With NBA Championship Swagger in Abundance, Warriors Can't Be Beat
LOS ANGELES — Everyone remembers the footage of the championship trophy being passed around.
The champagne showers and parade parties linger as matchless moments of celebratory release.
But if you really seek to be inspired, if you truly want to see the people at their best and understand how powerful it is to succeed and have it change your life, try to watch every single moment of every single game from the defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors you can right now.
The Warriors' undefeated record—now only victories over the Bulls, Nuggets and Lakers away from being the first 16-0 start in league history—is the byproduct of their awesome confidence, which arose from their breakthrough last season.
It's beyond confidence, really. It's certainty. That's how deeply this group that has come back almost intact believes in itself.
It's a confidence that we should all aspire to in our jobs, hobbies or even just our personal interactions. It does exist inside each of us.
Unfortunately—especially for the still-quivering-at-crunch-time, never-before-crowned Los Angeles Clippers—it can take momentous success to tap into our reservoirs and free that confidence to puff out our chests, lift up our chins and enrich all walks of our lives.
The Warriors rallied from 23 points down—including a 10-point deficit with five minutes to play—and simply took a 124-117 win from the Clippers on Thursday night at Staples Center.
The Warriors walked right up, boldly and surely, ready to make eye contact with everyone in their path and especially lock in on a rim they weren't afraid to miss, and they just took what they knew they could get.
"We just had confidence down the stretch and maturity that we relied on," Stephen Curry said, "starting from last year and continuing into this year."
If the Warriors' sinking eight of their final nine three-point attempts wasn't proof enough, here's a more colorful demonstration of their confidence:
Trailing 112-110 with 3:17 left, the Warriors came out of their timeout huddle to find referee Ron Garretson was still reviewing a play on the midcourt monitor at the scorer's table. Arena security personnel stand post to keep the teams away from the monitor area, and one big-bellied security guard in a black jacket and red tie was assigned to the Warriors' side.
The guy had pretty quick feet, which he used to stick that belly in the path first of Draymond Green and then Klay Thompson as they moved toward the center of the scorer's table. Thompson wanted to get the bottle of rosin powder that was over there, so he just frowned at the frantic defense of the security guy and bumped the side of that belly as many times as necessary to get over to reach that powder for his hands.
The Warriors felt so comfortable—despite still losing, despite being on the road—that they were soon all crowding the poor security guard. Finally, the diminutive female security guard on the other side—the Clippers were all dutifully standing out by the three-point arc—had to hustle over to offer double-team help against the Warriors.
Security waved and waved to show the Warriors they weren't supposed to be looking at Garretson's monitor. Curry's eyes never left the screen.
The Warriors have made the rough road of repeating look easy so far through their collective power.
Head coach Steve Kerr and assistant Luke Walton, both with direct experience as players on how challenging it is for a team to survive the noisy distractions and swelling egos as it attempts to repeat, keep putting those prepared speeches on hold. Their guys remain wonderfully confident instead of willfully complacent.
"They believe in themselves and believe in what we are doing," said Walton, filling in as head coach while Kerr deals with complications from back surgery. "There was never any panic on our bench."
Curry isn't naive. The NBA MVP seems like a superhero these days, but he used to be an undersized, injury-prone guy who played on fragmented, unsteady Golden State teams that went 85-145 his first three years in the league.
He can put himself in the shoes of the everyman who isn't so confident.
He can recall what it feels like to get blown out of a game early. But…
"We never feel like we're out of it," he said after stunning the Clippers.
He knows what human nature dictates to your breathing and posture if you push really hard to fix mistakes and gain ground only to mess it up again. Except…
"We got within one, but then they went up by 10. You feel like you'll get deflated at that point," he said. "But we didn't."
Like Curry, Clippers coach Doc Rivers hasn't forgotten his past. Knee-deep in confidence crises with these oft-collapsing Clippers, Rivers can draw upon the 2008 NBA title as coach of the Boston Celtics. It changed his life—particularly the year after.
"Once you win a title," Rivers said, "you own confidence for 82 games and the playoffs."
What can slip is execution if you don't tend to the details, and even the Warriors appear susceptible to that, which resulted in a first quarter Thursday night that saw the Clippers go up by 16. What won't waver is Golden State's confidence, though, and that alone is inspirational.
Look around and you'll see it everywhere—advertising, religion, definitely during this presidential campaign: Certainty, even without firm basis, is attractive and powerful.
In combination with true skill and even truer teamwork, certainty is invincible.
Just like the Warriors so far this season.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
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