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Super Teams Don't Care About The Regular Season

The Warriors and Cavaliers are not performing to everyone's expectations, and naturally, everyone is overreacting.

By Stone StrankmanPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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The Cavs and Warriors are not atop their respective conferences (or non-respective in the East's situation), and it is making people crazy. After three straight years of a Cavs and Warriors Finals, people expect to see it again this season.

I will admit going into this season, I expected to see the Cavs in a top-three situation in the East, and a number one spot from Golden State throughout the season. We have learned Cleveland is, in fact, bad, LeBron is still great, and the Warriors just do not care about the regular season.

Cleveland

The Cavs, as of November 3, are sitting in 13th place in the Eastern Conference. The Orlando Magic are resting on the top spot in the East, tied with the Boston Celtics. (The ORLANDO MAGIC, WHO EVERYONE THOUGHT WOULD BE A BOTTOM-FIVE TEAM IN THE LEAGUE, IS CURRENTLY THE BEST TEAM IN THE EAST.) No one saw that coming, not even in the first eight games. This summer, if I were to tell you eight games into the season that the Knicks, Magic, Pistons, and Nets would be ahead of the Cavs, no one would believe me.

LeBron is "carrying" Cleveland right now with 25 points, seven rebounds and nine assists per game, while shooting almost 60 percent from the field. Those are pretty insane and almost triple-double-ish.

While Isaiah Thomas is still recovering from his hip injury, the Cavs are faltering, but do they care? We are only eight games into the season, and LeBron has shown before that he can single-handedly drag teams to the playoffs, let alone the Finals.

LeBron will do something LeBron always does when this happens to his teams. He will say something in a press conference about how the team as a whole needs to try harder to win games, including himself. The King will say something on his Instagram story about how he cannot have any wine with Dwyane Wade until the Cavs rip off a 10-game win streak. He will do petty things to shame other players on his team into trying harder or being better players than they actually are. Look at Jeff Green; he is really not that good, but LeBron has a superpower, and it is making bad players actually look good at the sport of basketball. The Cavs will recover throughout this season and will still be a top-four team in the East, but it could take some time to see that team come alive.

Golden State

Meanwhile, in the Bay area, the Warriors are sitting in third place in the mighty, mighty West. They are also only nine games into the season as of November 3, but there is much less worry for Golden State being bad throughout the season, rather than Cleveland.

Players for the Warriors are not currently playing at their best, and it could be the championship hangover. Kevin Durant got his first ring this summer, while Stephen Curry got his big bag, and Klay Thompson kept trying to dunk in China. The Warriors just do not care enough to put up a 73-9 record again because, by the time they got to the Finals that year, they were gassed. The Warriors are not broken; they are just a little lackadaisical right now.

Having super teams in the NBA is not a bad thing because without super teams, the craziest offseason ever would not have happened. All the moves that happened this summer were made in order to compete with super teams, and now we are spoiled with a ton of them.

The two best super teams are just trying to sandbag it right now. Start slow, freak everyone out, start coming back toward the end, and finish right where we all figured they would be this offseason. No need to freak out about the Warriors this season. The Cavs, on the other hand, have a lot of kinks to figure out, and it might be time to start rubbing the panic button in Cleveland.

basketball
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About the Creator

Stone Strankman

I'm in a committed relationship with the NBA. Staff Writer, The Unbalanced.

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