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I.
This was not just one of the best (single-season) teams of all-time, but also one of the most likable teams, renowned for its sloppy half-court shooting competitions during practice, adored for the fact that its star player looked and acted a lot like an average guy (even if he didn’t often play like one). Who knows if they can maintain that likability — and that level of success — as the years go on, but it’s not often that a team captures a championship with such vigor and style, in a way that might literally change the way professional basketball is played. Already, they’ve done everything. And it may only be the beginning.
—Me, in 2015
II.
Please forgive me for quoting myself, but it almost feels like quoting another person altogether. I wrote those words nearly a decade ago, during an extremely brief tenure as a contributor to The San Francisco Examiner; reading them back now feels like transporting myself into an entirely different universe. I wrote them when I was in the midst of my own life transition, fresh off a divorce and entirely clueless about my own future; I wrote them at the moment the Golden State Warriors had transformed from a struggling franchise into a potential dynasty, and when none of the memes about them had fully solidified.
Back then, the Warriors resided in Oakland and I lived in San Francisco; now, the opposite is true. Back then, the Bay Area’s angst was focused on the short-term impacts of the tech industry on our way of life; now, that angst is focused on the long-term consequences of tech’s takeover of society, and the wreckage it’s left in its wake. Back then, the vast majority of country, freshly besotted by social media and delivery apps and entirely skeptical of the notion that a con artist could ever become president of the United States, was still capable of collectively liking things. And for the most part, people liked the Warriors. They were something entirely new. They pointed the way to a more vibrant future.
At that moment, the notion of a Warriors dynasty was nothing more than a fanciful idea. A decade later, the consequences of that idea are actually much larger than a single paragraph could have prophesied: The Warriors and their star player, Stephen Curry, reconfigured the fundamental structure of a sport. Basketball is played in a new way now; it looks completely different than it did before the Warriors. The big idea worked better than we could have imagined.
And now, as their core of stars near retirement age, they’ve reached that point: They are no longer capable of matching the vigor and style of every team that has now adopted the vision for the future they created. They were so thoroughly successful at this thing they created that they rendered themselves obsolete.
III.
Charles Barkley has made such a lucrative career out of trafficking in entertainingly stupid ideas that most of his bullshit eventually gets swept into the dustbin of history. Take this gem, from 2016:
"Maybe I'm old school, but I'm never going to like that little girly basketball where you have to outscore people…I love women's college basketball. But I don't want it in the NBA.”
This is not just the kind of blatantly sexist statement that only Barkley could get away with; it is so incredibly antiquated that it feels like it could have been uttered 50 years ago instead of eight years ago. But Barkley’s carping encapsulated the fear of change that people had about the Warriors at the onset of this dynasty—the fear that somehow their style would “feminize” the sport by emphasizing finesse and shooting over physicality.
In a way, Barkley’s fears were justified: The Warriors did alter the old-school thinking about basketball. During that 2014-15 season, when the Warriors won their first championship, Curry attempted 646 3-pointers, and four other players attempted more than 500; during the 2023-2024 season, 26 players attempted more than 500 3-pointers. In 2014-15, one team averaged more than 30 3-point attempts per game (it was actually Houston, and not the Warriors); in 2024, every single team in the league shot more than 30 3-pointers per game.
The Warriors opened everything up, and sure, it gave us a generation of pale Curry imitators who may rely on the 3-point shot a little too much at times. But it also gave us basketball players like Caitlin Clark.
Even Charles Barkley, in his infinite wisdom, cannot find fault with Caitlin Clark. Because she melds together the best idea of what basketball can be.
The game is better after the Warriors put their stamp on it, and even Barkley cannot deny it—which is why transformed his performative hatred of the Warriors’ Big Idea into a performative hatred for their city. But I suppose Barkley’s way is an entire way of life now: When you’re so blatantly and publicly wrong about something, the only way to dig out of it is to keep being wrong.
IV.
Look, I know how this process works: Something beautiful and new comes along, and people flock to it, and then the imitators come along, and then the contrarians tire of it and pull for its demise. And then several years later, when this thing has largely faded from public view, we all begin to fully appreciate the historical significance. It is the story of pretty much every great rock album of the past 50 years; it is the story behind pretty much every single great documentary of the 21st century.
And it will happen with the Warriors: A generation from now, the same people who glommed onto Charles Barkley’s fulminating idiocy every step of the way will take their children to San Francisco and explain to them what it was like to watch Stephen Curry alter the course of its history.
V.
Before we go, can we talk about Klay Thompson for a moment? Because man, do I love to talk about Klay.
There have been few more soulful athletes than Klay Thompson. Even in a moment of ignominy—an 0-for-10 performance against the Kings in a play-in tournament game that could be his last-ever as a Warrior—he became a symbol of our frustration with AI and tech moguls and the shortcomings of modern society. Klay is just so unbelievably real; everything he does shows on his face. Even now, with his legacy secure, he has that artist’s tendency to veer between self-criticism and self-love.
Anyway, all those years ago, one of my first assignments for the Examiner was an interview with Klay Thompson. I sat down with him for 20 minutes after practice and wrote a piece with this headline:
At that point, Klay Thompson did not know what might happen next. He did not know that this would keep going for another year, let alone another decade; he had endured rumors in recent years that he might be traded for Kevin Love.
At that point in my life, I didn’t know what would happen next, either. It was by pure chance that I arrived in San Francisco at the right time; it was by pure chance that I was there to witness the birth of an undeniably brilliant idea.
Whatever alternate universe we might live in without the modern-day Golden State Warriors, I am glad I don’t live there. I live here now, in the Bay Area, in an overpriced and troubled region where, a decade ago, a generation of people dreamed of changing the world for the better. Mostly, they left behind a ton of problems. But a few of them, like the Golden State Warriors, actually made their big ideas work.
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Great writing. As always.
nailed it