It is that time of year again. The time when the NBA a league that have been playing games since October and have basically been cleared to do so by society at large. Then they suddenly decide that none of those games mattered and it is time to start over. This is called “the playoffs,” and it is when things get genuinely interesting, or at least genuinely loud.
In the NBA, the Oklahoma City Thunder have gone 64-18, which in a normal universe would mean they are very good and will probably win. The San Antonio Spurs, meanwhile, went 62-20, which in a normal universe would mean they are also very good and will probably win. Both of these statements cannot be simultaneously true, which is why they play the games, and also why I have been confidently wrong about the playoffs every single year since 1987.
The Detroit Pistons are the No. 1 seed in the East. Let that sentence sit with you for a moment. The same Detroit Pistons who were, not so long ago, a team that lottery balls fled from in self-defense.
Behind them, the Boston Celtics (56-26) are lurking with the quiet confidence of a team that has won this thing before and would very much like to do so again, and the New York Knicks (53-29) are lurking with the loud confidence of a fan base that has not won this thing in fifty years and has somehow gotten louder about it. The Philadelphia 76ers are also in the playoffs, because they are always in the playoffs, in the same way that a smoke alarm is always in your kitchen — present, occasionally useful, and at some point going to make everyone in the building very tired.
Then there are the Golden State Warriors, my team, who have qualified for the play-in tournament, which is either a sign of resilience or a sign of something else that Warriors fans are not currently prepared to examine. The play-in, for those unfamiliar, is the NBA’s way of saying “we believe in you, but not entirely,” a sort of competitive purgatory in which teams that could not quite secure a real playoff spot are given the opportunity to earn one by beating someone else who also could not quite secure a real playoff spot. It is high-stakes basketball played by teams that are one bad night away from going home, which is a description that would have been unthinkable in the Chase Center not very long ago, and which is perfectly thinkable now.
The Warriors are in it. They are alive. Whether they will remain alive is a question the basketball gods have not yet chosen to answer, which is their prerogative, and which Dub Nation is handling by oscillating rapidly between cautious optimism and historical trauma. This is the correct response. This is Warriors basketball now. You take what you get, you show up for the play-in, and you remind yourself about the rings, which still happened, and which no one can take away, even if they are currently not adding to the collection at the previously established rate.