3-year pause felt like forever

Over 1,000 days later, Warriors back in playoffs

Was it worth a 1,039-day wait?

It has been that long since the Warriors were in a playoff series. The last time their core foundation of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson were on the floor together for a series. The last time the Warriors were the NBA’s postseason superstars.

Next weekend, the Warriors will step back into the world they dominated for a glorious stretch — the NBA playoffs.

We will learn more on Monday about Curry’s status, but all signs point toward him being healed from a sprained foot ligament and ready to lead his team back onto the big stage.

And doing it, for the first time, at Chase Center.

(We must dispense with last year’s “play-in” games, which the Warriors lost, first on the road against the Lakers and then at home against Memphis. Though the games felt all the world like the playoffs at the time, the official record shows that the Warriors were not in the playoffs last year.)

The Warriors’ most recent playoff game was June 13, 2019. It ended with sense of foreboding and doom, in a very dark cloud. The Warriors lost Game 6 and the NBA Finals to the Toronto Raptors. And we knew then that it was the end of something.

Kevin Durant had torn his Achilles in Game 5, but already had his good foot out the door — 17 days later, he would sign with the Nets.

Klay Thompson tore his ACL in Game 6.

That game was the last ever at Oracle Arena, and what was supposed to be a celebration instead turned into a wake.

The immediate future looked depressing. The longterm future was going to be different.

But no one in their right mind would have predicted it would be 1,039 days before the Warriors would find their way back to the playoffs. No one could have guessed — not in their most horrific nightmares — that Curry, Green and Thompson would play only one full game together in the next three seasons.

Of course, those are only the basketball things we could never have imagined happening back in June 2019. The idea that a global pandemic would shut down the world — including the NBA — nine months later would have been considered science fiction.

But now, finally, the Warriors are back on the playoff stage.

It has been a difficult, weird, frustrating 1,000-plus day journey to get here.

The wretched losing record in Chase’s first, truncated season — the only silver lining being the Warriors avoiding the playoff bubble. The blow of Thompson’s second devastating injury, tearing his Achilles, just as he was preparing to return to action. The erratic 2020-21 season, with pandemic protocols, an everchanging roster, salvaged only by Curry’s brilliance.

And then this strange season. Fans finally back, but only two of the big three taking turns playing while the other was out with injury. First Thompson, then Green, and — most recently — Curry.

After being the best team in basketball early in the season, the Warriors limped through much of the past two months. Yet, for stretches this season, the Warriors rechanneled their mojo. Rediscovered their joy. They developed young players. They found new pieces.

In the only game that the three foundational pieces of the team played together, in Washington last month, they helped make the Warriors look like a team that would be scary to face in the Western Conference finals.

Yet the process of getting to the postseason was one more piece of the strangeness of the journey. And unfamiliar to any Warriors fans who were minted during the championship era. Instead of waiting to see who would be the eighth-seeded opponent for the always top-seeded Warriors, the team juggled its position and seeding until the very last day of the regular season.

But, as it turns out, the Warriors will start their postseason run at home. Just like they used to.

“Homecourt advantage is a big deal, and we know that,” head coach Steve Kerr said. “I’ve always felt having that extra home game is a big deal.”

Of course, it is a different homecourt advantage than they’ve ever had in the playoffs before. And the memories of Roar-acle will be ever-present.

The Warriors will have a full week of practice, while this year’s play-in games take place, using that time to hopefully get Curry back in the fold.

And then the curtain will rise.

There will be anticipation. Optimism. And, after all that has happened on the path back to the playoffs, a degree of anxiousness.

What there will not be — should not be — is complacency. Not on the part of anyone involved, from front office to coaching staff to players to fans.

“I try not to take things for granted,” Green said recently, speaking of getting to 50 wins.

Those are words to live by this postseason. Waiting some 1,039 days for the Warriors to be back in the postseason, for the Warriors’ Big Three to be back together for more than one game, should teach everyone not to take anything for granted.

The Warriors are back on their stage. Enjoy every moment of it.