Gleaming Coronation, Dulled Crown
For five years the Warriors have presided over the NBA as the dominant force. The team has won three championships out of five trips to the Finals, a hugely impressive run from an organisation which has not experienced much joy outside of this core. The sole bright spots over the last thirty years before Curry, Thompson and Draymond are considered were the ‘We Believe’ Warriors in 2007 and Run-TMC in the early 1990s. This current iteration of the Warriors have been deeply impressive as they have swept aside a litany of contenders. Their conquests through the Western Conference have seen perennial contenders broken and previously competitive contenders dissected through pace and space. The past is incredible, the future is so much more uncertain.
The end of the Warriors’ dominance coincided with the departure from the Oracle Arena in Oakland, the home of the Warriors since the stadium was known as the Oakland Coliseum. It was known within the early years of the Lacob ownership that the Warriors would look to move across the Bay Area to the wealthier city of San Francisco. In the early years, the Warriors did not have the cultural capital to make a distinctive argument to the various government committees why a move to Mission Bay made sense. The move only came about once the Warriors became one of the hottest teams in the league and started to attract a crowd of venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs alongside the Oakland faithful.
The last game played in the Oracle was Game 6 of the NBA Finals in 2019. The last memories from that night in Oracle was Klay Thompson’s ACL injury and the Raptors lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time in their history. It felt like the end of the era in a few ways, the ‘light years ahead’ promise made by Joe Lacob finally seemed to coming into fruition. The Warriors would be moving into an arena which represented their status. The Warriors would be based in a fashionable area of a booming city with a gleaming, luxurious arena. The arena would even had a secluded lower bowl area for only the richest ticket-holders.
The indirect effect of the move across the Bay is that the loud, blue-collar Oakland crowd has likely been priced out of the market. A Warriors’ season ticket comes in at $5,000+ which is a significant sum of money to be spent as disposable income. For a working class crowd, it is hard to justify those types of prices especially when the cost of living is booming every single day. The average rent prices in the Bay Area have grown exponentially as Silicon Valley has grown into the dominant industrial force of this age. It has meant that the ‘Roaracle’ atmosphere has not translated into the new arena.
The Oracle was a fierce play to go and get a road win. The loudness of the crowd and the sheer passion of the fans could intimidate teams into under-performing. These old, historic buildings have a way of generating the perfect acoustics which result in a home-town advantage. The new building with its lack of history and lack of loudness lacks that intimidation factor which Oracle brought in spades. I have never seen a team crumble quite like the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016 when the crowd in Oracle raised the energy levels and got their players through two tough home games. Durant looked over-awed by the atmosphere and occasion which killed his level of play.
That alchemy of history, tradition and passion is impossible to beat. It lifts players from being mentally tough into being ‘mentality monsters’, a term coined by Jurgen Klopp after the Champions League Semi-Final second leg against Barcelona. Steve Kerr used the same term after the Warriors won Game 5 against the Raptors and it is easy to see why, the team was ready to run through the walls to secure a fourth championship. The collective effort and focus that an atmosphere can create improves energy levels and tap into the emotional drive of the players is necessary in tough games.
The move from Oracle dulled the crown somewhat as it felt like the Warriors were sacrificing some of their identity for the purpose of money. The team would no longer be the loudest crowd in the NBA with a passionate blue-collar crowd who bleed Warriors Gold. The games would be occasions where the super-rich could enjoy a night of basketball, there would not be the same emotional attachment.
Liverpool Football Club faced the same issue throughout the 2000s, there was a desire to leave Anfield and build a new stadium so that the commercial side of the club could be improved. George Gillett and Tom Hicks famously promised a ‘shovel in the ground within ninety days’. The promise never materialised and a change in ownership brought in FSG. FSG chose to stay at Anfield, their historic stadium with its rich blend of noise and intensity. The Warriors made the opposite decision, a decision to sacrifice some of its history to start a new chapter.
There was a belief among the Warriors’ organisation that Durant would be leaving the team in free agency, only the most ardent optimists believed otherwise. However, a core of Curry, Green and Thompson would still remain to generate buzz around the Warriors and build a rapport with the new crowd. Those plans went out of the window when Thompson went down and Curry injured his hand. The Warriors became a team that is a mortal and more susceptible to common patterns of NBA building. The team is now in the process of tanking the season and rebuilding for the future, much like the Spurs in ’98 with Tim Duncan. The gleaming coronation of a new stadium has not been met with the same level of regalia. It is a Warriors’ team which has been ravaged by injury, free agency and harsh realities of the salary cap. The crown worn by the Warriors for so long has been dulled.
