The Golden State Warriors are rattled to a level that was impossible to imagine beforehand. The team has lost three of four games against the Oklahoma City Thunder and are on the verge of being eliminated before reaching the Finals. After winning 73 games during the regular season, more than any team before them, anything short of a championship is both shocking and disappointing.
Yet that seems like the most likely scenario at this point and much like the Warriors team, Dubs fans also seem to be shaken by what is now not only a possibility, but also a probability.
According to Sam Amick of USA TODAY Sports, one fan took his anxiety to a whole new level, targeting a TV personality to take out his own anger:
There was pressure building on Saturday night at a hotel bar not far from the Thunder’s home, where a wayward Warriors fan was so enraged that TNT analyst Charles Barkley picked the Thunder to win the series that he challenged him to an actual fight (security was called, and the man was removed).
The crazy thing about this story (well besides the fact that someone thought another person’s basketball opinion was worth fighting over) is that it happened on Saturday night, before the Thunder rattled off two straight blowout wins at home and when the series was still tied up. How insecure was that fan to challenge Barkley, who by the way used to be a professional athlete so is probably fairly tough, to a fight during a 1-1 series?
Barkley says a lot of strange things and his reasons for picking OKC to reach the Finals were likely nothing legitimate. That said, he looks fairly smart for predicting this upset, regardless of his reasoning. And that fan? That fan is probably just a little bit more angry now, so I would advise the entire NBA on TNT crew to be cautious.
