The Golden State Warriors Need a Rival

The Golden State Warriors stand alone at the top of the NBA, blowing teams out on a regular basis. Many try to challenge them, but do they have a rival?

Remember when the Golden State Warriors took the Clippers the full 7 in a playoff series?

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Remember how it felt like every player on both teams could have been ejected any night? Remember the regular season games between the two teams since then? Remember when Draymond Green got bumped during his post game interview and gave possibly the best staredown ever? Warriors-Clippers was always hard fought and the two teams pretty much hated everything about each other. They were true rivals. Two teams on the upswing, with young exciting players.

Well, the Dubs won a championship, and the Clippers are punching their assistant equipment managers. So…that rivalry has turned out to be pretty one sided. The Clippers just aren’t good enough to be the Dubs’ true rivals.

So who does that leave us? The San Antonio Spurs? The Cleveland Cavaliers? The Oklahoma City Thunder?

The Spurs seem like the obvious choice.

They are perennial contenders, Gregg Popovich is possibly the only coach in the NBA better than Steve Kerr, and the Warriors’ path to the title will run through San Antonio for the forseeable future. Except that the Spurs are suuuuuper lame. The Spurs will never have true rivals. And not because of basketball. The Spurs just aren’t really fun enough.

I can’t imagine Stephen Curry nailing a step back three in Danny Green‘s face and giving him a stare. I can’t imagine watching Draymond stuff Kawhi Leonard at the rim and then trash talk him all the way down the floor. Because the Spurs will never reciprocate. Like all true basketball players know, trash talking isn’t fun if the guy doesn’t respond. It just gets boring at a certain point. It’s like your mom always said, ‘don’t let them get under your skin’. If someone is making fun of you, and you just kind of stare blankly back at them, they get all awkward and stop. So to conclude, the Spurs are like that weird kid at school who wears scarves in 80 degree weather, but you respect the hell out of him anyways. Fun to joke around with, eccentric, but that kid will never be your sworn enemy. And the Spurs will never be someone’s greatest rivals.

The Cavs, on the other hand, would pretty much perfectly fit the bill though. The only problem, though, is that the Warriors are a lot better than the Cavs.

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Sure, the next 5 finals could be Warriors-Cavs (unless LeBron James leaves again), but the Dubs would probably win all 5. But, oh how I want to hate the Cavs. They’re just so hateable. First, Matthew Dellavedova. The man was voted the dirtiest player in the league, by some margin too. Second, Cleveland. Do I need to expand on this? It’s Cleveland. I almost feel bad for the Cavs, actually. Third, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Warriors fans will ALWAYS hear about how the Cavs would have won the 2015 Finals if those two had been healthy. I’m sure at some point it will be amusing to hear bitter Cavs fans complain, but for now it’s just annoying. But, alas, what’s a rivalry if you can beat the team by 30 at their place? It’s not cool to beat up on inferior competition. It’s just rude.

So as much as I would love to be rivals with the Cavs (mostly because they’re so easy to make fun of), it just won’t happen.

Finally, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Thunder are interesting. You can kind of see this matchup becoming Warriors-Clippers. Both teams have traded some words recently, and both are good young teams that play exciting styles of basketball. Most importantly, though, is that the Thunder look like a scary candidate to dethrone the Dubs. The Spurs are good, yes, but even the best team in the NBA will have trouble guarding both Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. The question, however, is how long will those two be together? Both of them could be on the Thunder next year or both could be elsewhere (KD to the Warriors?). And what’s the fun in being arch rivals with a team that could have a major personnel shakeup this summer? The Thunder could be a totally different team next year.

Enjoy this run of unrivaled (see what I did there) terror that the Dubs are putting upon the league while you can, DubNation. It might only be around for 15 more years.

So, Warriors fans, who do you hate the most? Who do you want to hate? Personally, it’s still the Clippers, but they seem to be getting more and more irrelevant by the day. Tweet me @OwenMDillon or leave a comment down below letting me know who the Warriors true rivals should be.