Gender Sensitivity Key to Achieving Climate Justice — Global Issues

Women attend an event on solutions for implementing gender-responsive climate action at the United Nations in 2019. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown.
  • by Juliet Morrison (toronto)
  • Inter Press Service

A person’s vulnerability to climate change varies depending on their position in society, such as socioeconomic status, dependence on natural resources, and capacity to respond to natural hazards. Since different genders often experience different social standings, gender has emerged as a key element to consider for effective climate planning and adaptation.

Angie Dazé, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion lead at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), says social norms linked to gender in their communities and households influence people’s different roles.

“Gender influences how people experience the impacts of climate change, and it also influences their capacity to respond,” Dazé told IPS in an interview. “Because people play different roles, they’re differently impacted by the same effects of climate change.”

While climate change experiences are context-specific and varied, a growing body of research suggests that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The higher poverty level and lower socioeconomic power make recovery from natural disasters more difficult for women. UN figures also show that women and girls make up 80 percent of those displaced by climate change.

“Gender inequalities create barriers that can exacerbate people’s vulnerability to climate change. And this most often affects women and girls,” Dazé said.

Because social groups experience climate change differently, gender has become more central to the United Nations (UN) climate process and the international discourse around climate action.

Target 13.b of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on climate actionrecognizes the gender-environment nexus. It states that focusing on women is key for increasing climate change planning and management capacity.

Key frameworks encouraging the integration of gender considerations for climate action, such as the enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender and its Gender Action Plan, have also been established at recent UN Climate Change Conferences. Agreed upon at COP 25 in 2019, these frameworks promote gender mainstreaming for the parties and the integration of gender considerations throughout the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) work and processes.

Still, gender representation remains limited in climate decision-making spaces, and considerations of gender in national policy are inconsistent.

Despite men being just over half of the registered government delegates at UNFCCC plenary meetings from May to June 2021, according to a UNFCCC analysis, they spoke for 74 percent of the time. Attendance at COP gender-related events is also low.

On the national level, only 15 percent of environmental ministries are headed by women, and only a third of national energy frameworks contain considerations of gender. A study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of 89 nationally determined contributions revealed that nearly a quarter have no references to gender.

Pointing to the harm of gender-blind approaches to climate policy, Christina Kwauk, a gender, education, and climate change specialist, told IPS, “the policies that we create could have unintended consequences that perpetuate structures of discrimination or inequality, or gender norms and harmful gender-based practices.

“Current policies or solutions or actions could exacerbate time poverty for women or exclude access to women. Maybe women might not have as much access to these different solutions because of existing gender norms.”

Kwauk credits the progress toward gender mainstreaming as significant but believes it has not reached the pace needed to see a significant impact.

Current gender-responsive climate policies, Kwauk explained, “are all pointing in the right direction. But the underlying systems of inequality and the underlying structures of inequality remain. And as long as those issues are still there, the policy, the discourse, these are good moves in the right direction, but they’re not enough. They’re not changing actual lived experiences the social norms, and the social barriers to participation.”

As an eco-feminist and climate change activist working on land access for women, Adenike Oladosu is familiar with the intersections of gender and the environment. In an interview with IPS, she stressed the need for countries to integrate gender throughout various sectors better and—pointing to her home country of Nigeria—the need for governments to legalize and implement their gender action plan throughout all sectors.

Oladosu believes that this action is paramount to improving the representation of women in global fora.

“When we see that gender is important in different sectors, it improves the representation of women in conferences because we are able to execute every action we take in a gender-sensitive manner,” Oladosu said. “It all has to start from individual countries, trying to improve gender sensitivity in their barriers, or trying to integrate gender-sensitive approaches in their various sectors.”

Empowering women can also help create new solutions to mitigate the climate crisis. Drawing upon her advocacy work, Oladosu emphasized that tapping into women’s indigenous knowledge as caretakers of the land and facilitating land access for women leads to new solutions for mitigating the climate crisis.

UN data shows that when women are provided with the same resources as men, they can increase agricultural yields by 20-30%, reducing hunger.

