I've become Ben Tao. I check ESPN.com nearly everyday. Well, at least when and if I go back home for a visit sometime soon, I'll be caught up with American sports! Won't know a thing about new American social or economic problems cuz I don't check CNN.com or any sort of American newspaper website... but I'll know all about the Giants' playoff hopes this year and why the Warriors will just continue to be the embarassment to Bay Area sports (although Cal football in my four years there are a very close 2nd).
And that's not to say that I'm not a fan of either the Warriors or Cal football. Actually, I'm a huge fan of both... which is probably the saddest thing of all. How it pains me everytime I talk to a SoCal person! Somehow (probably because they don't have a football team anymore), the SoCal person'll talk about THEIR Lakers, who won yet another championship, and all I contribute to the conversation is, "Woo... go Warriors." To which I receive either a blank look, or wannabe sympathetic chuckles.
What happened to those Warriors? Run TMC got us to a 50 game season and of course the playoffs... to which we got ousted by the Sonics in the first round. They even had their own McDonalds hamburger. Remember the Tim and Chris burger? Or the Chris and Tim burger? Ehh, maybe it was a promo for only the bay area (like Eddie the Echo, howyadoin, howyadoin?). Anyway, it was all downhill from there... although it didn't seem that way at first. Spree was a great sleeper pick out of Alabama late in the 1st round. Picked him up because we needed defense... and as an added bonus, the NBA discovered that he had offensive game too. Webber was gonna be that awesome big man that was gonna take us to the next level. Instead, it was just a headache with him and Don Nelson (both of whom are doing awesome now in Sac and Dallas respectively). And so, went the search for the center. Why was there such an urgency for a center back then anyway? I mean, the Bulls won championship after championship with Cartwright in the middle.
I can't think of anything that was more destructive to the Warriors organization than the search for the center. First we wasted money by picking up Rony Seikaly. Ughhh! To think that the Warriors front office had the bay area (or maybe just me) tricked into believing that Rony Seikaly was going to save the Warriors! What was I thinking? Then there were all those dumb draft picks. Todd Fuller. Adonal Foyle. Jeff Foster. And finally when we accidentally got one in Marc Jackson... there were problems and we traded him away for, drum roll please... Dean Garrett (the guy who scores 20 points a game for me in video games because Garrett looks so much like Garnett). Ughh. Woo... go Warriors!