Ray Ratto: "I hereby declare that Cavs should play Blazers in Eastern final."

Ray Ratto, long time Bay Area sportswriter, was appropriately impressed by the Blazers.

http://www.csnbayarea.com/warriors/warriors-prove-greatness-having-it-tested-more-ever

 

High praise. I especially loved that part where he said this was the toughest opponent Golden State has played since their title run of 2015.

 

Still can't believe how close Portland was in the last two games. I think perhaps we just match up really well vs GS. I was not impressed with how we played vs the Clips, but man....I honestly think the Warriors were lucky to win this series.

 

I hope Neil and Stotts work well together, because look at how much Stotts got out of this team. When he first came to Portland, he took a core that hadn't made the playoffs in years and got them 50+ wins and a 1st round victory. This year he takes 2 stars and a bunch of rag tag casts offs and was narrowly defeated by what was supposed to be one of the best teams of all time.

 

I really hope all this great press translates into a marquee free agent.

 

But it's cool how much national attention this series got. Portland's effort was not ignored...should help us in our FA quest.

 

This series could have been completely ignored; a west coast series where the number 1 team beats the number 5 team in five. Whoop-dee-doo. But we benefitted from (a) playing our asses off with five high quality, high scoring games, and (b) the Miami/Toronto series looking like JV basketball performed by blind mimes. That series has been so bad, and ours was so good that nobody wants to cover the other series at all.

 

It's a little like the end of Rocky. We took the champ the distance, even if we didn't win.

 

This team has seriously overachieved two of the last three years under Terry Stotts.

And the one year we didn't overachieve and surprise everyone, we still won 51 games in spite of injuries that caused 4 of our 5 starters to miss at least 11 games. When Wesley Matthews tore his Achilles, the team was 41-19 with the second best record in the league, on pace to win 56 games.

Stotts has done an amazing job. He's far exceeded my expectations and is a vast improvement over Nate McMillan. Great hire!

BNM

 

I think a lot of people thought we'd just roll over and die in game five. We did not. We fought until the very end. People respect that. They see a team that was never supposed to be there. They see a team that was supposed to be significantly less talented than the Warriors. They see a team that was supposed to cower in fear and crumble once Curry came back. We did not. We fought and we fought and we fought. In the end, Curry is just too good. Without him, I think we have a legitimate shot at winning this series. He is the MVP. He played like the MVP, but we made them earn it. People love that. This is basically the plotline of Rocky.

 

Maybe I'm being a homer to the max, but I feel it this season... We are due for something special. We have the coach, we have the GM, we have a Dame and a CJ..

 

I was literally thinking the exact same thing.

 

So that means next season we'll beat them and eventually become best friends with them and run on the beach with them!

 

And then train their sons in 20 or 30 years.

 

Then watch them die on the court

 

Yep, without Steph Curry and his heroics, right now we're up 3-2 and heading into Game 6 in PDX with a chance to close them out.

BNM

 

Yup. If Curry doesn't go HAM, we win game four for sure. Actually, if Curry had sat out that game, we would have blown them out. They looked completely defeated in the first quarter. We were CRUSHING them. Curry came in, they immediately gained confidence having him on the floor, and they slowly turned it around. Ugh.... so many missed opportunities in this series. And the free throws....