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I don't know, which one of 8,000 happenings that made this game a totally nutso bonkers fucking mess should I start with? Should I write them down and cut them up and draw them out of a hat, and take them one by one, maybe? The article that resulted would probably make more sense than that "Toilet Overflowing with Shit and Piss and Confetti" that dressed itself up as a basketball game and ambled around the court drunkenly for 53 minutes.
[Draws slip of paper out of a hat.]
Sure, the ending. After the good ship S.S. Blazers, captained by the Ol' Seadog, Damian Lillard, righted itself for what seemed like had to be the last time, Harrison Barnes, of all the people in the known universe, drilled a three-pointer with 51 seconds left to tie the game at 111. Lillard got tied up in a knot, Curry's attempt wasn't particularly close, so: overtime. The Blazers were sitting on a whole pile of fouls, Andrew Bogut fouled out, Draymond Green was skating on thin ice with the refs all night—a perfect opportunity to strike at the hear…
Oh, wait, nevermind. Steph Curry, who had been totally unremarkable, even sluggish looking, in the first half, and merely very good in the second, just started taking and making shot after shot after shot. Three pointers! Drives! Digging underneath the court like a mole, devouring all available grubs, worms and other various protein-rich bugs, popping up right underneath CJ McCollum, knocking him on his ass, and laying in the ball! It never ended! By the time it was all said and done, he scored 17 points in the OT, which is, of course, an NBA record.
And you know what the worst part was? Some dude on the internet telling you you have to embrace this terror descended from the hell in Steph's heart, or else you're a philistine. Bow at the feet of your destruction, pedant! "The fire that burns your home is pure and clean, and it wipes the filth of this world away!"
Do not bend to the nattering of the national masses! Blazer fan—humble, beautiful Blazer fan, who I'm sure would never get drunk and talk about how "Brad Stevens is a Popovich in training" or speculate openly about Allen Crabbe being the third-best player on the team on the Max after a game—do not turn towards the light of acceptance and "respectful admiration." It is the way of the politician, the disinterested museum patron, the mediocre father.
After that disaster, you have been given a gift: a pure and perfect hatred, and you should nurture it in your heart of hearts. Look at Draymond Green, after a night of on-court extralegal excursions, egging you on even more:
Jesus Christ. No honor.
Also without honor on this night: refs! I mean, they've never really had any to begin with: They are professional narcs, after all. But tonight, all of refdom weeped as the game just spun more and more wildly out of control. Recalled whistles, techs, Shaun Livingston visibly yelling fuck out of frustration on TV and JumboTron. Both teams were on the shit end of some extremely bullcrap moving-screen calls, which is kind of a mild watchability problem when both teams use on- and off-ball screens about, oh, as much as anyone in the league?
Speaking of free throws, at the end of the second quarter, both teams just started hacking each other back and forth. Six or so possessions, arbitrarily eaten up by Hacktor, the Hell Demon of Hacking. Do you remember that? Do you remember that actual self-mutilation was the only way the riot of rabid dogs that truly was this game, from spirit to flesh, could stop headbutting each other?
Why did CJ isolate against Andre Igoudola, one of the NBA's all-time premiere wing defenders, during two high-leverage possessions in a row, during overtime? They probably still would have lost, Curry being Curry and all. But why did everything just grind to an illogical halt, right there? Dance with who brought you, you know? (Did Damian or ball movement bring them?)
In fairness to CJ, he did pump-fake Draymond in the air and give him a silly little look from the ground after he got fouled onto the wood. It was a very cute basketball play. Not a flagrant, even a little. The Good Refs still spent three minutes staring at it on a computer monitor, though.
Jesus Christ it was so loud. Louder than any other game in the playoffs by like a factor of 10. I don't know on what scale. A big scale, that can weight a lot of cheering, I guess. It was loud at the beginning, when the Blazers managed to kick the Warriors in the tummy. It was loud during the vacillating struggles of the middle. It was loud when they played "Everybody Dance Now" for what felt like five minutes during the fourth quarter and everyone in the whole damn building clapped along.
The guy who has sat in front of me for the entire series just kept high-fiving people. People in his section, people in other sections. He high-fived me, and I am not technically a Blazer fan while I'm a credential writer at a game (I am v professional). Did the loss make all those high-fives pointless? No, of course not. Just being together in a giant room and screaming blends the souls of the masses and builds a valuable emotional and psychic link. But the link streams out of the building, drunk and disappointed and dissolves into the night, lies down in thousands of beds all over Portland Metro, stares at the ceiling and mumbles, "So close."
Willamette Week