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If you’re a fan of the Golden State Warriors, you know the truth: You will never support a team as good as the Warriors were during their five years at the top of the Western Conference. A race that featured three titles, two MVPs, and an infamous light-year owner comment that is remembered as much for the precision of its sentiment as the inaccuracy of its science.
You have known it for a long time. Long before injuries increased and victories began to dissipate.
After the 2017 NBA Finals, we knew the high point had been reached – the only question was how long it could hold and how slow the decline would be.
And now we have an answer to that second question: not very slow at all.
The climb to the top of the mountain was historically fast for the Warriors. In 2014, they bounced back from the first round of the playoffs. The following offseason featured no notable player moves, and the hiring of Steve Kerr to replace Mark Jackson represented the only notable personnel change.
And then they won the championship in 2015.
The rest, through thick and thin, is a well-documented story, but both the rise and fall are jarring when you look at the timelines:
- May 3, 2014: The Warriors are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs
- May 4, 2015: Steph Curry wins MVP
- June 6, 2015: Warriors win NBA Finals
- May 10, 2016: Steph Curry becomes the first player in NBA history to win MVP unanimously
- April 13, 2016: The Warriors set the NBA record with 73 wins
- June 19, 2016: Warriors lose NBA Finals in seven games
- July 4, 2016: MVP Kevin Durant signs with Warriors
- February 19, 2017: Warriors send four players to All-Star Game
- June 12, 2017: Warriors win NBA Finals after going 16-1 in postseason
- June 27, 2017: Draymond Green wins Defensive Player of the Year
- June 8, 2018: The Warriors sweep the NBA Finals
- July 2, 2018: Warriors sign perennial All-Star DeMarcus Cousins
- April 15, 2019: DeMarcus Cousins tears his quadriceps
- May 8, 2019: Kevin Durant suffers a serious leg injury
- June 3, 2019: Kevon Looney breaks his collarbone
- June 10, 2019: Kevin Durant tears his Achilles tendon
- June 13, 2019: Klay Thompson tears his anterior cruciate ligament
- June 13, 2019: Decimated by injuries, Warriors lose NBA Finals
- June 30, 2019: Kevin Durant leaves to join the Nets
- October 30, 2019: Steph Curry breaks her hand
- March 10, 2020: Warriors fall to 15-60, their worst winning percentage since 2000-01
- March 11, 2020: The season is suspended due to the coronavirus, ending the year of the Warriors
- November 18, 2020: Klay Thompson tears his Achilles tendon
The Warriors went the stonks up meme, and then the stonks down meme, with barely enough time to get a tattoo of Klay and Rocco in between.
We have no way of knowing if there is a direct correlation. It sounds like cruel poetry, but the Warriors may well have paid the price for their success. They may have sold his soul to the devil, only his soul was the actual parts of his body and the devil was Mr. Larry O’Brien. Success requires sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice has long-standing ramifications.
Golden State played in the last game of the year five years in a row. That final game took place roughly two months after the regular season ended, meaning the Warriors not only put an additional two months of games on their odometer each year, but they had two fewer months of summer vacation.
During the Warriors’ five-year career atop the West, Thompson and Green played 104 playoff games, and Curry played 93. That’s the equivalent of one and a quarter seasons, with nine months to go.
Greg Oden’s entire career lasted just one game longer than Thompson and Green played in the playoffs alone during the Warriors dynasty.
It can bite you again, and maybe that’s what happened here.
Or maybe they only got a 64-ounce bottle of lucky shit at once, the same way they got an equally large container of great luck when Curry fell to them with the No. 7 pick, Thompson fell to them in the No. 11, Green slipped into the second round, and Durant was available during an unprecedented and quite ridiculous single peak in the salary cap.
Whatever the reason, the Warriors came up the mountain with historic speed. And they fell just as quickly.
