Sometime in the Golden State Warriors’ future, these past few days will be looked back on with infamy, as both our brains and hearts were brutalized by simultaneous fumbled balls. One misstep leading to another, bridges burned for confusing reasons, a front office that looks inept and feeble, a fan base juggling the twin conditions of frustration and despair.
The acrimonious, emotionally unforgivable finale to the Klay Thompson era, sandwiched between very publicly failing to acquire Paul George and the anticlimactic waiving of Chris Paul’s corporeal form, is perfectly set up to break all perceptions of Warriors greatness that Dubs fans have built up over the years, led in no small part by owner Joe Lacob.
Allowing Paul to walk for nothing, as the Athletic’s Anthony Slater succinctly put it, amounts to a glorified salary dump for Jordan Poole. It was Poole, the flawed but exciting young guard who helped Golden State win its fourth title of the 21st century, who had the gall to put his face too close to Draymond Green’s fist. Yes, it’s quietly agonizing to watch it all unfold, and baby, it might just be getting started.
Mike Dunleavy, formerly a despised player, has pivoted careers and is trying his hand at being a despised general manager, one perhaps slightly more pliant (though perhaps slightly not) than Bob Myers to devote himself to performing the role of a happy hatchet man for the Lacob family and its Order 66 that prioritizes saving money over rebuilding a competitive team as the doomsday clock to Steph Curry’s inevitable decline counts down. Lacob and his crew seem to think their brand will save them when Curry is gone, but he couldn’t be more cosmically incorrect. There is no brand without Curry. The years here will be lean — and sooner than later. Maybe the decades. We’ve been there before.
Make no mistake: What we are witnessing in real time is the absolute eradication of the Light Years mythology, the rending of Warriors exceptionalism. From one standpoint: Great! It was this old-fashioned hubris cloaked in Silicon Valley venture-capital brain that helped drag Golden State to this new brink. A team that once “broke basketball” is now preparing itself for life in a Sisyphean pit of its own design while both allies and enemies crow about the chickens decisively coming home to roost. On the other hand, it’s also what the ancient Greeks called “a real bummer” to witness the team you care about (particularly a team with a still-productive-despite-everything top-10 player in Curry!) sputter to the finish line, and to do it in such shabby fashion, staining by far the most successful era in Warriors history with an undignified final act, a sour taste the Bay Area will remember for a good long while.
What may or may not have happened behind closed doors between Golden State and the Los Angeles Clippers is moot. If, as sources allege, the Clippers were never seriously going to consider trading George to their NorCal nemesis, then what good was the negotiation in the first place? It feels almost like a doomed Kabuki dance designed to placate an increasingly concerned fan base, an excuse for the front office to claim it really tried to pull it off, but circumstances outside its control snatched its victory away, and now the new collective bargaining agreement means it can’t do anything else. But that’s what ownership groups are there for! That’s their entire reason for existence — to spend the money to put a winning product on the floor. They spend money to make money. It’s all raw unencumbered capitalism, but that’s their job. The players win championships, and the only credit owners deserve is how much they were willing to pay for a quality team. Paul George was an obvious, immediate upgrade for a Warriors roster that has struggled since 2019 to anoint a 1B option behind Curry, one that can create shots for himself and for others. George would have been perfect, alas, too perfect.
Your mileage may vary on whatever other upgrades are out there, like Lauri Markkanen. Zach LaVine, who seems likely to be the next casualty of Chicago’s meandering fire sale, could be a risk worth considering, especially if other assets were at play, first-round picks for instance. Of course, why would you trust the front office with draft picks? Hey, at least it can’t draft James Wiseman again!
All the dysfunction and haplessness will require a proper unpacking and accounting when free agency comes to an end, but for now, inside the eye of the storm, we can only observe from a distance — us regular people who love this team and are sentimental about it, protective of it. And it’s the messy divorce from Thompson, who has agreed to join the Dallas Mavericks, that is hitting the hardest.
A player who is so beloved that all of us likely thought he’d retire here instead felt the magnetic need to sail away from the only professional team he’s ever known. The injuries changed him, ravaged not just his body but his sense of self. For such a stoic personality, Thompson is an emotional whirlwind on the floor, a guy with as much pride and fire as anyone in the league. It surely wasn’t easy watching the Warriors draft numerous players over the years who were clearly meant to eventually supplant him as the starting 2-guard. Or being reduced to a spectator as the Warriors started 18-2 on their way to an eventual title. Perhaps the final straw was being benched for Brandin Podziemski, a rookie whose star was ascendant even as Thompson was being written about by the media as if he were a dead man. He wasn’t dead; he was still capable in bursts, but he was very clearly no longer the indefatigable second option he once was, and reckoning with this took a lot out of him. His former never-say-die pugnacity took on a desperate, vengeful shade, shooting his team out of games, forcing the issue and relying on Steve Kerr’s long, merciful rope with his veterans.
What hand Curry and Green had in ameliorating Thompson’s angst is unknown, but their efforts were apparently not enough for a rapprochement. That Thompson ended his tenure with Golden State shooting a bombastic and depressing 0-for-10 in the play-in tournament against the Sacramento Kings is a tragic but not all that shocking culmination for a Warriors legend who refused to go out quietly. Sadly, he decided to go out mad, which feels worse and emblematic of the post-2019 Klay that never quite put it all together again. (Which, of course, how could he?)
In the end, we have to acknowledge that Klay Thompson gave us so much. The Warriors don’t win those championships without him, don’t even reach those NBA Finals they couldn’t quite close without him. Even if this was inevitable, it feels tarnished by the bad vibes, by the what-ifs of it all. These Warriors were supposed to finish their careers with each other. I suppose Lacob and Dunleavy are just doing us a favor by reminding us not to romanticize a billion-dollar enterprise and to not think of their salaried employees as family and friends. Klay will always be royalty in the Bay Area, but something was broken, and the Warriors apparently didn’t care enough to fix it. That’s their right. It’s also Klay’s right to simmer about it. And my right to be melancholy. And concerned. And without much hope.
This team is proudly stuck in neutral at best, mired in play-in purgatory. That should be illegal for a team featuring Curry. Lacob doesn’t really care at this point. He thought it was over five years ago and planned accordingly with his Two Timelines initiative! How many times has this team been finished and written off? At least three! But remember, each time it’s pronounced dead, Curry is a little bit older, a little bit less of a supernova. This death certificate then might be the final word. And the final word might just be … WHY?