Overall, gender is key to consider—and women are paramount to involve—for a just and equitable fight against climate change.

“Women make up half of the population of the world,” Oladosu said. “So, if you take them away or leave them behind in solving the defining issue of our time, it definitely is going to affect the solutions that are brought up, or by now, we would have achieved climate justice.”

IPS UN Bureau Report


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Small Bitcoin whales may be keeping BTC price from ‘capitulation’ — analysis

Bitcoin (BTC) could still see a major price capitulation, but more whales need to start selling first, data suggests.

In one of its daily QuickTake market updates on May 27, on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant highlighted increasingly bearish whale behavior.

Small whale selling should spark “absolute capitulation”

Amid widespread consensus that BTC/USD should put in a lower low than its May 12 pivot price of $23,800, some of Bitcoin’s largest holders are showing signs of impatience.

Looking at unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) from various “bands” of whale wallets, CryptoQuant contributor Binh Dang flagged selling from the top cohort increasing since April.

Those entities with $1 million or more, known as “giant” whales, have upped their distribution of coins, while smaller whales — those with under $1 million — have been slower to shift their position.

“After the dip was at the end of January, we still saw the accumulation because all of the leading value bands went up, but from the 21st of April to now, giant whales (range over 1M$ – USD) have been distributing and do not get any signals to accumulate now,” Dang explained.

“If minor whales and retailers give up, I think we will see the absolute capitulation and bottom also. If not, I will keep an eye on positive movements in the range of $1M to consider a reversal.” 

An accompanying graphic showed realized supply from giant whales decreasing sharply, with $100,000-$1 million whales only now beginning to follow suit.

By contrast, the $10,000-$100,000 and $1,000-$10,000 bands showed no signs of capitulation.

“Giant whales keep going on the distribution. Minor ones and retailers keep the defensive state,” CryptoQuant lead on-chain analyst Julio Moreno added in private comments to Cointelegraph.

Data from fellow on-chain analytics firm Glassnode meanwhile confirmed an overall decrease in the number of entities qualifying as whales.

Once again, an acceleration since April pointed to whale distribution, and as of May 27, overall whale numbers were at their lowest since July 2020.

Bitcoin entities with a balance above 1,000 BTC vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: Glassnode

Eyes on volume triggers

Earlier in May, whale buy levels formed key support targets below $27,000.

Related: Bitcoin ‘good to go up’ after BTC price hits lowest since Terra crash

For on-chain monitoring resource Whalemap, these were of interest in the aftermath of the initial May 12 dip.

In subsequent analysis, researchers showed that capitulatory events of the kind forecast for BTC/USD required coins moving at both a profit and a loss in elevated amounts.

“On May 12th both profits AND losses were higher than usual,” part of an explanatory tweet stated, alongside a chart of moving profit/ loss (MPL) data.

“A good example of capitulation was in Dec 2018 when similar MPL activity was present (but at a much larger scale).”

This week, on-chain transaction volume saw a noticeable increase, Cointelegraph reported.

Bitcoin moving profit/ loss (MPL) vs. BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: Whalemap/ Twitter

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.



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Big Tech Including Twitter, Google to Face Impact on Revenue Growth as Advertising Trends Dissipate: Report

After unprecedented revenue growth last year, digital platforms including Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Snap and Twitter now face a sobering reality as pandemic-driven advertising trends dissipate, according to an analyst report on Thursday.

Research firm MoffettNathanson cut its 2025 revenue estimates for each of the four companies by double-digit percentages.

US digital ad spending surged 38 percent in 2021 over the previous year. Alphabet, the largest digital advertising platform in the world, posted record revenue of $257 billion (roughly Rs. 19,95,499 crore) that year.

While the companies have warned of pressure from inflation, the Ukraine war and the end of a COVID-induced lift to advertising, the report estimates for the first time the potential impact to revenue over the next few years.

“After years of uber-bullishness, we are truly concerned about longer-term growth in digital advertising,” wrote Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, in the report.

