In Soviet Russia, the ball shoots you

The Warriors are Twilight Zone NBA. They succeed by not playing basketball. That is, they don't play basketball as it's "meant to be" by Those in the Know. The Right-Wayers have no place here. Teams are defeated not by box-outs or carefully-run screens; instead, they sacrifice themselves on the altar of Playground Basketball. They willingly allow their hearts to be taken beating from their chests because they deep down love the game as it should be, winners stay, shirts vs. skins. It's less the Warriors imposing their will on the other team and more that the other team can't help themselves from being seduced and becoming the National Guardsman tripping on LSD, heading down to the river to skinny-dip while the Weathermen loot in the background. It makes sense then that the team that ended the dream last year was Jerry Sloan's team of robo-players. It was either going to be them or the similar androids that make up the Spurs that would finally put an end to this, ending like most rebellions do, a splinter group, broken off from the ideological runners of the Suns, defeating The Best only to fall when presented with a foe that would not give in to their hedonistic orgy of threes and bops. Few Warriors fans would say that fate could be any different for this year. For one, the Dubs might not even make the playoffs, a travesty that has caused Bop City to proclaim, on an estimated average of 3.5 times per day that alternately, either that the league should reseed across conferences to prevent the hideousness of the lower seeds in the East desecrating the concept of a meritocracy or alternately that Stern already has such a reseeding in place, waiting only for the moment to grasp media ascendancy for the NBA, only biding his time until the moment is right. Of course, we all know that the iron fist of Rules and Regulations will remain supreme over any sort of Common Sense. The Management is The Management for a good reason and this is because they see this sort of thing as important. To finish, this season should prove, to any knowledgeable fan at least, that the heart and soul of the Warriors is Stephen Jackson. Aside from the straight-up evidence (horrible start, the Messiah returns, vengeance is wreaked, etc.), he is at one the physical and mental personification of the team and its philosophies. It makes far too much sense in a smoking-too-much-pot kind of way that it took S-Jax coming to Oakland basketball for them to redeem each other.