Who's afraid of the big, bad Warriors?

Gravitational forces keep pulling them down.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Canyon With Crows; Georgia O’Keeffe; 1917

Over most of the past decade, NBA fans in the Eastern two-thirds of the United States would fall asleep around midnight with the Golden State Warriors losing badly and surprisingly to some rival, and then the Warriors would storm back to win behind Steph Curry or Klay Thompson, the next morning the people who knew the Warriors won would be treated to a rolling, waking awareness among those who fell asleep before the final buzzer of what happened on Basketball Twitter. It was one of the most delightful things about the Warriors dynasty.

Last night, the same thing happened but in reverse. The Warriors were beating the Clippers by double-digits with Kawhi Leonard out of the game and Paul George in foul trouble, midnight Eastern hit … and the Clippers came back to win.

Brandin Podziemski, Draymond Green and Curry were doing everything they could to keep the Warriors in position to win. But Curry missed a couple of shots that usually (or used to?) go down, and the Warriors fouled Amir Coffey on a rushed 1-on-4 for no good reason, and Klay — who had sat all of crunch time until the final 48 seconds — made a boneheaded foul on Russell Westbrook after a huge Podz three cut the deficit to three. The Warriors made mental mistakes and lost to a team led by James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Amir Coffey.

Oh, and we can’t forget about Norm Powell, who is like a superpower to this Clippers team. He doesn’t need the ball, competes hard defensively and is a dead-eye catch-and-shoot sniper. A perfect role player on this team.

Earlier in the fourth, Mason Plumlee fouled Podziemski unnecessarily hard, earning a light shove from Jonathan Kuminga and a Flagrant-1. That gave Draymond an opportunity to … act like Draymond.