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.

-Sharks lose to the Dallas Stars 3-0. Not really a surprise considering the Stars were looking to open up a can of whoop-as and the Sharkies were coming off a four-game break. It's the Sharks second loss to the Stars and the third time they've been blanked in the past fourteen games. ...

-The Niners beat the Seahawks in what has to be a bit of a shocker, 24-14. We'll have more on this later. -In a game KNBR called the "signature victory" for the Warriors, Baron Davis hits a three with 1.2 seconds left to beat the Rockets. -Sharks have their three game winning streak snapped in a 4-2 loss to the LA Kings. -Now a cyclist is caught up in the BALCO mess. -Peter Magowan wonders......

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! ...

What's the plan? The War-bloons have basically been treading water for the last couple of months, and like a small-time sucker playing conservative bets at the $5 blackjack tables in Reno, the house odds are starting to take their toll. Yet as their won-loss record sinks further into the red and the playoff dream shrivels up like Adonal Foyle's points per game average, Head Veep Chris Mullett can only watch as opportunities like the NBA trading deadline slip past like Brad Miller blowing by Troy Murphy unabated to the hoop....

We were taking down the Festivus Pole last night and dejectedly wondering to whom we could regift the Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish contraption that weird Uncle Mannie gave us this year, when it occurred to us that it might be interesting to look at how the War-toes fared this holiday season.<...

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!......

While all may seem to be lost here in the Bay Area, at least we can all take solace in the fact that the Golden State Warriors are opening their season tonight at the Coliseum, or whatever you want to call it, against the Portland Jail Blazers. The W's just signed two of their best players, Jason Richardson and Troy Murphy, to six-year deals totaling about $130 million and it's looking like the team playing......