Losing is like a Rose...vs ATL

Well you can thank Peggle and PackRat for this one being so late. Not like there was a whole lot to say about the game itself anyway. We lost to Hotlanta's Hawk's. Looking at the Hawk's record it should of been a win. But if you look at their players you notice a good number of them are decent names in Fantasy hoops. Anyway this game was a let down for me I really expected it to be more exciting and for the Dubs to win. What can you except with Captin Jack and the Latvian Lurch out? Thats two starters short and with Webber on the court we need all the help we can get. Despite the bitterness over the loss I did have a good time. Some old friends picked up tickets and joined us. After the game we hit one of my friends favorite spots in Oakland the Mexicali Rose. It was my first time eating there and I would highley recommend it. It was packed since it was a Friday night. It is seat yourself though so we bum rushed a booth and service was quick. The food was excellent but molten lava hot. I still have burns on the top of my mouth to show for that night. That is my fault though I had a few beers in me and did not head the warning of everyone at my table. At the end of the night the game was like a Thistle and the Mexicali joint was a Rose.

/Remind me to never ever work a metaphor into a sports blog post again.

When Irish Eye's are Crying...vs BOS

Wow what can I say about this game. This was one of the best Basketball games I have been to in my life. I won't say it was better then the playoff game I went to last year but it was damn close. It was not a Nationally televised game but still a lot of eyes were on the outcome of this game. After all the Boston Celtics are the best team in Basketball right now. Not to mention they had KG, Allen and Pierce all suited and starting. We however were short one Captain Jack due to an injury from the night before in Utah. No doubt about it this was to be a hard fought victory if we could even pull it off. The first two minutes had been horrible it looked like we were going to be skunked. By the half though it was a close game again and damn exciting. Baron shook off the slump he has been in lately and looked like himself at the season start. Monta was just amazing from his speed to his no fear attitude and never give up on he play work ethic. Pietrus got the start in place of Captain Jack and I seriously thought it was due to us wanting to trade him. He has been seeing so much play time latley my only rational for it was we had been shopping him. But the trade deadline has came and gone so it either didn't work out or Nelly honestly wants to increase his role. I think he was shopping him personally.



Anyway back to this record breaking game. Yes thats right we broke the attendance record for a game in California yet again. It seems like this is the third or fourth game I have been to that we set an attendance record at. I have no clue where and how they are fitting more people in. In the standing room section you could see it was packed. The place was insane just jam packed with fans. Surprisingly a lot of Celtic fans as well. I am sure a lot of them have been die hards for years now. But I also bet with the recent good fortune of Bostons Baseball and Football teams you got a lot of Bandwagon Bostonian wanna be's. To each his own though. This is Dub country and there ain't no Country for old Celts round here. Anyway the yelling back and forth was passionate among the fans as it was a nail biter all the way down to the end. In the end Baron "Boom Dizzle" Davis ended up winning it for us right at the buzzer. With .3 seconds left he put up a 20 foot jumper to break the deadlock and send us fans home with a smile. Not much more to say other then "WOW I love this game".

Run N Gun....vs PHX

This was a great game plain and simple. But what a difference in attendance from Mondays against the Wizards to this one. On Monday night my wife and I moved up like 10 rows cause no one was there. Then on Wednesday I needed to kick people out of my seat. It was not just the Shaq hype either as any basketball fan knows. Both Phoenix and Golden State are easily top 5 most fun to watch teams in the NBA. I would even say they are top 2 respectively but I am biased. In my heart I was hoping to see Shaq suited up. He did not play though but was with his team. Shaq had talked a lot to Jackson, Baron and even Brandon Wright. Speaking of not suiting up I was a little happy to see Webber was not suited up. Don't get me wrong I am really optimistic. I really hope he ends up working out. But in the last 3 home games his play was sluggish and he was missing easy layups. I think he has had a mental effect on others to. I am sure though as they practice and get to know each other better things will start grooving. They better because I got my playoff packet in the mail today.



