Not even the Warriors

As the final seconds ticked off the clock in the first quarter, Steph Curry launched a 90footer that stayed in the air for hours. Eventually, it came down, hit iron and bounced harmlessly to the court. The Warriors trailed 33-32.

The defending champions had no business trailing by only 1. Kyle Lowry scored the first 8 points of the game, the first 11 for the Raptors and finished the quarter with 15, massacring the Warriors’ switch-heavy defense that was once the backbone of a dynasty. No one on the Warriors had anything for him, or for Fred VanVleet or Pascal Siakam. But the Warriors would not go away. They stuck around, flashing the brilliance that made them champions. They also could no longer get over the top.

Klay Thompson stopped the bleeding, scoring 10 points in the first on the way to a signature Klay game. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. The Warriors lost Game 6 to the Raptors, failing to complete a three-peat as an unending series of injuries stripped away everything that made them untouchable.

There are five Warrior holdovers from the advent of the dynasty: Curry, Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. (Andrew Bogut, who is back from Australian rumspringa this season, absolutely does not count.) At the beginning, the roster was rotten with veterans who had been overlooked, written off, miscast and underestimated. It came together to form the best team of the generation, winning titles with a style that upended conventional wisdom. Now those veterans are retired or have moved on, taking much of that old identity with them.

Losing Kevin Durant trumps everything, of course. So does losing Thompson in the third quarter, who scored 30 points in 32 minutes in the sort of game that had saved the Warriors countless times before. But it isn’t just about the players who are missing. The difference shows up in the plays where the Warriors used to make magic, and now only fizzle.

Midway through the second