Warriors buoyed by culture
Draymond Green sparked wide smiles and rollicking laughter at one end of Chase Center. He made a free throw to win some sort of friendly contest, leading to Green’s signature strut and exuberant highfives with teammates Juan Toscano-Anderson and Nemanja Bjelica.
At the other basket, as a mix of hip-hop and R&B music blared through loud speakers, Stephen Curry and Jordan Poole led a parade of players trying to make 3-pointers from the wing — off the backboard. That’s probably not a shot they’ll try in the NBA Finals, but Curry and Co. thoroughly enjoyed the exercise.
These scenes, at the end of Wednesday’s practice, spoke to the Golden State Warriors’ culture: loose, fun, music-filled, collaborative. This all makes sense for a franchise on the brink of its sixth Finals appearance in eight years.
But their distinctive culture also helps explain how the Warriors weathered two discouraging seasons — especially their league-worst 15-50 slog through the pandemic-shortened, 2019-20 campaign. That kind of record often tears teams apart, but these Warriors emerged intact, together and maybe even stronger.
Now here they stand, on the NBA’s biggest stage once again.
“We never lost our spirit,” assistant coach Bruce Fraser said of the 15-50 season. “If you lose your competitive spirit then you’re in trouble, but we never did. We always felt like we were going to be back.”
They’re back, absolutely. The Warriors became the first NBA team in 55 years to climb from a league-worst record to a Finals appearance in two years or less. They’re only the fourth team ever to achieve the feat, joining the 1967 San Francisco Warriors, 1959 Minneapolis Lakers and 1957 St. Louis Hawks.
Worth noting: There were only eight teams in the league in ’57 and ’59, and just 10 in ’67. Now there are 30, which is another way of saying the Warriors really were bad — epically, historically bad — two years ago.
Their fall from grace was not entirely unexpected, of course. Kevin Durant bolted for Brooklyn. Klay Thompson missed the season while recovering from a torn ACL. Curry missed all but five games with a broken hand.
So the Warriors spiraled into a strange realm, where they absorbed loss after relentless loss. They could have collectively shrugged, knowing they were without three-fifths of
their powerhouse starting lineup from a year earlier. Green wouldn’t tolerate it. “Even when we were getting crushed, the mind-set every day was, ‘How can we win?’ ” he said this week. “It was never, ‘Let’s go out there and, well, see if we’re capable of doing this.’ No, it was always doing things from a place of, ‘This is how you win.’ ...
“We were 15-50 and I felt all of those losses. All of them bothered me. It was never, ‘Oh, we suck, we’ll just move on.’ That was never our mind-set. It was always, ‘How can we get better to get back to the Finals?’ ”
Green’s simmering intensity counts as a central element in the Warriors’ culture. Curry brings his own competitive fire, masked by his perpetually pleasant demeanor, but he shapes the environment in other ways.
Talk to any Warriors player about the team’s “culture” and they inevitably steer the conversation toward Curry. Yes, owner Joe Lacob, general manager Bob Myers and head coach Steve Kerr establish the atmosphere, deciding how much latitude to give players (more than they get with most NBA teams).
And, yes, Kerr makes players feel invested by seeking their input on important decisions. Green and Curry, for instance, essentially decided Kevon Looney would rejoin the starting lineup during the conference semifinals against Memphis.
Still, the Warriors’ culture hinges mostly on Curry. Their best player is also the most universally liked, the one who fosters spirit through his personality. One example: Fraser asked Curry to resume traveling with the team in 2019-20, even when he wasn’t playing, to boost Golden State’s collective spirit. It mattered.
“I think Steph embodies everything we believe in, all the values,” Kerr said. “So Steph’s presence from the very beginning allowed that culture to blossom.”
Or, as Andre Iguodala put it, “Steph kind of sets the tone for everyone else.”
That tone includes a fierce work ethic. Peer past Curry’s smile and his shimmy, beyond the joy he exudes on the court. He also puts in the time on his conditioning and his game, and other Warriors players see that.
Curry regularly came to the team’s practice facility at Chase Center during the lost season of 2019-20. He and Green made sure their teammates knew a quick return to prominence was not only possible; it was expected.
Then, after plodding along for the first 50-plus games last season, the Warriors started to click again. They went 15-5 down the stretch to force their way into the play-in tournament. They didn’t make the playoffs, but they planted the seeds for this season.
Looney sees a clear connection between 15-50 two years ago and a Finals appearance in 2022.
“Even though we were losing, it was still fun to come to work,” he said. “Draymond, Steph and Klay were still around, attacking rehab hard. If those guys aren’t complaining, you can’t complain either. They did a good job of keeping everybody in line.”
Gary Payton II spent time with five other NBA teams (Rockets, Bucks, Lakers, Trail Blazers, Wizards) before joining the Warriors, so he saw first-hand how other teams work. Payton agreed that Curry, Thompson and Green “built the vibe” for Golden State.
The vibe also runs deeper in Payton’s mind. He traced the Warriors’ success, and their ability to bounce back from the past two playoff-less seasons, to their habit of hanging together off the court.
That’s partly why all players on the roster — not only Curry, Thompson and Green — feel like they matter. And that makes a difference.
“This organization is about doing things together,” Payton said. “On the road, we have a lot of team dinners the organization puts on for us. Guys have kids with birthdays and they invite everyone over, complete with family from the front office down.
“I’ve never been somewhere where it’s family-based like that. Players here really care for one another and enjoy watching each other have success. You don’t get that in a lot of places around the league.”