You’re betting on basketball, and the Golden State Warriors are the embodiment of basketball in the second half of the second decade of the 2000s. As such, they are the sports betting favorites to win not only the NBA playoffs Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, but also go all the way and win their second NBA championship. Where does that leave the Thunder? They were also the underdogs versus the San Antonio Spurs, and we all know how that turned out.
OKC came back from a 32-point blowout in Game 1 to eliminate the Spurs in six games – thus opening our eyes to the fact that the proverbial Emperor had, in fact, no clothes.
However, the Thunder have not achieved the impossible just yet. As far as betting on basketball goes, they not only defied the odds by beating the Spurs, but took those odds outback and put them out of their misery. But that wasn’t an impossible feat; Tim Duncan’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, and his legs of iron, but his feet were only part of iron and part of clay. For better or for worse, he was face, heart, and soul of the Spurs, and the twilight of this particular idol meant San Antonio was doomed to fail sooner than later. If he ideally retires, then the Spurs can be rebuilt around Kawhi Leonard et al.
The Thunder will finally come face to face with the impossible on Monday 6th, when the WCF kick off at the Oracle Arena. The impossible would be defeating the greatest team in history – going by regular season win-loss record – which is lead by certainly not the greatest player in history, but a two-time Most Valuable Player – and the first unanimously elected MVP. Moreover, Golden State is more than just the sum of its parts. To put it in historical context, when Michael Jordan missed 64 games of his sophomore NBA season with a broken foot, the Chicago Bulls barely squeezed through the playoffs with the at the time fifth worst record of any team to qualify for the postseason in NBA history. And let’s even get started with his first 10 minute retirement.
Now let’s make no mistake. Stephen Curry is no Michael Jordan, and that’s not bad thing; that’s a good thing. It’s a net positive for Golden State because they are nowhere near as dependent on Curry as the Bulls were on Jordan – or the Lakers on Kobe, or the Clippers on Chris Paul, or the Cavs on LeBron James, or the Thunder on Russell Westbrook, for that matter. The Thunder are a hell of a team, and at this point would be favorites, in terms of sports betting on basketball, against almost any other – but the Warriors are not just any other team, with or without Curry.