Growth in the advertising market last year was driven in part by an “unprecedented spike” in profitability at companies that saved money on office space and expansion and had more to spend on marketing, as well as brands spending on ads to drive customers to shop online, Nathanson wrote.

But e-commerce as a percentage of retail sales has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, and corporate expenses are likely to rise as workers return to the office, according to the report.

The firm said it now expects online advertising in the United States to grow by 12.5 percent annually through 2025, down from the previous estimate of 18.5 percent annual growth.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Stranger Things 4 Episode 1 Gets Warning Card Following Texas School Shooting

Netflix has added a warning card to the Stranger Things 4 premiere in the wake of the Texas school shooting incident.

The warning card reads, “We filmed this season of Stranger Things a year ago. But given the recent tragic shooting at a school in Texas, viewers may find the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. We are deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts go out to every family mourning a loved one.”

This warning will appear before the prior season recap that auto-plays at the beginning of Stranger Things 4 episode 1 for viewers in the US only, Variety reported.

Netflix has also edited the description for the premiere to include the note, “Warning: Contains graphic violence involving children,” and added “disturbing images” to the show’s rating advisories.

The warning and note are in reference to the first eight minutes of Stranger Things 4 episode 1, that were released to YouTube by Netflix earlier this week. In response to the Texas mass shooting, that video has been taken down by Netflix.

The incident took place on Tuesday (local time in the US) after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults. The gunman was later killed by law enforcement officers.

Created and directed in parts by The Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things 4 stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Cara Buono, Brett Gelman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Eduardo Franco, and Joseph Quinn.

Stranger Things 4 is out Friday, May 27 at 12am PT / 12:30pm IST on Netflix worldwide.


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Golden State Advances to Sixth NBA Finals in Eight Years

Warriors! Come out and plaayyyy!

Wow. The Golden State Warriors are back in the NBA Finals for the sixth time in eight years after their 120-110 series-clinching win over the Dallas Mavericks.

The win is sweeter when you remember where the Warriors were after their 2019 NBA Finals loss to the Toronto Raptors.

A lottery finish in 2020 and a play-in tournament flameout in 2021 wasn’t enough to stop the Warriors’ core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green from dreaming of coming back to the FInals again. The Dubs (53-29) finished the regular-season with the third-seed in the Western Conference playoffs. The 2021-22 campaign was highlighted by Curry becoming the all-time king in long-range shooting and Thompson’s long-awaited return.

To get to this point, the Warriors beat the Nuggets in a gentlemen sweep, outlasted the Grizzlies in six games, and beat the Mavericks in five games.

“This is a blessing,” Curry said. “Obviously, this is a team effort with what Draymond said, for us to be out the mix the last two years. To be where we belong back in the Finals — this is special.”

“Everything about it is special. . We know this isn’t the ultimate goal, but we have to celebrate this cause of all we went through these last three years.”

Game 6 Thompson (32 points on eight made threes) made an early appearance to help the Warriors close out the Mavericks on Thursday’s Game. The five-time All-Star scored 19 points on five triples, giving Golden State a 17-point lead on this dagger-three that Thompson celebrated with a Curry-like shimmy.

In the second-half, Golden State grew their lead to as many as 25 points after Curry (15 points, nine assists) knocked down a floater. Luka Doncic (28 points, nine rebounds, six dimes) then woke up from his sleepy start and scored 15 points in the third frame, helping to engineer a 15-4 run that cut the deficit to eight points powered by back-to-back triples from Luka Magic.

However, that’s as close as Dallas would get. The Warriors scored five straight points to bring the lead back to 15, and the Golden State Big 3 of Curry, Green (17 points, six rebounds, nine assists, including seven in the fourth), and Thompson scored 15 points to close Game 6 out, with Curry and Thompson knocking down consecutive three-pointe to build a 16-point lead with 2:02 left in the game.

“You’re going to make me emotional, man,” Thompson said, smiling from corner to corner. “It’s hard to put in words — I dreamt of this day. There were some dog days, and to be here, I’m so thankful for our squad they started the season so incredibly well, allowed us to finish out strong, and we are four wins away from a championship.”

