Homeless fans take pride in neighboring Warriors
It’s 5 o’clock Friday afternoon, tip-off time for the Warriors vs. Pelicans playoff game from New Orleans. Bobby Ray Wright is trying to get the radio broadcast of the game on his phone.
Wright, in his 70s, sits in front of his tent in Lafayette Square, a little park one block from the Warriors’ headquarters and practice facility in downtown Oakland.
There are maybe 15 tents pitched in the square, and another five or six trashy heaps of canvas and tarp that were tents the day before, but were left behind by people lucky enough to score real housing nearby.
Wright, wearing a stylish Warriors Chinese-heritage hoodie that somebody gave him, fiddles with his phone, then puts it down and shakes his head.
“Not enough battery.”
Wright forgot to charge his phone earlier, using a nearby streetlight. Somebody pried loose an access door on the light pole and tapped into the circuit. Free juice for the homeless, but now it’s too late — game’s on.
Of the 30 or more people living in the park, most seem to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable Warriors fans. But one challenge of being a homeless Warriors fan is simply
keeping up with your boys.
When one of these folks can manage to stream the game on a phone, live or via YouTube replay, or get the game on radio, a group will gather.
“We put the phone right there on the table, like a movie theater,” says Tonya Smith.
If that doesn’t happen, they mostly scatter to catch the game — to nearby bars, to homes of friends and family. Or they wait until the next day to find out how their Dubs fared.
The irony is not lost on these folks: Ardent Warriors fans living virtually in the shadow of their team’s gleaming headquarters struggle to simply watch or listen to the games.
“That’s where they practice, right there!” says Cedrick Montgomery, pointing at the top of the Warriors’ building peeking over the roofs of closer buildings.
The proximity provides a tangible connection with the Warriors. Most of the players drive past the park on their way to and from practice.
One day Kevin Durant stopped at a red light, lowered his window and had a brief chat with park resident Jerry Brown, known here as Governor.
Last season a Warriors player came to Lafayette Square and handed out a load of team T-shirts and socks. The folks don’t remember which player it was, but I checked with the Warriors and they are pretty sure it was James Michael McAdoo, who is no longer with the team.
Kevon Looney, the Warriors’ emerging young center, has had food delivered to the park.
The people in the park feel the Warriors are not only their team, but their boys. Their neighbors.
If you want to talk Warriors, pull up a park bench.
Arthur Porter says he’s been a Warriors fan since the late ’60s, when he was 8 or 9. He understands that every sports team has its ups and downs.
“We all go through intensive times,” Porter says, “and this is one of those sweet times that we are having here in the Bay Area. They have a dynasty team. (Head coach Steve) Kerr has brought that franchise up to be a prosperous team, and the Bay Area is prospering from it.”
Prosperity. On a picnic bench is a large stack of aluminum trays, the remains of a meal dropped off by a nearby church, restaurant or shelter.
As modern Oakland springs up around the one-square-block park — high-rise apartments, office buildings and hip restaurants on every side — Lafayette Square persists as an island of homeless squalor.
Every evening about dusk the park is invaded by rats, scampering out of holes in a long dirt berm near the tents.
“Running all through here, playin’, man, like cats!” says Governor Brown.
Wildlife knowledge is useful.
“Oh, man,” says Wright, dismissing the annoying nightly invasion, “as long as you don’t (corner) a rat, he ain’t gonna bite you.”
Lafayette Square was a park when Oakland was incorporated in 1852. It was the original site of the Chabot Observatory. In 1999, the square was renovated and reopened as a symbol of hope and change in Oakland.
Now, the park offers not much of either.
Some take notice. Raiders defensive lineman Bruce Irvin and a teammate put on a barbecue in the park last year and handed out clothing and $50 gift certificates.
Now it’s basketball season, and the Warriors are all the talk.
“I think it’s beautiful how the Warriors stepped up without (guard Stephen) Curry, first and foremost, and did what they needed to do as a whole,” says Edward Rodriguez, a Warriors fan dating to the Rick Barry days. “And what they did, also, they gave time for the newcomers to step up, let the veterans rest while they get the young ones good enough to be potential candidates.
“Not trying to say we don’t need Curry, or Durant, etc., but the youngsters have stepped up their game, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
Quincy Collins, who lived in the park about four years, says, “It’s all in the coaching. They had a good black coach (Mark Jackson), then they got rid of that coach and they put another coach in (Steve Kerr), but he is just as good as the black coach. And it’s that coach that’s really the reason why the Warriors are where they’re at right now, because he knows how to rest his players.”
Porter adds that Curry leads the way, but “it’s a team effort, it really ain’t no one player. Kerr knows how to rotate his bench. Every player is a starter, no matter when you come in. They all formulate into one big circle, you know what I mean?”
The tents are sheltered by the branches of a massive, ancient oak tree. Brown says this is the very oak tree that was used as the model for the city’s logo, and for the artist rendering of an oak tree on the front of the Warriors’ “The Town” jerseys.
It certainly looks like the logo tree, massive and twisted, but I found no evidence to back the claim that this is the tree. Still, if that belief helps these people bond with their city and with their team, why poke holes in the story?
As the Warriors take a beating in New Orleans, Lafayette Square is quiet. No telecast or broadcast of the game here on this particular night, but it’s just as well. The Warriors are getting crushed. Who needs the added despair?
“This is a rough time of our lives — we trying to make the best of it,” says Wright.
He sits at his tent, meticulously cleaning a pair of vintage blue and gold Air Jordans he rescued from a pile that some Samaritan heaped on a nearby bench not long ago. He keeps them super clean.
“Dirty Air Jordans, that’s an insult,” Wright says. “Everybody be talkin’ about you.”