There was a version of me, years ago, who spent way too many nights doing something I’d never admit to the average person walking down the street. I’d hop from team blog to team blog under the infamous blogboi moniker of Goldbloodedking, deep in enemy territory, soaking up whatever fear and doubt was leaking out of the comment sections.
I was skulking through Pounding the Rock during the Spurs’ slow fade. I was hanging around The Dream Shake when the Rockets were still convinced they had one more run in them. I took kerosene and matches to Fear the Sword, back when Cleveland fans were bracing for whatever came after LeBron’s first go-round. I’d show up uninvited and declare, with the full confidence of a visionary who had one drink too many on a Friday night, that their franchise had been chosen for one purpose: to be the next team the Warriors dynasty flattened on its way up the mountain.
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The Warriors hadn’t won anything yet when I started saying this. I wasn’t reacting to a trophy case. I had a feeling, and I said it loud enough and often enough that the other blogs got sick of me. Pounding the Rock banned me. The Dream Shake hated my guts. Fear the Sword ran me out of town before the ink was even dry on the first banner. I didn’t care. I believed it before it was true, and then it was true, and I got to be right in front of everybody who told me to sit down.
This week I found myself reading a Warriors headline that sounded exactly like the conversations I used to have with everybody else, except this time I couldn’t laugh it off: “Warriors are just fine running back this old team”.
Slater’s reporting paints a surprisingly clear picture. The Warriors are comfortable bringing back essentially the same veteran core, a team that won 37 games, and the front office isn’t pretending that group is part of the title conversation this season. Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking about all those nights on Pounding the Rock and Fear the Sword. Only now the dynasty everybody was quietly writing around was the one in my backyard.
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The moves themselves tell you why nobody’s expecting a leap. Draymond Green came back on the same one-year, $27.7 million deal he’d previously turned down. LeBron picked Philadelphia over everybody, including Golden State. The free agent market was about as thin as it’s been in years, and the Warriors filled the rest of the roster out with minimum deals because that’s all the cap situation allowed.
The Warriors are positioning themselves for next summer instead of this one. Draymond and Butler both come off the books after this season, Curry becomes extension eligible on August 29, and once the current contracts are finalized, the Warriors are projected to have some of the cleanest cap space in the league by next summer. They’re trying to get to next summer with as much flexibility as possible, betting that the next disgruntled superstar eventually becomes available once the books actually clear.
I don’t know how else to read it. Does the organization already believe this probably isn’t the group that’s winning another championship? I get keeping themselves flexible until another real opportunity walks through the door, but is there truly know way to improve this team this season externally?
I spent a decade telling other fanbases to make peace with their ending. I never thought I’d be the one hearing it being told back to me by the Warriors themselves.
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