The fans: The faithful packed Oracle for a watch party and were not ready to say goodbye.
Thousands of fans filed out of Oakland’s Oracle Arena on Monday, not ready to say goodbye to the Warriors East Bay home just yet.
They nearly filled the lower deck, cheering their hearts out, going hoarse with too many “Let’s Go Warriors” as they willed a one-point win from afar despite what had been a 3-1 deficit to the Toronto Raptors.
The never-say-die crowd had hoped, perhaps prayed, it wouldn’t be the last time they’d root for the Warriors in Oakland.
Every two-point shot yielded a deafening cry while the 3pointers seared the arena’s Roaracle nickname into the rafters.
Not yet, they said. Not quite yet.
“Not today,” said Roma Bautista as she climbed the steps to leave, adding it was a close game and she had feared she’d have to say goodbye to Oracle and a championship trophy in one night. “I was preparing myself; but not today, Raptors. Not today.”
Folks from across the Bay Area and California had lined up before the doors opened at Warriors home to watch their team play on big screens, chanting “Warriors,” and hoping Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant, some 2,600 miles away in Toronto, could somehow hear them.
By the middle of the first quarter, the the upper seats of the arena were still mostly empty, but it seemed as if everyone filling the lower deck was taking on double duty when it came to roars as Curry made his first bucket.
If this was to be the last game of the season, Warriors fans were not walking gently or quietly into the night.
The cheers gave way only to a brief groan as Kevin Durant limped off the court in the middle of the second quarter.
Even with Durant’s departure, no one inside Oracle believed the Warriors would lose Game 5 of the Finals, ending the season and their storied history in the East Bay arena with a loss. At least none would admit it. Any doubts were pushed aside with a fervent “this can’t be the end.”
“Not gonna happen, not the last game,” said Skip Tademy, who drove up from Los Angeles. “Coach Kerr said. Steph said. Warriors Nation says. We’re going to win it in Toronto.”
Xochi Hung, 11, got a little worried, however, as the Raptors pulled ahead and the referees, she thought, started favoring the Canadians.
“The refs were biased,” she said with conviction. The score, she added, should have been “maybe 103 to maybe in the 90s — not so close.”
With the Warriors winning Game 5, they will be back home on Thursday. Goodbye would have to wait until another day.
The team stores continue to be stocked with half-price jerseys, including those with the Oakland tree logo and “The Town.”
Justin Dizon of Hayward already had one of those, as did his 5-year-old son, Arieus Rook Dizon. He’d always wanted a Warriors jersey that represented the team’s Oakland roots. He said he’ll still wear it next year, even when the team is 11 miles to the west.
“It’s just the end of an era,” he said of the move. “It’s bittersweet.”
But he plans to continue going to games when the team moves to San Francisco next year.
“They’re still the Bay Area’s team wherever they play,” he said, adding that a championship team deserves a new arena.
In the meantime, he unconditionally believes the Warriors will land in San Francisco as reigning champs.
And yet, even if the Warriors pull out the two wins needed to take the series in a Game 7, the victory would come in Canada. It won’t be the goodbye in Oakland that Michelle Haberman dreamed of when the Warriors made it to the finals — celebrating the last game in Oakland by lifting a trophy.
“They won’t have that now,” she said. “We did not get the storybook ending.”
She still wants the trophy.