Warriors Opening Night 2023 at the Chase Center
Written by Nicolas O. ‘27
Basketball season has officially started, which is in my opinion the best time of the year. My favorite team is obviously the Golden State Warriors and their opening game was on October 24, 2023. They ended up going against my second favorite team of all time, the Phoenix Suns. My mom ended up telling me that she got tickets for us to go see my favorite teams play against each other.
After school my mom got special ferry tickets that are specifically made for going to the Warriors games. We left our car at Jack London parking lot and got on the ferry at around 5:50pm and it was a 15 minute ferry ride to San Francisco and a 10 minute walk to the Chase Center. I wanted to get there early because they were handing out free T-shirts at the Chase Center. This was my fourth time at the Chase Center.
So I’ve experienced it before and every time Igo it’s just such a fun experience. It’s such a high quality stadium because it’s huge and it can hold up to 18,000 people. They have a huge merch store and restaurant outside. The only critique I have about it is just that everything is so expensive, but I guess you can expect that from a sports event, especially an NBA game.
Since the Warriors were facing the Suns, they’re went against their past teammate, Kevin Durant. When we made it to the Chase Center, they instantly honored Durant on the jumbotron for being a past 2-time champion for back to back seasons with the Warriors. Durant is an amazing player that I think every warriors player misses.
Then they introduced the players, and we got to see some of the new additions like Brandin Podziemski, the latest rookie, or the new superstar Usman Garuba. The most controversial and biggest new addition to the Warriors is Chris Paul and he’s great, but they traded him for one of my favorite players, Jordan Poole.
Here is a link to video taken by me showing off the players being revealed.
The game was pretty entertaining. Steph Curry didn’t play much because he supposedly made five fouls before the second half. Klay Thompson couldn’t make a single three pointer, but Andrew Wiggins was popping off. He carried the team for the first two quarters but not even Wiggins could save us for the first two quarters, as the Warriors were down 15 points. But as soon as the third quarter came around, I guess the Warriors locked in because they made a huge comeback. Klay was making three pointers and Gary Payton II also made some crazy three pointers.
The fourth quarter was back and forth on who had more points but in the end the Warriors lost by four points. The final score was 108–104. It was a tough loss but if we were going to lose to anyone, I would rather lose to my second favorite team than lose to the Lakers. Overall, it was a great experience. We had a rough start to the season, but we’re going to win this year, and I can’t wait for this NBA season.
