Warriors trophy clocks serious summer mileage
As Larry’s personal bodyguard, Katie Smith watches for potential threats. The highest-risk situations are when the 14½-pound Larry, so shiny he acts as a mirror of sorts, is around toddlers.
During a photo opportunity last month in Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia, a young boy — no older than 4 — gave Larry a shove. Smith
hopped onto the stage. Someone had already caught the tipping Larry, but it was a scary enough run-in to still resonate with Smith four weeks later.
“I feel like he’s a member of my family,” said Smith, a Warriors event coordinator. “I protect him.”
“Him” is the Larry O’Brien championship trophy. While Golden State’s players have tried to rest since their championship-sealing victory on June 12, Larry has traveled more than 33,000 miles — many of them alongside Smith.
There were meetings with corporate sponsors, media outlets, fans and basketball campers. There were trips to the hometowns of Patrick McCaw (St. Louis), Shaun Livingston (Peoria, Ill.), Ian Clark (Memphis), Kevin Durant (Seat Pleasant, Md.), Steve Kerr (San Diego), JaVale McGee (Flint, Mich.) and Zaza Pachulia (Tbilisi).
That was Larry on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with Draymond Green two days after the Warriors’ Game 5 win over Cleveland in the NBA Finals. Larry was there at the championship parade, McGee’s charity softball game at Oakland Coliseum, the San Francisco Pride Parade and McCaw’s alma mater, UNLV. Larry’s twin, a replica housed in the NBA offices, joined Stephen Curry in China and South Korea, and Durant in India.
“The Warriors helped me make my dreams come true, taking the trophy back home for a couple days,” Pachulia said. “It was an amazing experience. Moments that I’m never going to forget, honestly.”
Traveling with Larry is a high-stakes endeavor. Though valued at $13,500, he might as well be priceless. There is no replacing the symbolic significance of the trophy that the Warriors doused with Champagne.
To ensure Larry’s safety, Golden State took numerous precautions. At least one fulltime employee, typically Smith, ushered him to every appearance. Larry always flew on United Airlines, which has a partnership with the Warriors. A team staffer purchased Larry his own seat on the flights. Plane tickets included his name (“Larry Trophy”) and his birth date ( June 5, 1977; the first time he was given to an NBA champ).
Shortly after booking flights, a Warriors employee alerted Fraz Zahid, United’s operations manager at San Francisco International Airport, about Larry’s upcoming itinerary. It was Zahid who oversaw Larry’s path from the security line to his seat. Encased in a 4-foot tall, bolt-studded black box with wheels, Larry rode through the X-ray conveyor belt.
Because the NBA prohibits Larry from being opened in front of large groups, TSA agents inspected him in the United Club lounge. Airport employees and people awaiting flights there often seized the opportunity to pose with him.
“We take every trip very, very seriously,” Zahid said, “but we definitely have fun, too.”
Said Smith: “Sometimes I just like to put him through the X-ray, then watch the operators’ faces light up when they see the image pop up on the screen. You see their eyes get big, and then they kind of give me a smile like, ‘You got
?’” Larry stands 2 feet tall. Designed to look like a basketball about to enter a net, he is made by Tiffany and Co. — approximately 16 points of sterling silver and vermeil with a 24karat gold overlay.
Larry, whose current design was created by Tiffany in 1984, has been basketball’s top prize since his introduction four decades ago. Growing up outside Grand Rapids, Mich., in the 1990s, Smith saw Larry on TV and daydreamed about being the first woman to play in the NBA.
In 2012, after six years as logistics coordinator for a circuit-board manufacturing company in Auburn Hills, Mich., she moved to Oakland eyeing a career in sports. It took two years as a nanny before Smith finally found parttime work in the A’s premiumseating department.
Soon enough, she added part-time jobs in corporate sponsorship for the Raiders and events for the Warriors. In fall 2015, only months after Golden State won its first NBA title in 40 years, Smith was hired full time as Larry’s unofficial bodyguard.
Today, that Larry is so overpolished that portions of his gold overlay have given way to a silver hue. Smith regularly shines the new Larry with a glove, but she only took him to Tiffany in Walnut Creek once this summer for a polishing.
It was the last day at Tiffany for the employee who polished Larry. An avid Cavaliers fan, he didn’t complain as he made Larry look his best. The employee even obliged when Smith asked him to take a picture with Larry.
“Sometimes traveling with Larry can be stressful,” said Matt de Nesnera, a Warriors PR assistant who accompanied Larry on several trips this summer. “But when you see how he brings people together, it makes it all worth it.”