SO who gets to win when two generations of Golden State Warriors teams in ‘Run TMC’ and ‘Dub Nation’ play against each other?
There’s no doubt in Tim Hardaway’s mind his high-scoring trio of Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin will beat the triumvirate of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.
“In our rules, we’ll kill,” said the 51-year-old Hardaway, currently visiting the country to promote the NBA 3X Philippines presented by AXA this weekend. “We’ll beat them up bad.”
But put Kevin Durant in the equation, and it’s a different story as far as the five-time NBA All-Star is concerned.
“But now Kevin Durant, oooohh man,” said Hardaway as he drew laughs from his audience at the Upper Ground room of Makati Diamond Hotel.
“I’ll tell you, that guy right there, he’s something special,” he added. “They say he’s about 6-11, but he plays with jump shoes on, so he’s really seven feet. And what he can do and how he can do it at seven feet, he can handle the ball, makes shots anywhere in the court, he just puts it to another level.”
With Durant on board, the Warriors have won back-to-back championships both at the expense of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, including a 4-0 sweep of the finals just last season.
In Durant’s first year with the team, Golden State went 16-1 in the playoffs to register the best winning percentage of .941 in NBA playoffs history.
Still, Hardaway likes his team’s chances against the Dubs even with the presence of Durant.
“I’m not going to say they would win,” he said with a big smile on his face. “I’m just saying he (Durant) puts in another spin on it, he puts another something else to it.
“It would be a tough war between us. We’ll probably have to quit because we will be beating each other up.”
Hardaway pointed out though, Curry and Co. are playing the same type of ball ‘Run TMC’ had been doing in the late 80s and early 90s.
“What they’re doing now, we’ve been doing back in 91 and 92. The way the Golden State Warriors are playing right now, we’ve been doing that in 89, 90, 91, and 92,” he said of the fast-paced, run-and-gun type of game implemented by then coach Don Nelson.
“Exactly the same way, just come down, passing cut, backdoor, backscreen. They averaged about 18 to 20 threes, we averaged about 15 to probably 18 threes a game. It was the same type of style that they are running now,” said Hardaway.
The show lasted for only four seasons before Golden State management decided to break up the trio by trading away Richmond to the Sacramento Kings just before the 1991-92 season.
“Once we lost Mitch, that was tough and that was devastating for the team,” recalled Hardaway.
But had ‘Run TMC’ stayed together a little bit longer, Hardaway believes they could have given the Warriors an NBA title back then.
“If we had stayed together, I think we could have made a run at an NBA championship. We only need some pieces here and there,” he stressed.
Get more of the latest sports news & updates on SPIN.ph