Warriors responded to their victory over the Bucks in the most improbably newsworthy two-game series of the young season:
Draymond Green, Mayo have a little talk after the game, slight shove by Green. pic.twitter.com/9WYSEWocOg
— ✶ Ⓜ️𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕦𝕤 ▶️ ✶ (@_MarcusD_) December 19, 2015
This time, the Bucks and — of all people — O.J. MAYO (YES!) lectured the Warriors about winning with class:
Bucks' OJ Mayo told Yahoo he approached Warriors' Draymond Green about his quote on @knbr about his teammate. pic.twitter.com/sOyhHGshyV
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) December 19, 2015
Where to begin?
Let’s start with the simple reality that when we arrive at Christmas Day — for many casuals, the start of the NBA season and the moment when pro basketball begins to register in their consciousness — the biggest story other than the Golden State Warriors having only one loss (barring an unexpected stumble against Utah in the coming days) will be that the Milwaukee Bucks flustered, unnerved, and basically equaled the otherwise-untouchable Warriors.
When the Bucks beat the Warriors on Dec. 12, everyone could understand why. The Dubs were dead tired at the end of a road trip — a night after a double-overtime game in a different time zone — with a rusty Klay Thompson coming off an injury.
This reunion in Oracle Arena was different. The Warriors played just one game over the following five days. They had a day off before this Friday encounter. The Bucks, instead of gaining momentum and form as a result of their win over Golden State, lost their next two games… and that’s not even the whole of it.
Milwaukee had two full days off, and then STUNK against the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday. The Bucks didn’t lose a one-point game on an off-balance Nick Young runner at the horn; they lost by 18 points. The next night, still in Los Angeles (on the back end of what is the gentlest back-to-back in the league, given the complete absence of travel), the Bucks had nothing again, losing by 13 to the Clippers.
Milwaukee played two games over the past five days before its visit to Oakland. Those two games did occur in the context of a back-to-back, but they were played in one city, and the Bucks had ample rest before the back-to-back began. Milwaukee got whacked by a combined total of 31 points.
Any notions of beating the Warriors leading to an internal transformation for the Bucks — written about on this site — were complete bunk. Milwaukee wasn’t just a bad 10-17 team heading into Oakland on Friday; it was a bad team playing poorly, not with a renewed outlook on NBA life.
This — THIS — was the team which led the Warriors by 11 points a few minutes into the fourth quarter before a desperate Golden State rally carried the home team to a narrow and hard-fought win. This is the Milwaukee team which nearly swept the Dubs this season, on a night when Michael Carter-Williams largely outplayed Stephen Curry, and the Bucks’ length challenged the Warriors’ small-ball game on a consistent basis.
That’s where we begin.
Where do we continue this most improbable story (even though the Warriors didn’t lose a second time to the Bucks, which would have been a million times more remarkable)?
With all the talk in the press over the past week, followed by the particularly contentious nature of this game and its immediate aftermath.
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What possessed the Warriors to react with such open displeasure for the way Milwaukee celebrated its win? What made a team steamrolling toward NBA history take its focus off the prize, and get so mentally detoured? Just what was it which made this embodiment of such pronounced excellence — this team displaying uncommon poise in the process of chasing all-time greatness under a young interim head coach — look so petty and sophomoric?
How did the Milwaukee Bucks rent out space in the Warriors’ heads?
Remember, these weren’t the Bucks who overachieved last season in the East and led some people to think they were the team of the future in the conference; these were the 10-17 Bucks, one of the NBA’s more prominent disappointments this season. THEY got inside the Warriors’ craniums? THEY flustered Golden State and got up for the Warriors twice this season, all while no-showing against the likes of the Lakers and many other teams?
The Bucks, the Warriors, and head space have complicated relationship. How does one come to grips with the head space the Warriors ceded, and which Milwaukee seems to occupy only when it plays the NBA champions… and not against anyone else?
What a misuse of the Warriors’ competititve energies — if Gregg Popovich knows how to push a button or three in late May, one can easily envision a scenario in which the San Antonio Spurs can get under the Warriors’ skin with their defense and size.
Yet, more than that, what a failure this is on the part of the Milwaukee Bucks to compete at a high level on a regular basis. A team which can bother Golden State — home and away, when off the radar and then when very much a target for the Dubs — should not be 10-18. It shouldn’t be 13-15. It should at least be 16-12 if not 18-10.
Want to know the mysteries of the human mind? The Bucks and the Warriors — in their unexpected 2015 NBA grievance festival — offer powerfully representative case studies.
Whoever could have imagined those sentences would actually apply to this NBA season, before even arriving at Christmas Day?