With the WCF series wrapped up, Curry became the first-ever Magic Johnson Trophy winner. The Warriors await the winner of the Heat-Celtics series, the Celtics lead the series 3-2. Golden State will host Game 1 of the FInals when they begin on June 2.



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Swinburne Uni brings Web3 firms to class

Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology has partnered with two financial technology firms which will provide its students exposure to the financial technology and cryptocurrency business world.

The partnership is between Swinburne and small business loan provider Judo Bank along with Banxa, a payment service provider with a fiat to crypto platform whose clients include Binance, KuCoin, and Trezor amongst others.

Students of the university’s Master of Financial Technology (FinTech) course will be “exposed to real life examples and cases across the spectrum of financial services,” Dr. Dimitrios Salampasis Swinburne’s Director of the Master of FinTech told Cointelegraph.

Dr. Salampasis said Judo Bank is “one of the most innovative FinTech unicorns, one of the very few unicorns in Australia” while Banxa is a “massively interesting organization” who are “very serious in the job that they do in the blockchain and the crypto space”.

“This space is very new. I mean, when I put together the course a couple of years ago, we didn’t really know what that meant. Other universities around the globe have different FinTech offerings, but I believe, particularly for the FinTech space, you need some proper working experience.”

“Maybe they want to show our students some simulations of their processes, do some sort of presentation on their products and services or have a debate,” he said, “maybe even give our students a real project to work on.”

The partnership sees Banxa and Judo Bank co-creating content, hosting lectures and providing case studies. Students will have access to each of the companies networks as part of the partnership, which Dr. Salampasis says will allow the industry to “tap into future talent”.

“The whole vision behind this degree is to bring industry in to ensure relevance on the things we teach, to be able to bring these real life insights for leadership in the classroom. We can ensure the students get exposed to whatever the latest developments are in the space, because the general FinTech space is moving so quickly.”

Dr. Salampasis was 2021’s Blockchain Educator of the Year Awardee from the country’s main industry body Blockchain Australia.

Related: Needed: A massive education project to fight hacks and scams

Cointelegraph reported last week that Dr. Salampasis had been one of the few people Finder spoke to for its regular predictions survey who warned about the inherent risks in the Terra ecosystem which subsequently collapsed.

He said the event had caused terrible publicity for the space, but he was hopeful with more education such situations could be avoided in future.

“In general, blockchain and crypto have received a lot of negative attention and publicity. Part of our role as a university is to ‘de-risk’ the space, to provide real information, real awareness, and educate our students to become the next leaders in the space, to work with people who actually know what they’re doing.”

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Opinion | Biden Vows to Defend Taiwan, But China Has The Upper Hand

President Biden’s recent trip to Asia nearly went off without a hitch — until Taiwan came up. Mr. Biden was asked whether the United States would respond “militarily” if China sought to retake the self-ruled island by force.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s the commitment we made.”

It was one of the most explicit U.S. defense guarantees for Taiwan in decades, appearing to depart from a longtime policy of “strategic ambiguity.” But it’s far from certain that the United States could hold off China.

I have been involved in dozens of war games and tabletop exercises to see how a conflict would turn out. Simply put, the United States is outgunned. At the very least, a confrontation with China would be a massive drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces. Mr. Biden’s comments may be aimed at deterring a Chinese attack, and hopefully they will.

After a decades-long military modernization, China has the world’s largest navy and the United States could throw far fewer ships into a Taiwan conflict. China’s missile force is also thought to be capable of targeting ships at sea to neutralize the main U.S. tool of power projection, aircraft carriers.

The United States has the most advanced fighter jets in the world, but access to just two U.S. air bases within unrefueled combat radius of the Taiwan Strait, both in Japan, compared with China’s 39 air bases within 500 miles of Taipei.

If China’s leaders decide they need to recover Taiwan and are convinced that the United States would respond, they may see no other option but a pre-emptive strike on U.S. forces in the region. Chinese missiles could take out key American bases in Japan, and U.S. aircraft carriers could face Chinese “carrier killer” missiles. In this scenario, superior U.S. training and experience would matter little.

