Will the Warriors ever lose? Well, yes but its tough to figure out exactly what it is that will undo the best team in basketball (and maybe the history of basketball) or if itll happen anytime soon. Here, we take a stab at it.
The golden State Warriors are a mess.
Have you seen these guys lately? Just days after the season ended, the team’s GM, head coach and play-by-play guy—their play-by-play guy—were caught on camera cracking jokes about how their best player hasn’t truly earned a max deal and probably won’t stick around anyway. It doesn’t help that that dude keeps overshadowing the guy who used to be their best player. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the team is already openly sizing up bigtime free agents—a clear message that the stars already on the roster apparently aren’t bright enough. Egos are on the line. Feelings are bound to get hurt. Whatever they think they’ve built in the Bay Area, it’s clearly on the verge of falling apart.
At least, that’s one way of looking at things.
In context, the above is obviously an unfairly harsh reading of the state of things in Oakland/San Francisco. Those jokes at Kevin Durant’s expense back in June were clearly just that—jokes, if pretty lame ones—and they came during the Warriors’ NBA championship parade, an event that not only marked the team’s third title in four years, but KD’s second straight turn as Finals MVP. And if those back-to-back FMVP trophies have thrown unintentional shade over the glow emitted by Stephen Curry—the guy whose unforgettable emergence started this whole dynasty, remember—Curry himself hardly seems bothered.
As for those free agents: Why wouldn’t the Warriors be interested in positioning themselves for a run at, say, Anthony Davis in the summer of 2019? Even if they’re coming off yet another title this time next year, they’ve shown they can incorporate an MVP-caliber talent into their already loaded core. And as long as at least some of that core is intact, they’d be crazy not to try to add to it and keep this thing going as long as they can.
This story is from the October 2018 edition of Slam.
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This story is from the October 2018 edition of Slam.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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