Day T-minus-9 before the LoveYourDubs.com Summit came and went. The previous night featured a four-hour live Watch Party where I concluded that Al Horford is awesome, Jonathan Kuminga tried really hard to get rebounds (led the team with six), and Jerry Stackhouse really blitzed the backup Lakers point guard — Bronny James or R.J. Davis — with two 5s on the floor.
🚨 Again: signup for the Love Your Dubs Summit for free! It’s a no-brainer 🎟️
And, yeah, Horford is awesome covering two guys on the weakside after the blitz, although Jarred Vanderbilt’s bad shooting from 3s probably helped. Might not be as magical against, say, the OKC Thunder. We’ll see.
We also noticed that Draymond Green’s beard has less gray than it used to. Check the timestamps for all the notes here.
Also, at postgame one Wardell Stephen Curry hinted at more challenging and longer endurance-based off-season workouts — I’ll put an excerpt of the SF Chronicle’s Ron Kroichick at the bottom, but here’s the interview with transcript in the Comments:
Curry actually was first on the podium, after the one-half-only performance in a preseason game allowed him to do that. He’s usually the last guy, sometimes a couple hours after the final buzzer, and so there was a joke at the end of his presser where he said he’d be back in an hour to do another one — which is usually how long he takes to get there after every (regular season) game.
So after the livestream I stayed up late to transcribe that one and then was determined to get a Glenn Robinson III Instagram Reel done from our Zoom call a couple weeks ago. More on that, tomorrow.
My friend Steve Lavin, who is the coach of the University of San Diego men’s basketball team, then reposted this snippet of Will Ferrell from a podcast:
What perfect timing. It made me think, sometimes I’m not having the fun I should be having with the Love Your Dubs Summit.
“Might as well have a blast doing it,” Ferrell said.
I’ve come to realize that I put a lot of pressure on myself to reach some benchmark of success. Maybe it’s revenue. Maybe it’s getting celebrity XYZ to be a speaker. Maybe it’s conquering some tech issue.
It’s programmed into my subconscious from probably generations of cultural reasons. It’s a survival instinct and it’s actually worked. My dad came to the United States with one suitcase and one suit inside, with no more room for more clothes because of the bulky tuberculosis tests. I got straight A’s through high school mainly because of the pressure I put on myself for those results. I really didn’t know any better. As I said, it’s kind of hard-wired into my brain.
But it comes at a cost. It’s harder for guys like us to have fun. It’s harder to, as Ferrell put it, “be free”.
Tangent: S/O World B. Free. Two seasons of 22-plus points per game with the Warriors in the early 1980s.
So I’m learning to surrender as well as be free.
It’s hard to do in basketball, too. We’ve heard the countless stories of Brandin Podziemski being too hard on himself. It’s a balance. Only a select few have mastered it.
I look back at my own “career” in the Asian-American basketball circles and it’s really true. That flow state is all about joy, all about confidence, less about control, less worry about outcomes.
On Monday, with nine days to go, I also had Jury Duty, but managed to get it postponed after a glitch on the website forced me to go downtown and do that in person. I selected December 22nd, so we’ll see if that strategy works.
I love creating IG Reels so I finally got the GRIII one done and then I had to take a nap to catch up on sleep from the night before. I sojourn downtown allowed me to pass by my parents’ place so I said hi to the folks, but when I awoke from my long nap, mom was gone doing her chorus-singing thing and I got to say goodbye to dad, who independently of the Ferrell IG post, told me to have fun.
Then I hopped on another live to promote the summit, people barely showed up for that, but I’m intrigued by the Substack social media stats (more on this some other time) and here I am thumb-typing away, hoping to get this posted before midnight — didn’t happen, as I konked out yet again, but got back up super-early morning.
Today is a massive content day, as I’m returning to Warriors practice one last time. If all goes well, I’ll get to say goodbye to many of my fellow beat-mates. But LetsGoWarriors will be represented on-the-scene by Riley Bermudez going forward. Here’s his IG post from last Friday. We are in good hands:
With that, I’d like to also announce our new Behind-the-Scenes Membership. More on this in a future post, but it will regularly cost $47/mo and included in that is this Substack and the Discord with the live Twitter feeds (at least a $15/mo. value).
In fact, anybody who upgrades to The Vault for the Summit gets a $1 first month trial then $37/month, which is a $146 savings.
So the goal for Tuesday is to get through practice with LGW coverage on YouTube and the Summit Vault, and Wednesday it’s to launch the membership — plus we’ll have Riley at the game versus Portland and probably a special guest reporter postgame on our livestream.
Thanks for checking out this Love Your Dubs “diary” and, well, be free!
Here’s Kroichick’s look at Steph training regimen: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/warriors/article/warriors-steph-curry-changed-preparations-17th-21081923.php
Along the way, he and his training team have tweaked his workout regimen, partly as a nod to age. They lean on data about Curry’s heart rate and “foot strikes,” he said, to measure how long he’s on his feet and how to optimize workouts to reach peak physical shape.
“All those types of things help monitor the output you have over the summer, so you’re working smarter and coming into camp fresh,” Curry said. “You’re not putting your body through any unnecessary stress with the transition from offseason to in-season. That’s been kind of fun to figure out on the fly.”
Warriors assistant coach Bruce Fraser works with Curry nearly every day and can tell his state during warmups. He spent the first few days of training camp getting his legs under him, as Fraser put it — and then drilled 90 of 100 shots beyond the arc in one practice. Curry often is in the 80s and once hit 97, per Fraser.
Fraser echoed Curry’s point — it’s wise to focus on body composition and longevity at this point of his career.
“Steph’s concern has to be not to overwork himself, so he’s in a good place to go the distance,” Fraser said. “It’s the duration now. When you’re younger, the duration is a lot easier.”
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