Ann Killion: Thursday farewell to Oracle will be emotional.
Oracle finale: Game 5 win ensured one last night in Oakland’s arena
For years, during the long, slow departure, we’ve been wondering how we were going to say goodbye to Oracle Arena. With a championship bang? With a disheartening loss? With an unmemorable event, or a moment of consequence? Now we know. What will take place Thursday in Game 6 of the NBA Finals will be the last, loudest farewell to a building that you’ve likely ever heard.
It will be emotional, with an edge and an urgency as well as a legacy to honor.
“Our goal was to get them back on the plane, get them back to Oakland,” Warriors guard
Klay Thompson said. “We owe our fans one more game at Oracle.”
They will get one, something we might not have expected as late as with three minutes remaining in Game 5.
Instead, the Warriors will play an elimination game in a hurricane of emotions. The team and their fans are surfing a wave of feelings. There is a Game 6 to play, and possibly a Game 7, and the engine will be fueled by a mix of sadness and anger, outrage and loyalty, pride and determination.
The sadness is for Kevin Durant. The Warriors are ripped apart by the devastating injury to their teammate, a man they played with, competed with, watched rehabilitate to get back on the court. He’s their teammate, brother, friend.
Game 6 will be, in part, about honoring Durant’s legacy, which was forever changed in 12 minutes in Game 5. He came back to play for his team and ended up sacrificing everything in the process; no one ever again can doubt his heart or the bond between the men who make up the Warriors. “We do it for Kevin,” Thompson said when asked how the team will push forward. “We do it for K. … You think of him every time you dive for a loose ball or go for a rebound. I know how bad he wants to be out there.”
If Durant’s Achilles injury is as bad as feared — he was scheduled to have an MRI exam Tuesday — it means the most sublime player in the league will lose a year of his prime. That his career trajectory will be altered forever. That, for likely a full year, he will be robbed of the thing he loves most, the instrument of his brilliance.
“He gave us what he had, he went out there and sacrificed his body,” guard Stephen Curry said. “The shared experience we have is way more important long-term than anything that happens on the court. I feel so bad for him.”
Curry was flushed with emotion, from the moment he trailed down the hallway behind Durant — while he was still needed in the game — to the postgame on-court interview to the locker room where he teared up upon seeing his general manager’s emotional news conference to his own podium news conference. He left the building flushed, barely keeping it together.
The collective sadness will be whisked into some residue of anger and outrage. The Warriors were furious that a loud contingent of Raptors fans cheered when Durant went down.
“That was freaking bulls—,” Thompson said.
Until that moment, the worst behavior of the Finals had come from Warriors minority owner Mark Stevens. The series had been primarily one of mutual respect. But hearing fans cheering for a devastating injury left not only the Warriors and their fans aghast, but the Toronto players as well.
“We don’t want that type of stuff,” said guard Kyle Lowry, who was one of the players urging the Toronto crowd to show respect. “We’re all brothers. It’s a small brotherhood, and you never want to see a competitor like him go down.”
The anger will cause Warriors fans to close ranks even tighter around the team. They’ve typically been protective and defensive about their superstar player who arrived in 2016 and helped the team win two more titles. Now Durant’s Warriors legacy and story are dramatically altered, but his 12 minutes of play Monday defined him with a new clarity.
Brilliant. Determined. And, more than anything, an integral piece of this team, this moment, this Warriors era.
The team is in a fragile place. General manager Bob Myers wept at the podium in a rare display of pure love and raw emotion that an executive feels for a player.
“Kevin just wants to play basketball and right now he can’t,” Myers said. “Basketball has gotten him through his life.”
Love and loyalty. Sadness and anger. Nostalgia and memories.
And pride. So much pride.
“We’re done with proving people wrong,” Stephen Curry said Monday.
In other words, do not doubt the Golden State Warriors.
Not when they’re wounded. Not when they’re still alive. Not when they have a teammate to honor and a legacy to uphold.
It’s going to be a hell of a way to say goodbye.