If you’re a Warriors fan, you should be thankful. And a bit ashamed.
Your figurative Thanksgiving plate runneth over. Your holiday dinner table is sagging under the turducken and all the trimmin’s, while your neighbors — fans of every other NBA team — are prying open the clamshell cardboard boxes on their Happy Meals.
Who has it better than you? Nobody, buddy.
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With the world on the brink of ... something, you’ve got the Warriors to keep everything upbeat and lively. Like when Granny shows up with the pumpkin pies and demands to know what in tarnation the Warriors intend to do about rim protection.
When was the last time the Bay Area could boast having the most dynamic, exciting, dominating and fun team in all of sports? Maybe the Bill Walsh 49ers?
With no disrespect to the three-ring Giants or the Bash Brothers A’s, none of them made the impact on the sports world as a whole that the Warriors have made.
You know all the good stuff about the Warriors, but Thanksgiving is a day for enthusiastically stating the obvious. Look at me! I’m taking on lard like the hold of the Pequod. So, the Warriors are the coolest show on Earth.
They even brought excitement to a game against the Lakers on Wednesday night at Oracle. First, the Warriors have energized an inexperienced Lakers team by donating coach Luke Walton, who has his guys playing way over their heads.
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Walton made a rookie mistake by telling his players that the Warriors might be vulnerable because they would be nervous, fearing an embarrassing second straight loss to the Lakers.
Yeah, no. Steve Kerr apparently told his guys, “OK, our 14-game period-of-adjustment dress rehearsal is over. Let’s show the Lakers what nervous looks like.”
The Warriors broke out the trapezes and flaming hoops. Oop-dunks, three-balls, double-hockey assists, power blocks (there you go, Granny). In a dazzling first half, the Warriors scored 80 and had 26 assists (eight by Dishmaster Draymond Green) on 29 field goals. Have mercy.
Kevin Durant posted up a smaller man on the low block, got the ball for a sure-thing turnaround that he would have taken 100 percent of the time in Oklahoma City, and slipped it to rookie Patrick (“I Must Be Dreaming”) McCaw slashing through the lane.
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Stephen Curry scored 24, Durant 19. In the half.
“Oh,” said Walton’s young fellows, “so that’s what all the fuss is about.”
League sources are still checking into the legality of Kerr’s rotation. When Kerr sends in the Warriors’ second team late in the first quarter, off the bench after an early rest pops Durant. Come on.
Anyone worried that the Warriors lost a lot of heart and fun when they lost Mo Speights and Leandro Barbosa will be glad to know, as Ian Clark hinted Wednesday, that new guy JaVale McGee has picked up some of the slack. On the flight home from the recent four-game road trip, McGee commandeered the cabin microphone and did his impersonation of a flight attendant.
This isn’t just a devastatingly good and fun team, it’s also enlightened. At a recent coaches’ meeting, Kerr was telling his assistants that they all had to find a way to get the team to play with more energy.
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Bruce “Q” Fraser, the assistant coach whose duties include working with Curry on his shooting, broke in and commented, “Look at us. You guys are asking the team to bring energy, look at our energy right now.”
I wasn’t at the meeting, but I picture one or two of the guys dozing off and another gnawing a doughnut while checking his texts.
“My job is fairly meaningless,” Fraser said Wednesday, “but if I’m not bringing some sort of energy and passion to it, how can I expect whoever I’m shooting with (in practice) to do that, especially Steph?”
The Warriors feature the most exciting player in any sport in Curry, the best coach in Kerr, the best fit-in superstar in Durant, the best villain in Green. Maybe the nicest guy, in Klay Thompson, whose dog Rocco is the second-most-beloved dog of every pet owner in the Bay Area. Joe Lacob is on the short list of get-’er-done, enlightened team owners, and Bob Myers, who graduated from college about a month ago, is the Midas general manager.
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More by Scott Ostler
What could go wrong? Plenty, which is something else for which to be thankful, because with no conflict and tension, you have no soap opera.
Oh, the Warriors will face challenges. Opponents have gone from respect, to annoyance to, in some cases (hello, Clippers) snarling disdain.
And no team escapes inner turmoil. On Wednesday at practice, I asked Durant if he’s had a chance to play H-O-R-S-E against Thompson and Curry, maybe the two greatest shooters ever.
“Yeah,” said Durant, a gunslinger glint in his eye. “I kicked Steph’s ass already.”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Enjoy your turducken, fans. All diets begin Jan. 1.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler