The Warriors season starts up tonight and in honor of the return of basketball, SFist Chris takes a look at the Warriors. ...

If you were born after 1994 you have no idea what it's like. If you're a long-time fan, you might have a hazy, vague recollection of it. If you come from places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or Miami, you desperately miss it. We're talking a big game -- more specifically, a Warriors big game. An important game. A game that means something besides wrapping up a Lottery pick or nudging out Seattle or Memphis for the 11th overall spot in the Western Conference.

Tonight the Warriors play the Indiana Pacers in their biggest, most important game of this season or possibly the last 10 seasons. If the Dubs win, their slight hopes for the last playoff spot in the WC remain on life support; if they lose, consider the plug pulled on yet another failed season.

You can exhale Warriors fans, there is hope. The universe works in mysterious ways, and yesterday, it worked for the Warriors.

Just when the flagging team needed it, on a day when they could only suit up seven players in a loss to the Clippers (as predicted by our LAist comrades), the Warriors announced that they had pulled off an almost unbelievable eight-player trade with the Indiana Pacers. And there is more good news. Some how, some way, VP of Basketball Operations Chris Mullin convinced his Indiana counterpart, Larry Bird, to take Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy. That's right! The Warriors unloaded both baby Duns and Man-o-War in one fell swoop. And it keeps getting better. In return, Mullin snagged Al Harrington to help bolster the frontcourt lineup and guard Stephen Jackson to, uh, help with the police lineup. Both teams also threw in a couple of redshirts to level out the financials and collective bargaining requirements, but even the redshirts are looking good.

Pacers 108 Warriors 106: In detailing the game, the Chron's Janny Hu actually uses the word "upset" to describe the Warriors loss. Now when was the last time those words have ever been said about a Warriors loss? Probably sometime last century. In this game, Al Harrington (who Chris Mullin tried to get in the off-season) sunk a last second three pointer to lead the Pacers over Golden State. ...

Easy, Nellie, easy baby. It's early yet. Tuesday night, the Warriors came from behind in the Oracle to beat the Portland Trailblazers relatively easily, 108-96. But in the post-game news conference coach Don Nelson was acting like the Warriors had just blown the season. Head hanging, shirt open several buttons at the collar, hair disheveled, the seemingly overly overwrought Nelson moaned that "there were so many things wrong" with the team's performance in the......

Let the PR horns boldly announce it from the highest rafters: The second Don Nelson era is off to a flying start.

Training camp. Whether you're fans of the Chicago Cubs, the Arizona Cardinals, the Boston Bruins, or even the Golden State Warriors, it is a time of hope. A time to believe. A time to go all in with the Karma chips and think the unthinkable. A time to take a flyer on 125-1 odds that the hometown squad can rise up and revel in the glory of a championship.

Tonight is Playoff Time for the Warriors, or at least the only exciting thing to happen to the Warriors during playoff time-- the NBA Draft Lottery. This will be the eleventh consecutive year the Warriors will be part of the NBA's reality show, which means that, yes, now that the Clippers are a playoff team (or were) and look like they'll be a playoff team for years to come, the Warriors are the new Clippers. Yay, team! ...

Our man on the PNW sport beat, Seattlest Seth, has a modest proposal that could be just the thing to turn around the fortunes of the Golden State Warriors, and it has nothing to do with hiring some egghead from Stanford as coach. Chris Tomasson of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver is publishing a series of articles in an 'expose' about marijuana use in the NBA. Apparently, basketball players like to smoke pot!......