CSN Bay Area

There was a time when the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association was feared and respected. It had many fearsome teams, and every game mattered greatly and was stuffed with near cosmic import.

And then the Golden State Warriors happened. And then the injuries happened. And then more injuries. And then more Warriors. And then, on the outside and scaring people as if they were hellhounds who snapped their chains, the San Antonio Spurs re-happened.

So this is your Western Conference now, children. A shell of its former self, gaudy numbers be damned.

You see, the Warriors ruined the West, and reminded everyone of it again Thursday night. They played a mediocre game Thursday against Portland (and why not, since they were only playing for don’t-get-hurt), fell behind by 13 in the second quarter and then did that five-minute-blitz thing they do to wreck another potentially white-knuckle event.

The end result, a 116-105 win, wasn’t particularly meaningful. Stephen Curry broke his own three-point record en route to a standard finger-in-your-eye-up-to-the-second-knuckle 45-point night, and the Warriors won their 45th game by double digits. Plus, because no good deed ever goes undamaged, Portland lost another player, Arron Afflalo, to a potentially playoff-shredding shoulder injury. Playoff-shredding, that is, if not for the fact that losing Wesley Matthews already took care of that.

Those were the high and lowlights, and remind us yet again the difference between the have-nots (Phoenix and below), the haves (everyone except San Antonio and Golden State) and the way-haves (San Antonio and Golden State).

This is not the same as saying no upsets can happen in the first or second rounds. The Los Angeles Clippers have fattened themselves on a series of bad teams (they have won 11 of their last 12, but only two over playoff teams) but have been locked into fifth place for weeks now. Houston and Memphis are locked in a murderous battle with San Antonio for the two-spot, and New Orleans and Oklahoma City trade good and bad nights as they joust for the final playoff place.

And they’ve all endured telling injuries that helped derail their own dreams of glory. All but, well, you know.

Golden State, disgustingly healthy and crushingly deep as they are, are now 37-2 at home with two more to host, and won 26 of those by 10 or more. They defend when they don’t shoot, they have all but mastered the art of the five-minute soul-killing burst, and Thursday was one of those rare evenings when Curry, Klay Thompson (26) and Draymond Green (11, 14 rebounds) all had to play more than 35 minutes; only the 12th time all year that Steve Kerr has “needed” them all to play that much.

The result of this glory and gory is that the only series that will satisfy the nation is Warriors-Spurs. The two elite teams of a conference that could have had seven elite teams if everyone had kept their most important players. The Warriors would still be superb, and Curry would still be the MVP favorite, but they wouldn’t be 67-15 superb, or 39-2 superb, or 48 double-digit wins superb.

And we would get the most brilliant playoffs ever, to more than wash the brackish taste of the grisly East from our yaps. We as a nation deserved that, after the miserable college basketball season that people are still lining up to publicly slag, and after an Eastern race that gave us five teams with winning records and only two with a decent chance to survive the hot mess that is their playoffs.

But we don’t live that well, ever, and Thursday was one more example. On the one hand, Curry Curry’d as only Curry can Curry. On the other, Portland took another gut punch it didn’t need, and fell even further from the Warriors/Spur standard, joining Houston, Dallas, the OKC/Nawlins combo and maybe even Memphis as teams that could have been but will end up not.

Oh, well. The trophy isn’t gauged to degree of difficulty. You win, you get the same haul at the end, and the parade is just as long and happy. Nobody will remember, let alone care, how glorious it truly could have been for everyone.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com