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Here’s the thing with having a 73-win season, and winning two NBA Championships in three years, and at least partially reinventing the game of basketball in a blur of three-pointers and an orgy of scoring. People kind of expect you to do the same thing—or even better it—every year that follows. And that, as any student of the rise and fall of dynasties knows, is pretty much an impossibility. We are talking about the Golden State Warriors, of course, and what has been an… interesting start to the season, to put things politely. Interesting in a bad way for the Warriors, who have lost two of their first three games including a Saturday night defeat to the Memphis Grizzlies. Interesting in a good way for the rest of the Western Conference, which came into the new season chasing the Warriors’ coattails and now finds itself, mostly, looking down on the champions. The Houston Rockets, with their double-headed monster of a backcourt in James Harden and Chris Paul, are already two games ahead of the Warriors. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now It’s not the gap, though, that should concern anyone with a vested interest in the Warriors’ dynasty continuing past 2017. There are, after all, 78 more regular-season games to play. It’s more the general, and shocking, air of dysfunction that colored the first week of the regular season. Steve Kerr admitting, for instance, that his team had lacked conditioning against the Rockets in the season-opener on October 18. Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant getting ejected from the defeat to the Grizzlies; Curry throwing out his mouthpiece. “I think he should be suspended eight, maybe 10 games. It was egregious. It was awful,” Kerr joked in quotes reported by USA Today. And maybe it was an incident petty enough to joke about, and maybe you could even turn the situation on its head and say it’s good that Curry is irked that the Warriors have already lost almost a quarter of the number of games they lost in total two seasons ago. But this is, and has been, a team known for its laser-like focus on detail and execution and all of the little details that coaches like Kerr like to emphasize. And so far in 2017-18, the Warriors have been sloppy, and lacking in concentration at vital moments. In the circumstances, a visit to American Airlines Arena to play the 0-3 Dallas Mavericks seems like a fillip to put the Warriors back on track quickly. It’s true, surely, that the Warriors are in part victims of their success and extraordinary powers of invention. But it’s also true that dynasties can rise and fall on a whim, brutally, unexpectedly. It's up to Curry, Durant, Klay Thompson and their supporting cast to decide how their story ends. |
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On June 6, Stefan Heck posted a joke about Silicon Valley's self-absorbed mission to disrupt the world, even where it may not need disrupting. Heck may have been referring to the Lyft Shuttle, which was unveiled earlier this year and is undergoing beta testing in San Francisco and Chicago. The way the service is broken down on the ride-sharing app's website reads almost like a parody of the Silicon Valley thinking to which Heck's tweet refers. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now Related: GM to test thousands of self-driving cars for Lyft in 2018 "Walk to stop. Hop in. Hop out. Walk to destination," the site explains, before providing a more detailed breakdown of how users can "find their route," then "walk to your pickup stop," then "ride along the designated route" and, finally, "walk to your destination." On Monday, Lifehacker reviewed Lyft Shuttle. Here's how the service is described:
The review was positive, and did not acknowledge the similarities to a certain publicly funded transportation service that was not invented by Lyft (although Lifehacker's sister site, Jalopnik, did so later on Monday). Twitter also took note of Lyft's groundbreaking new innovation. Heather Yamada-Hosley, who reviewed the service for Lifehacker, writes in the comments to her post about how public transportation in San Francisco is "dirty, slow, crowded, and increasingly dangerous," making Lyft Shuttle a valuable resource. Others wrote that they live in areas with no accessible public transportation lines, or in places where they do not have to walk as far to get to or from a Lyft Shuttle as they would to a bus or train stop. Some have accused these Lyft Shuttle defenders as simply justifying various degrees of revulsion to the poor. The reality is probably somewhere in between. Matthew Yglesias's first tweet sums up the issue: The Lyft Shuttle isn't a bad idea, but it also isn't anything new. Though it may be convenient for some people living in certain cities, privatizing a public service that has been in place for years isn't "innovative" or "disruptive" or "groundbreaking" so much as it is a way for Lyft to make money and expand its influence. Tags: inhandnetworks, InHand Networks - Global Leader in Industrial IoT, Global Leader in Industrial IoTn>, android-computer, iot, industrial-iot |