Anyway this was a hard fought close game. We held the lead for a majority of the minutes but it was anyone's game. ESPN was in the house for this one. It's nice to see the Dub's get more and more National Television time. One thing is for sure the West houses some of the most exciting and best teams in the NBA. Well time to take a break and watch the All Star weekend. Yea they snubbed Boom Dizzle but I cannot hate on All Star weekend. I am looking forward to Moon winning the Dunk contest. After the break starts the run lets go Warriors! PLAYOFFS!

Ellis gets retired.. vs WAS

What a strange turn of events this night turned out to be. Let me start with how I ended up at this game in the first place. It was Monday and I had a busy day at work. By the time Noon rolled around I pretty much figured I needed a night off. It was the Wizards without Agent 0 or Butler also. I figured this was an easy win and didn't want to see those god awful Gold Wizards Jerseys anyway. Talked with my buddy and he agreed lets pass and watch it on TV. So I put our tickets up for sale on the Warriors ticket exchange. The way it works is if they do not sell before 2 hours till the game then they expire and are still valid. So 5:30pm rolls around and I get an email saying they did not sell. I am home now and feeling a lot less lethargic now. Looking at the ticket I notice this is game 25. That made me start thinking back to what games I had missed so far. Out of the 25 games well 27 if you count pre season I had missed 3 so far. Why extend it to 4 I thought. I then call up my friend and he still did not feel like going. My wife ended up joining me and Grammy and Pop Pop got stuck with babysitting duty again. We figured since I did not originally plan on going anyway that we could leave early and give the grandparents a break without feeling like we wasted the tickets.



So we make our way to the game and it's pretty dead. Lot's of open seats everywhere in good old club 200. We decide to upgrade our seats and plop down as close as we can get. Everything is going good the Wizards dont have the ugly jerseys on. Everyone is reminiscing on the old Jamison days. In first few minutes of the game though you start to notice a trend. Every single shot the Wizards put up is going in and damn near the exact opposite is happening to us. Compound that with the fact the refs seem to think every move we make is a foul and the Wizards are really Angels. It was insanely lopsided in the calls seriously. I am not talking with foolish pride here either. Anyway I started to put two and two together. The last time we played this shitty was against Chicago. Then I was wearing my Ellis jersey. I normally wear a Jackson or Davis jersey and the Jackson jersey has never seen a loss. At the Chicago game I told my friend I notice when I wear the Ellis they always lose. Anyway so halftime comes we are down by 23 and my wife starts talking about leaving. In my mind I am thinking "This Jersey has to leave the building in order for the dubs to win". So I agree and head on out. We listen to the game on the way home and we start to make some strides. By the time I arrived on my couch and turned the game on we were only down by 4 points. I then took off my Ellis Jersey and sat down. What came next was clutch of all clutchness Jackson set a new points record for himself and got us a hard won win. I know it's crazy and probably meaningless. But the Ellis Jersey is being retired from games and the Jackson is not getting washed till playoffs!

We from Tuff Town vs SAC

It was a Saturday game against a West Coast rival the Sacramento Kings. The Kings finally had all their starters healthy again too so this was not going to be easy. It was also an interesting dynamic in the audience as well. Sacramento is about an hour and some change from Oakland so we always get lots of Kings fans showing up. Webber of course being a franchise star to them he had fans on both sides cheering for him. Speaking of Webber 2nd start now and still not seeing much. I am not going to make my mind up just yet. I like seeing more tools on the team. But some of the tools we already have IE Wright and POB should be getting developed. This is another debate back to the game at hand. It was close at times to close. We kept letting them get back in and even over take us at times. It was exciting sure but I hate when we just slide by. My heart cant take a whole season of this especially with all the Hyphy juice I drank at the beginning of the season.



It came down to a big shot from Monta on an inbound pass. That set the buffer we needed to insure the win. Speaking of Monta I thought he was from Jackson, MS. Talking with another fan I come to find out he is really from Tuff Town. Apparently Stephan Jackson is also from Tuff Town. In fact the entire Warrior team is really from Tuff Town. The Kings found out the hard way where the Warriors come from. That's right fellas we are from Tuff Town now have a great ride back to Sacramento.

