The marquee matchup in the NBA last night had the Phoenix Suns and their 18-game win streak taking on the Golden State Warriors. These have been the two best teams in the NBA this season, but I had three reasons for not watching this game.
One, it’s the NBA, the game of professional basketball has easily become the most boring sport to watch. The majority of the game is played with guys standing around the 3-point line shooting. What’s fun about watching that? It’s not like anyone is playing defense on them while they’re taking these shots either. Every now and then you get a guy going to the rim for a highlight reel type of dunk, but even when those plays happen there’s no one trying to defend that from happening. Why do I want to watch that?
Two, it’s an NBA regular season game. Even though it featured two of the best teams in the NBA the game itself didn’t mean anything because it’s very early in the regular season and by the time the playoffs come around this game will not have mattered at all. Even Lebron James has mentioned that the NBA regular season isn’t important and whatever James says goes when it comes to this league.
Three, the game started late. Even though it was on a Friday night the game had a start time of 9:00 p.m. locally for me, if it started on time. That means that there was no way it would be over before Midnight. There was no chance that I would be awake to see the end of the game. Hell, I had planned to watch at least the 1st quarter and actually fell asleep before the game even started.
As for the game itself it was pretty clear that the Warriors would snap the Suns winning streak last night and they did relatively easily winning by 22 points 118-96.
The Warriors where 18-3 coming into last night’s game; so, it’s not they were bottom feeding chumps. It was a home game for Golden State; so, they were playing at Oracle Arena. Wait it’s not the Oracle Arena anymore; it’s the Chase Center now; sorry I forgot that. I’m not sure how much being at home is an advantage, but the Warriors where 11-1 at home coming into last night’s game. There also may have been a little bit of revenge on the Warriors mind as the Suns had beaten them on their home court just a few days ago. Finally, the biggest thing that made this clear that Golden State would get a win last night is the fact that Phoenix had to go into the game without their best player, Devin Booker.
Booker exited the Suns win over the Warriors early in that game with a hamstring injury. Booker also didn’t play against the Detroit Pistons on December 2nd. The Suns were able to continue their win streak against a bad Pistons team getting a 114-103 win without Booker but facing a team like the Warriors without him is a different story.
Phoenix found a way to keep the game close for a half as they trailed by just three points 51-48, but Golden State was able to pull away in the second half. The Warriors outscored the Suns by nine points in the 3rd quarter and then put the game away by outscoring the Suns by 10 points in the 4th quarter.
The one thing I found kind of surprising was that there were just two players who scored over 20 points in this game. Steph Curry led the Warriors with 23 points and DeAndre Ayton matched him by scoring 23 points for the Suns. Golden State did have four other players score in double figure while Phoenix had three other players reach double digits in scoring.
Now if and when this is a Western conference playoff match up, I’ll be a lot more interested in this game, but a NBA regular season game with nothing on the line and the best player missing from one of the teams isn’t a draw for me.
Did you watch this game? If you did, I’d be interested to get your thoughts on it. I’d also like to know what drew you to watch this game.
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I watched some of the game but stopped viewing after the first half. Even though the score was close, I had the feeling that G.S. would pull away and score a decisive victory. And they did just that. I don’t think that Phoenix’s best player would have made much difference last night.
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