Stop Counting

By Jake Appleman

“We hailin’ from East Oakland, California and, um sometimes it gets a little hectic out there…”

I think “Gully State Warriors” might be the greatest thing I’ve ever heard of. (Sam, do you take full credit for that?)

Anyway, I started thinking…

If anything (other than Gully State, of course), these Warriors are, in the literal sense of the words, Souls of Mischief: Ejections; Matchup problems; Unconventional, “do as you want as if authority didn’t exist” basketball; Anti-red state in their thuggish appeal; A renegade bunch of rabble-rousers that’s stunning the NBA to its very core (and court); A Bullet-clad Fedora; A tormented Baron Davis finally wreaking havoc again; A tormented Matt Barnes that nearly quit to play in the NFL (!) finally finding himself; Stephen Jackson.

In case you didn’t get where this comparison came from, Souls of Mischief is/was a seminal early to mid 90’s hip hop group from Oakland, California. Their greatest hit was a song called “93 Til Infinity” off an album of the same name.

Golden State’s playoff drought began in the 92-93 season, a season referred to by most basketball fans as “93”. (Update: The Warriors made the playoffs in 94, losing in three games in the first round, making me a moron and poor fact checker. I apologize for getting your hopes up. I will just watch the game now. Actually, though, if you still want to run with this, just agrue that the 94 Warriors didn’t matter. If I remember correctly, they didn’t matter to each other…)

Even stranger, on gate night ’06, the day before this year’s NBA season tipped off, Del the Funky Homosapien announced that Souls of Mischief were working on their first album in 11 years.

The obvious question: With the drought over and the potential for one of the greatest doubly concidental upsets ever (music and basketball in the same city) looming large, have we reached infinity?

(By the way, I may not be the first person to mention this. If someone else beat me to it, point us in their direction.)