StillMatic? vs CHI

The night much like the game itself I had good expectations for but it just didn't happen the way I hoped. I was originally planning to leave early so we could grab a little Popeye's before the game and still be there in time for the announcement of the starters. One thing lead to another though and I was running late. We still stopped at Popeye's knowing we would be rushed eating. Long story short I highly recommend not throwing back Chicken, Jalapeño Peppers and a Strawberry soda and then sprinting across the overpass from BART. I however was willing to put my body on the line to get you the exclusive video of Webber's return. With stomach ache and all I quickly made my way to my seat in time to catch the last thirty seconds of warm ups "Mission Complete". On arrival it was plain to see the same curiosity was on everyone's minds. The other season ticket holders that I have come to know all instantly started the Webber talk. The consensus was pretty much the same everyone has high hopes but also hold many reservations. I was really interested to see how the crowd would react. I figured it would be a mixture and from the video you can tell it was.

Right from the jump though you could tell this was not going to be easy. The Bulls just scored on us at will and we could not get anything to go in. Webber missed a few layups but hit some jumpers and ended up with decent numbers for the minutes played. Harrington however did not take lightly to losing his starting spot and came off the bench on fire. One fan said he thinks we could have won had we started Harrington instead of Webber. Who knows for sure but one thing is clear we got outplayed plain and simple. I won't say Webber was the cause of it. Only time will tell how this story pans out though. On the celebrity's sightings we had some normals and one out of left field. Dontrelle Willis and C.C. Sabathia were having one last night out before reporting to spring training. The other star took me for a loop though. How often do you see one of your favorite rappers at a game? I thought it was funny they had been playing a lot of Nas during warm ups and at time outs. Then they showed him up on the screen and I put two and two together. It was funny watching all the people try and get pictures and such. After awhile they had to get security to stand behind his seat. The best thing though was seeing Nas cheering for the Warriors. He even stood up and clapped on some of those nasty dunks from Ellis and Pietrus. At the end of the night I had a good time. It was exciting and close at times but we could not get what should of been an easy win over a injured Bulls team.

Welcome Back vs CHA

What another excellent home game this was. It was the return of Jason Richardson whom we all miss and wish was still a Warrior. It was pretty obvious trading him was to reduce salary. It was just unfortunate how it was handled. I remember reading JR had no idea this was coming. My speculation was it was to try and make salary room to get us in on the Garnett lotto. Brandon Wright is a decent player with a lot of potential but I just don't think that trade was what it is on the surface. Anyway I am sure this has already been discussed ten times over on numerous occasions. Back to this fine Friday night home game against the Bobcats. I picked up some extra tickets for my wife and my buddies girlfriend. With the other couple driving my wife and I decided to kick off our shoes and throwback some suds. We even brought a few for the parking lot before the game. The BART police did not like that idea much though as they asked us to kindly pour them out. I really thought we would be able to finish them when she volunteered the information to us that they allow it for Raiders game simply because they are outnumbered. I tried to plead the case that why should we suffer because the Warriors fans lack sufficient numbers compared to Raiders fans. She was not hearing it though and again asked we pour our beers out. Despite the BART police officers lack of fear in our Warrior numbers this game was packed. The place was filled and it was full of Richardson jerseys. I even joined in on the chance to proudly wear some JR throwback gear. He was met with applause and even cheered for as he scored and shot free throws. It was nice to see the love I am sure he understands that us fans wish he never left.



The game itself was perfect to have a buzz at too. We took a lead and never stopped pounding them. At one point I think we had been up by like 32 points. Marco, Brandon, POB all the pine riders saw some serious minutes in this blowout. Webber was in the house too in his street clothes though. Perhaps we will get to see him against the Bulls. While I am on the topic of Webber I would like to say I am optimistic. Yes the first time around in 93 he stirred up some serious waves. But I think times and people have changed and he does have something to offer. Right now as it stands we are doing damn good so he can either help or hinder that. I am hoping he will help but I understand those who are worried he will hinder only time will tell. Anyway another great win and I am looking forward to the 9 more home games we got in February.