A crowning achievement
Warriors made it back-to-back titles by completing sweep of Cavs in 2018
This column was originally published on June 9, 2018
The Warriors didn’t show any mercy, and they didn’t leave any doubt.
With their 108-85 NBA Finals-sweeping win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, the Warriors not only established themselves as the NBA’s best team for the second straight season and for the third time in the past four years but also firmly placed themselves among the greatest teams in Bay Area and NBA history.
And while this team appears poised to continue their dynastic run in the years to come — forcing everything to be viewed through a wide lens — it’s necessary to take a moment to acknowledge the greatness this team has shown off to date.
Because there’s no guarantee that we see this kind of greatness again.
After all, this is the team that changed the game — that ruined the game. Yes, NBA history — perhaps more than any other professional North American sport — is littered with dynasties, but how many of those dynasties came in eras of incredible parity (relatively speaking, of course)?
How many of those dynasties created a leaguewide existential crisis?
These Warriors took the league by storm in 2015, jumping to the front of the line to claim the franchise’s first title in 40 years with a lovable group of players that no one (including the Warriors
themselves) quite understood were starting a revolution. The Warriors played the game the right way — with joy and unparalleled grace — even if the rest of the league didn’t realize it was the right way right away.
Four years later, much — if not all — of that charm has dissipated under the singular scrutiny of the basketball world and the weight of expanded expectations — but the 2017-18 Warriors were nevertheless a supernova featuring four Hall
of Fame players that fully understood its prodigious might and used it, seemingly, only when the occasion required it.
Friday night was one of those occasions.
“It’s so different,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told me after Game 4. “(When) we won the whole thing, and it’s like ‘oh my god, we’re the darlings of the league.’” Not anymore.
“It’s more of a relief now. It was more joy back then, more relief now.”
This season’s Warriors were at times maddening, but they were, without a doubt, spectacular.
“I knew in training camp how difficult this year was going to be, based on my experience in Chicago,” Kerr continued, harkening to his time with the Bulls in the 1990s. “The third year in Chicago was so hard, and we were running on fumes in the ‘98 Finals. So I kind of knew, just from a spiritual sense how hard it would be.
“I tried to prepare the team for it, I tried to prepare myself for it, but you just can’t — you can’t prepare, because the exhaustion sets in, the frustration. It was not easy.”
But this team has understood, all along, that legacies are formed not in the micro, but in the macro. That understanding showed up in these playoffs, and particularly in the NBA Finals, as we saw in Game 4.
Having already laid claim to being the team of this decade, and having surpassed the Heat, Spurs (a Kerr team), and Lakers as the team of this millennium, the Warriors might just set their sights on the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s and the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls (also featuring Kerr), who won six titles in eight years in the seasons to come.
Maybe, just maybe, they make a run at the Bill Russell-era Boston Celtics (eight titles in the 1960s). With these Warriors, anything seems possible, because the players, coaches and front office continued to push for immortality, understanding that the barrier that separates success from failure becomes thinner every season.
“You don’t have many opportunities to win, so if you’re there, knocking at that door, I think you have to go full force to do it,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said. “You don’t want to regret anything. And this moment we’re in, this window — reducing your odds of winning by 5%, 10 %, could be the difference between winning and losing.”
Greatness is fragile. Sustained greatness, even more so. That’s what makes these Warriors so exceptional.
For the first time since Kevin Durant signed with the team following the 2016 season, they had to face their own mortality — they met an enemy of their own creation, a squad whose full focus was beating Golden State, the first in what is sure to be a wave to come.
Yet after falling fell behind 3-2 to the Rockets in the Western Conference Finals, the Warriors prevailed, sparked by their unparalleled talent but also a sense of historical understanding. Those four Hall of Famers — the Warriors’ core — will stay together, perhaps leading to bigger and better things than the incredible accomplishments they have already claimed, but Friday was the last time we’ll see “this” Warriors team. This summer, role players will leave, and new guys will be added in their place — the competition around the league never yields and the unsavory, mercenary realities of the professional game compound year-over-year.
Yes, the expectation is that this run keeps going — it has every reason to keep going — the truth remains that no one can definitively say how long something special like this will last, and most of the time, it doesn’t last as long as you’d think.
Next year will bring new challenges — both internally and externally — but on a summer night in Ohio, the Warriors cemented themselves in NBA lore.
It was what they expected, but it’s still worthy of a full-throated celebration, if for no other reason than the fact that — even for this “leagueruining” team — success was never guaranteed.
So if Friday night was it — if that sweep was as good as it gets — just remember: these Warriors was special.