Win over Clippers shows Warriors repeat won't come easy

In what can only be considered a huge win for the Los Angeles Clippers, the Golden State Warriors beat the Clips Wednesday night, 112-108.

And yes, that actually makes sense.

True, it means that the Warriors win again, and stand alone among all American basketball teams –- they’ll have to take Canada up with the Toronto Raptors, of course -– but the NBA needed to see that there is drama to be had in this season, and that the Warriors will indeed discover how hard repeating a parade truly is.

You know. For the sake of the (ick) “narrative.”

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But for the most part, it took the Clippers to challenge the Warriors in Oakland with the kind of hard-hided resolution that wasn’t shown by New Orleans or Houston or Memphis in Games 1 through 4. It took Stephen Curry rallying from a slow start and a barely moving third quarter. It took Andrew Bogut being absent from his five-times-a-year job harassing DeAndre Jordan to distraction, and Draymond Green battling Blake Griffin not to a draw but to a at-least-he-didn’t-go-32-and-17.

It took the Warriors this game to remind them that the business of two-fer is a hard one, and it took the Clippers, the gentlemen they hate and who hate them in return, to provide the backdrop for what we can only assume will be a long-running war for the soul of the Western Conference.

Or more likely, given the sample size involved here, it gives us at least one team that will keep Golden State honest -– more honest than the tiresome we-don’t-get-respect sidebars that have pockmarked the offseason and first week of the regular.

To say this felt like a playoff game is probably stretching the truth a wee dram, but it was clearly a game that mattered every bit as much to the Warriors as the Clippers, for very different reasons -– the Clippers, because they needed to show themselves they are the equal of what seems from the outside to be a budding juggernaut, and the Warriors, because you never forget your first good punch in the yap.

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Indeed, there was a few strays arms, hands and elbows here and there, and Chris Paul’s prehensile fingers kept getting caught in the mesh of Curry’s jersey, typically on picks, but each team gave as it got, and other than a brief bit of handbags between Paul and Green in the second half, nothing truly untoward actually occurred, on the floor, in the hallway, over the Internet -- damn their eyes. We came for senseless violence, and we got jobbed.

But the missing NASCARitude aside, these two teams established not the pecking order in the Western Conference, but the fact that at least one team will not be cowed by the rolling beast. Yet.

Moreover, the standard shriekings of the 19,596 entombed in the soon-to-be-no-longer Home Of The Hits needed to be heard again, to pull the customers back into the real world of face-first basketball. Yes, frontrunning is good, well-moneyed children, but the satisfaction comes when you know that your team has prepared for the long, hard, sometimes soul-squeezing slog of a repeat title. You may never forget your first parade, but no town that has never gotten a second has failed to be damned pissed about it.

What is of concern, though, is the fact that co-owner Joe Lacob shacked up with the Larry O’Brien Trophy, thereby making it unfit for human cohabitation again until June.

No, that’s not it. It’s a disgusting vision, turning a trophy into a cheap and shameless object for the amusement of a local oligarch, true, but not the real issue for the Warriors.

The real issue is that head coach Steve Kerr’s return from unsuccessful successful back surgery, which has been nebulously scheduled for maybe before Christmas, kinda sorta, may now push well into the new calendar year. This is not an implication of Luke Walton’s work -– five wins, after all, are really the zenith of this team’s goals through five games.

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But we can infer from all known evidence through the history of the sport that the Warriors are better with Kerr in the Captain Kirk chair, and that the transition back from New Dad to Old Dad may very well happen when the true playoff position push is beginning.

This may just be creating worry where there is none, but there should be some somewhere, and that is the value of Wednesday’s game. Both the Clippers and Warriors needed to know this is not going to be a boatrace, and that ultimately the teams, the division, the conference and league need not just games like this but results that suggests that there could be more like this. I mean, 119-69 is a nice score as a rare and wondrous treat, but a steady diet of it means that somewhere the Washington Generals have been resuscitated and cloned, all to the detriment of the nation.

So well done, Clips. In losing nobly, stubbornly, and snarlingly, you allowed us all to win, or at the very least not to feel cheated by the hype. And the same to the Warriors, for gritting through a hard night’s entertainment to provide the desired response for a fan base that, well, is slowly becoming reward junkies. Congratulations, one and all.

Though would one good punch in the nethers now and then just to stir the pot a little have killed you guys?