We’ll Remember These Warriors, But Not Just Because They Were Champions
I don’t get mad anymore when someone tells me “it’s just a game.”
I just know that they don’t understand, that they’ve never been in a game, or watched a game, that they cared about so much that a loss was as painfully real as anything in “reality.”
People think sports are an escape from life, and they are, but they only can be so because they are life’s perfect metaphor — it’s a parallel. To escape “reality” through sports is to enter another world, only to find that it’s exactly like the one that you just left.
People say wins are just numbers — a championship is just a trophy — but that’s like saying about life: money is just a number, a big house is just a lot of cement. It’s true. And that’s not what matters. Think about what does matter in life — who you do it with, what the ride is like — and it’s the same with sports.
The Golden State Warriors beat the Cavaliers in the 2015 NBA Finals, but that’s not what we’re going to remember. Because let me ask you this: Who won the Finals five years ago? Who was the starting five? I don’t know — maybe you do — but I don’t even care that much.
Jun 19, 2015; Oakland, CA, USA; Golden State Warriors hold the trophy during the Golden State Warriors 2015 championship celebration at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
What we do remember are the teams for the ages, the stories for the ages, and this Warriors team has a lot.
We remember the “Bad Boy” Pistons of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. We remember the bruising duo of Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman, the electric backcourt of Joe Dumars and Isaiah Thomas. We remember them as the NBA’s first team of villains.
We remember the “Showtime” Lakers, and the interplay between Magic up top, Kareem in the middle, and James Worthy on the wing. We remember the Celtics of the ‘80s because of Bird, McHale, and Parish, the Lakers’ arch-nemesises, and the epic battles the teams would have — Magic and Bird, Kareem and Parish.
We remember the “7 seconds or less” Suns with Nash, Stoudemire, Hill, and Barbosa, for their revolutionary style of basketball, pushing it at every chance. Nash would whisk the ball through defenders’ legs, and Stoudemire, his goggles pinned to his face, was perhaps the league’s first small ball center.
We’re certainly going to remember the Spurs and their “Big Three” — really a “Big Four,” as Pop has been there all along — for defying Father Time year after year.
Do we remember the championships? Well, sometimes. But what really sticks with us are the stories, the teams and how they got there.
We remember Steve Nash playing with a disgusting, gushing forehead. We remember Danny Green lighting it up from three, Boris Diaw coming in for Splitter and making us all wonder how any team in its right mind could ever waive him. We remember the redemption stories, like when LeBron finally won his first title and shed the label of a “choker” who could never finish in the playoffs. That’s what we remember; that’s what really makes a winning team.
Can Mike D’Antoni’s Suns be a dynasty if they never won a championship? Can the “Bad Boy” Pistons be a dynasty, after only winning two? I think so — to me, a dynasty is a team we remember, a team whose legacy transcends a number of rings. And more than any number of wins, more than any amount of money accrued, what were remember are the stories, the players and the teams.
With this Warriors team, we’ll remember Draymond Green roasting Steve Kerr at the parade — “24 percent?” “Well we got a championship!”, Andre Igoudala not starting the whole season for the first time in his career, and then starring in the Finals to win the Finals MVP, Stephen Curry’s shot in Round 1 against the Pelicans where he almost blindly threw it up from the corner at the buzzer while being buried by three players, and Riley Curry — “Daddy! You’re too loud.”
Jun 19, 2015; Oakland, CA, USA; Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green (23) speaks during the Golden State Warriors 2015 championship celebration at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
We’ll remember David Lee coming off the bench to spark the Warriors in the Finals, the team dousing Steve Kerr in “water” after he broke the record for wins for a rookie coach, and the Instagram videos of Leandro Barbosa making whatever this sound is while the team sings “Coco” on the plane.
We’ll remember these Warriors, but not simply because they won a title — this season is so much more than that. Because in basketball, just like in life, we care about stuff — only it’s not the championships that we think it is, it’s not the money that we think it is. Because if it were just about championships, then they would be right, it would just be a game.
Draymond Green, at his press conference after the finals, said that no one “could ever take away” this season; criticism would come and go, but it would be with him forever. But trophies are just metal, a lot of people would look at his tears and say: “Sheesh, he just won a game.”
I hope someday, they’ll get to feel that it’s so much more.
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