Opening night from Chicago to Oakland....vs NOR

The journey to this game started back on Sunday the 26th when I landed in Ohare Airport in Chicago. At the time I had put my tickets up for sale for an outrageous price on the Warriors Ticket Exchange. The reason was I found out a few weeks prior I would have to be away on Business in Chicago. My flight back would have me landing at SFO around 7pm. Initially I was scheduled to be in meetings up until Wednesday morning. But with some creative rescheduling and a hardcore pace I managed to have everything wrapped up by Tuesday night. I made it to the Airport early Wednesday morning and got on Standby for an earlier flight. Then jumped on the net and canceled my sale on the tickets. Lucky for me no one bit on my triple the face value offering. So I ended up getting a flight and after catching BART home I arrived at my house at 6:10pm. It only takes me about a half hour if that to be at the Oracle. So I made it with plenty of time before Tip Off. Traveled a long way to get there but as always it was a great night out.

So on my way back to the Bay Area I had read about the Nelson extension news and the Harrington trade request. I was happy for Nelson as I do like his no coaching coach style of coaching. It lends itself to some exciting ball but it does not equal wins all the time. Anyway so Nelly should now break the record for wins good for him. Smoke those cigars and drink those Mohitos and let the players play. I was however disappointed in the Harrington news. He requested a trade last year to so its nothing new but I have always had higher hopes for him and the Warriors. I think he has potential but he has never stepped it up past mediocre. Be it his or his coaches fault I don't know. Enough on the big news though how was the game right?

So being opening night we all got a crappy yellow shirt with just that on it "Opening Night". Also every seat had a "Go Warriors" poster with a schedule on the back. Note the heavy advertising on both items. I love free stuff though so I can't complain. What I do want to complain about though is that between the last preseason game and now they decided to buy some new laser lights. Thing is they mounted them directly in my field of vision from my nose bleed seats and the scoreboard. Speaking of scoreboards I kid you not it was not working for 3 full quarters. Yes CP3 took an early first quarter break but if you followed the score board he never came back in. Nothing was working except the actual game score on the main screens above center court. As for the game itself it was exciting and I have to say I was surprised it was as close as it was. I figured they would walk all over us given our current roster and dark cloud from upper management lingering over us. Not to say I wasn't disappointed in the sad defensive match ups that kept being exploited by West and others. Also Nelly needs to loosen up and let some of the rookies see some minutes. Wright deserves to play and Randolph looks very promising and could use the floor time if we want him to develop. It's not like the main squad is seasoned vets anyway. But like I said before I was pleasantly surprised with the teams performance. Just like the bad beats of yesteryear had the team made their free throws they would have won. To be that close on a top notch western team with our rag tag bunch was good showing. The only question is can we step it up and win more then 25 games this year? As a fan I sure hope so, but as Warriors fans already know the bad years are far more common then the good ones.

Stole their Thunder...vs Oklahoma City

Twas a few weeks before the season opener and all through the Oracle, Wasn't an Ellis a stirring not even in street clothes. Seriously though I kept looking hoping to at least see him in a Blazer looking all Chabarkabary. Turns out he got suspended due to Mopedgate and it's also going to cost him around 3 mil in salary. Anyway the crowd was light and not really energetic tonight. What can you expect considering the recent turn of events and the fact it is a preseason game though. Marco went off and also did a great job moving the ball and setting up plays. So did DeMarcus Nelson he is going to be interesting to watch out of the possible PG's. The Rookie Randolph did OK. He looked a little clumsy at times but is very fast for a big guy. Speaking of clumsy Hendrix was a controlled chaos. He pulled down 13 boards but I think 4 of them were from layups he missed. Gotta give it up, he did show some hustle and potential though. What really kept me smiling all night though was every time the announcer said "Thunder calls time out.". I just kept picturing Thunder doing a hand stand with a clipboard running the team. Anyway we pulled off a win as we should of considering the opponent. The future of this season looks to be exciting but also an exercise in futility.

No No in N.O

Some of you may of stopped believing awhile ago but that has not kept me off the court and glued to W's news. Unfortuanetly I don't have any of the good kind to report. The Warriors just lost their first preseason game to the Hornets in N.O. The first preseason home game is against the Oklahoma City Thunder. As usual Marco lead in scoring only to become a freakish side show for blowouts during the regular season. Anyway here is the boxscore:

So long and thanks for all the Fish thunder?

Shortly after the Sonics "R.I.P" got renamed the Oklahoma City Thunder rumors started circulating about what the Warriors would do or say about it. Thunder has been the Mascot for 12 years now. I Personally am not a huge fan of him. Like I said in the past I would rather see a more Indian type Warrior mascot as was originally intended. Either way it sounds like Thunder won't be around for long. Here is some quotes from Warriors team president Robert Rowell:

“We’re clearly going to do something to accommodate Oklahoma City and not have our mascot named Thunder,”

“For the sake of not making things confusing, we’re going to do something. We just have to figure out a good exit strategy.”

“The other thing we were thinking is maybe we trade him to Oklahoma City for a mascot to be named later or something like that,”

He had this to say about Thunder in regards to the Warriors upcoming trip to Asia:

“He might get lost in the crowd over in China, There are 1.3 billion people there.”

I don't think anything is going to happen this year though. To close to the season to get anything going. Maybe we won't see Thunder anymore this year but don't expect a replacement on opening night.