The best defense is not always more offense. Sometimes the best defense, is actually defense.
Now if you told me that the Houston Rockets lost to the Golden State Warriors by 41 points, I’d have just kind of gone ‘meh.’ Everyone gets blown out by the Golden State Warriors these days, and seldom are there any final scores that aren’t a 1-2 point nail-biter or a 20+ point blowout. The Memphis Grizzlies lost a game by 61 points earlier this year, so 41 sounds like a tight contest in comparison.
But add in the fact that this happened in the Western Conference Finals and that the Houston Rockets were the #1 seed getting throttled by the #2 Warriors, and now it’s (sort of) worth talking about how pathetic the NBA is once again.
The Rockets and Warriors aren’t just the #1 and #2 in the Western Conference, they’re pretty much the #1 and #2 teams in all of the NBA. The Boston Celtics are somehow managing to win and play well in spite of all their injuries, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are where they are because they’re always at this point every year mostly on the sheer will of LeBron James, but neither is remotely a threat to the championship.
And honestly, despite my general disdain for superteams, I do think the championship is the Warriors’ to lose, despite them being the lower seed. The Rockets are good, and James Harden is an incredible player, but the entire team’s fortune rest solely on one man, whom if he doesn’t take 50 shots a game and sink 20 of them, the team will lose, period full stop. The Warriors might not have had as many wins going into the playoffs, but it’s hard to argue that they weren’t the better team, and if it’s not Durant scoring 30, it’s Steph Curry scoring 30, and if it’s not Steph Curry, then Klay Thompson is scoring 30. Teams beat great players on a regular basis.
But still though. The Rockets didn’t land a #1 seed for nothing, so it’s pathetic to see them get blown out by 41 points in an unofficial championship playoff game. The Warriors are undoubtedly as good of a team as a superteam should be, but the Rockets were still good enough to land a #1 seed, you’d think that they’d be good enough not get humiliated to the tune of getting blasted by 41 points. But in today’s Cobra Kai NBA, where it’s solely offense and nobody knows how to play defense, it’s rarely a battle of team versus team these days, as much as it’s teams versus themselves, and whether or not they can sink shots and free throws better than the other team can.
I look forward to the day when an NBA coach comes around and decides to try this brand new revolutionary tactic called defense, and then lands a massive multi-million dollar contract for basically employing typical Pat Riley coaching strategies, and is revered as this genius of a tactician as a result. And the saddest thing is that it’s not a matter of if this ever happens, but when, because what’s old will always become new again, and eventually we’ll see some 81-75 final scores like the Knicks and Heat used to do in the 90s.
