Buckets of Curry

Welcome, dunking reader, as this week the focus has mostly been on basketball. Yes, the last 7 days have seen the final few games of the NBA playoff series, and as you'll probably know by now, our very own Golden State Warriors won it.

The NBA playoffs, like the baseball World Series, consists of a number of 7 game match-ups, with the teams criss-crossing this massive country to play each other those 7 times. So it was that the Warriors tied up the series at 2-2 in Boston last Friday, then took the lead by winning in San Francisco on Monday, then it was back to Boston for what turned out to be the last game on Thursday.

The Golden State team has been on a bit of a journey. They won the NBA championship in 2015, 2017 and 2018, but the last few seasons have been much, much harder: star player Steph Curry broke his hand late in 2019 and was out for months; prolific scorer Klay Thompson tore ligaments in the 2019 playoffs and only returned to the court this year; and Draymond Green, the person euphemistically known as the "physical presence" of the team (this means he thumps people), had been out of sorts too. But they managed to come together for this series and rediscover their best, ably supported by some new talent that has been added to the team as well.

As I've mentioned before, sport generally isn't a big deal here in the Bay Area unless there's a chance of winning something, so the progress of the Warriors certainly ratcheted up the local interest. Ticket prices for the last few games started at about $1000 and you were looking at $20000 to sit courtside and have the privilege of getting flattened by Draymond Green. Seemingly this isn't considered insane in these parts.

I also found this bell this week, by the side of the road known as El Camino Real, the historic route up the peninsula. I do the walk past this spot 4 or 5 times a week, but for some reason I've only just spotted this; the bells were erected early in the last century to mark the historic route and the history of the Spanish missions that were the centre of the initial settlements around here.

So, how do we follow the Warriors victory? Hard to say, although this evening we're going to the other end of the spectrum, visiting the lowest-tier of minor league baseball in San Jose. We went to a game here when our visitors were over from the UK, and the slightly more rustic, authentic feel makes for a fun night out. Well, that and the hotdogs and garlic fries, anyway.