0 comments by John Cannon on 7/6/2016
There will be plenty of time for Golden State Warriors fans to anticipate the future made possible by Kevin Durant’s announcement on the 4th of July, but let’s take a moment to acknowledge that this is not solely a continuation of what the Warriors have built to this point. It’s a new beginning, and also […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/20/2016
Much has already been said and written about the 2016 NBA Finals, so it’s not easy to find ground not already staked out, but let’s try to do that here. Nobody choked. Nobody shrank from the moment. Nobody left anything in the tank. The way our sports society is wired these days (which, as always is a reflection […]
0 comments by John Cannon
This is a column I’ve dreaded having to write for this whole season, especially since the Golden State Warriors went down 3-1 to the Oklahoma City Thunder. In case you’re just putting yourself together this Monday morning or you’re reading this in the year 2056, the Warriors just became the first team in NBA history […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/18/2016
It took me a while to figure out when I’d had that feeling before. As I watched the Golden State Warriors stumble through the first quarter of Game 6 of the NBA Finals, it finally hit me: Game 7 of the 2002 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the (then-) Anaheim Angels. I’ll get to the baseball parallel, but first, the Warriors seem […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/14/2016
The key moment in Game 5 of the NBA Finals wasn’t even in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. It was the altercation between Draymond Green and LeBron James with 2:47 to go in Game 4. Neither team will admit this, but Draymond Green’s absence was without question the difference in Monday night’s game. With […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/13/2016
Game 4 of the NBA Finals spent 45 minutes sucking all of the suspense and intrigue out of the series, but the last three wound up making a huge difference. Draymond Green will not play Game 5 for the Golden State Warriors, while serving a one-game suspension. If you’re reading this column, you know why, […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/11/2016
The Golden State Warriors play good defense, they shoot 3-pointers at a historic clip, and they have possibly the best bench in the history of basketball. All of those things were reasons for them winning 67 games last year and 73 this year, which is pretty impressive. But when the story of this team is […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/9/2016
ESPN Analyst Amin Elhassan, who worked with both Cavaliers’ GM David Griffin and Warriors head coach Steve Kerr when they were all with the Phoenix Suns, has a unique perspective on this NBA Finals matchup. We talk extensively about the Game 3, the series, the Oklahoma City series, and what’s going on with Steph Curry. […]
0 comments by John Cannon
Most sports fans are non-players. Very few people who write articles like this actually played the sports they write about at a level above high school, and there are many (like me) who never played it above recreational ball with friends. It’s easy for us to lose sight of how important emotion is in the […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/7/2016
Cleveland, this isn’t about you. You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. To be a Cleveland sports fan is to know the depths of great disappointment, and many Cavaliers fans are disappointed after Sunday’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals. This is simultaneously the only honest reaction to the start of the series, […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/3/2016
The general narrative following Game 1 of the NBA Finals was that if the Golden State Warriors could beat the Cleveland Cavaliers by 15 with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson scoring only 20 points combined, the Cavs stand no chance in this series. I disagree. Well, sort of. I completely agree that the Cavs have […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 6/2/2016
This is going to be a (relatively) short post, so no need to get too comfortable. I’m really surprised by how many really smart basketball people are expecting the Warriors to take six or even seven games to win the 2016 NBA Finals. I’ll take a few guesses at the reasoning behind that in a […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 5/31/2016
The Golden State Warriors are back. I don’t mean back in the NBA Finals, although that is also true. I mean back on the planet. They had obviously been abducted, along with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and replaced with lookalike human forms that aliens thought would pass satisfactorily while they conducted experiments on the real players. For three […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 5/30/2016
I have been saying for a week that being down 3-1 in a seven-game series, while not a position to be desired, is not fatal to a very good basketball team. If that team is the defending NBA champion, there’s even less cause for panic. To support that position, I merely had to recount my […]
0 comments by John Cannon on 5/29/2016
Being a high school saxophone player in the Bay Area, I pretty much grew up with Tower of Power. One of the group’s more memorable album covers, shown in the cover image above, is also the immediate headline after Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals: BACK TO OAKLAND. I’m not going to pretend I […]