The need to project power across vast distances also makes U.S. forces vulnerable to China’s electronic and cyberwarfare capability. China could disrupt networks like the United States Transportation Command, which moves American assets around and is considered vulnerable to cyberattacks. China may also have the ability to damage satellites and disrupt communications, navigation, targeting, intelligence-gathering, or command and control. Operating from home turf, China could use more-secure systems like fiber-optic cables for its own networks.

Under a best-case battle scenario for the United States, China would attack only Taiwan and refrain from hitting American forces to avoid drawing in U.S. military might. This would allow the United States time to bring its forces into the region, move others to safety and pick where and when it engages with China.

If the United States did ever intervene, it would need regional allies to provide runways, ports, and supply depots. But those partners may be eager to stay out of the crossfire.

I’m not the only one who’s worried. A 2018 congressionally-mandated assessment warned that America could face a “decisive military defeat” in a war over Taiwan, citing China’s increasingly advanced capabilities and myriad U.S. logistical difficulties. Several top former U.S. defense officials have reached similar conclusions.

Mr. Biden’s remarks were made in the context of Ukraine, and America’s failure to prevent that war may be driving his thinking on Taiwan. Mr. Biden may be calculating that Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine will give China pause and that guaranteed U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan would cost Beijing too much, even if it took the island.

But comparing Ukraine and Taiwan is problematic. Beijing views Taiwan — self-ruled since 1949 — as an integral part of Chinese territory since ancient times, a significantly deeper attachment than Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine. Reuniting the island with the mainland is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most cherished goals, and China would see U.S. intervention as a bitter betrayal of the “one-China” principle — the recognition that China and Taiwan belong together, which Washington has endorsed since the 1970s.

China’s military is bigger and more formidable than Russia’s, and its economy far larger, more resilient and globally integrated. Rallying support for economic sanctions against Beijing during a conflict — China is the biggest trading partner of many countries — would be more challenging than isolating Russia.

The White House is once again walking back Mr. Biden’s comments, saying official policy has not changed.

If so, then Mr. Biden should stop rocking the boat and focus instead on strengthening America’s position in the Taiwan theater. This doesn’t just mean more weapons for Taiwan and a more robust U.S. military presence in the region, though the former would help the island hold out if China attacked, and both would boost deterrence.

It also means shrewd diplomacy. Mr. Biden needs to stand firm against Chinese intimidation of Taiwan, while working to ease Beijing’s anxieties by demonstrating a stronger U.S. commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan dilemma. Mr. Biden should also persuade regional friends to provide more bases for the United States to use. This not only increases U.S. operational flexibility, but heightens deterrence.

Whatever Mr. Biden’s calculations, departing from the “strategic ambiguity” that has helped keep peace for decades misses the point. The main question for President Xi Jinping must be not whether the United States would join in, but whether China could beat the United States in a battle for Taiwan. Twenty years ago, China’s poorly trained army and largely obsolete naval and air forces had no chance. But that was then.

Many will applaud Mr. Biden for standing up for democratic Taiwan in the face of Chinese threats. But he could be putting the island in greater danger, and the United States may not be able to come to the rescue.

Oriana Skylar Mastro (@osmastro) is a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Stephen Curry Named the First-Ever Magic Johnson Trophy

Stephen Curry picked up some shiny new hardware after the Golden State Warriors closed the Western Conference Finals on Thursday, beating the Mavericks 120-11.

The Baby-Faced Assassin is the first-ever winner of the Magic Johnson Trophy, the NBA’s newest postseason awarded earlier this month.

Curry won the award after averaging 23.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 7.4 assists per game.

“This is a blessing,” Curry said. “Obviously, this is a team effort with what Draymond said, for us to be out the mix the last two years. To be where we belong back in the Finals — this is special.”

“Everything about it is special. . We know this isn’t the ultimate goal, but we have to celebrate this cause of all we went through these last three years. “

Curry is now 6-0 in conference finals and will be making his six NBA Finals appearances in eight years. The two-time MVP has won three titles with the Warriors, last winning the whole thing in 2018 to end the final chapter of the Warriors-Cavaliers rivalry.

The No. 3 seed Warriors will meet the winner of the Miami-Boston Eastern Conference Finals. No. 2 seed Boston is currently up 3-2 heading into Friday’s Game 6 in Boston.

Although Boston and Golden State split their regular-season series, Golden State (53-29) owns the superior regular-season record. They will therefore hold home-court advantage when the Finals begin on June 2.



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Golden State Headed to NBA Finals After Beating Dallas Mavericks

Golden State will return to the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 2019 after defeating the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals.

Golden State won the series, 4-1, with a 120-110 victory in Game 5 on Thursday in San Francisco.

Because of injuries, the Warriors had spent a couple of seasons wandering through the N.B.A. wilderness. But their celebrated core — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — is together again and playing some of its best basketball, no small achievement considering the team’s triumphant past.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing our guys compete and stay connected and improve and succeed,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said this week. “We’ve been through a lot the last couple of years, so it’s wonderful to be back in this position.”

Golden State won three championships and advanced to five straight finals from 2015 to 2019, before it all began to come unglued. While falling to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 finals, Thompson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and Kevin Durant ruptured his right Achilles’ tendon.

It would get worse. A few weeks later, Durant, who had helped Golden State win two championships, left for the Nets. Four games into the subsequent season, Curry broke his left hand. Golden State finished with the worst record in the league, a humbling blow for a franchise that had seemed on the cusp of establishing itself as a dynasty.

Earlier this season, in a podcast interview with the former player JJ Redick, Green acknowledged his uncertainty about the future — both the team’s and his own — as Golden State labored through that listless 2019-20 season. Without Thompson, who spent much of his time rehabilitating away from the team, and Curry, who appeared in just five games, Green did little to hide his frustrations. He mentored some of the team’s younger players, but he also sulked and shot terribly.

“I couldn’t get myself going,” Green told Redick. “It was never a point where I felt that my window was closing because of my skills or because of what I bring to the table. But if we’re going to suck like this every year, then my window is closed because I can’t get up for these meaningless games.”

Thompson suffered another misfortune when he tore his right Achilles’ tendon in a private workout before the start of the 2020-21 season.

Behind the scenes, though, Golden State’s decision makers were building toward a future — one they hoped would resemble the team’s not-so-distant past. In February 2020, General Manager Bob Myers traded for Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 draft pick in 2014 who had never quite fulfilled his seemingly vast potential with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

With the Warriors, Wiggins would prove he could do a bit of everything: shoot, pass, rebound, defend. On Monday, Kerr described the trade for Wiggins as “the key to all of this.” Golden State’s depth at the wing position had evaporated after the 2019 finals. Thompson was injured. Shaun Livingston had retired. And Andre Iguodala had been traded to the Memphis Grizzlies.

“So the Wiggins trade allowed us to start to rebuild that wing defense,” Kerr said, “and Wiggs has just been so good. He’s gotten so much better over the last couple of years. He’s a perfect fit next to our guys.”

This season, Wiggins was a first-time All-Star as Golden State went 53-29, good for the third-best record in the West. There were other meaningful moments along the way. Curry broke the league record for career 3-pointers. Thompson, after 941 days away, made his long-anticipated return from injury, scoring 17 points — and even dunking — in a win against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

But Golden State did not exactly race into the playoffs. It took time for Thompson to regain his familiar feel for the game, and Curry missed the final 12 games of the regular season with a sprained foot. Over one particularly lean stretch at the end of March, the Warriors lost seven of eight games. It was far from assured that they were capable of making a deep run in the playoffs.

But Golden State needed just five games to eliminate the sixth-seeded Denver Nuggets in the first round, then six to take care of the second-seeded Grizzlies in the conference semifinals.

The Mavericks, despite the best efforts of Luka Doncic, were little more than a speed bump.

“I felt like we had a chance to be a lot better than we were in the regular season,” Kerr said this week, adding: “We believed from the beginning that we could be a pretty good team, and we’re catching some momentum now and trying to ride it out as best we can.”



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