Iguodala was visionary Warriors always needed for storied dynasty originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – Andre Iguodala’s Warriors legacy didn’t start with him winning 2015 NBA Finals MVP. It didn’t start with his first Warriors championship, nor his second, third and fourth.
It began with a hug, a tweet, putting pen to paper and forever shifting the course of a franchise.
July 4, 2016, is a date that always is connected to the Warriors’ dynasty as the day Kevin Durant announced to the world that his next chapter would be in a Golden State jersey. But don’t forget July 5, 2013. That’s the day Iguodala and the Warriors agreed to a four-year contract, two months after he and the Denver Nuggets were upset by a young, scrappy, up-and-coming Golden State squad.
Once the contract details were set in stone, Iguodala reached out to one Warrior over Twitter, now known as X.
Iguodala scored a game-high 24 points against the Warriors in Game 6 of the first round of the 2013 NBA playoffs, losing 92-88 and getting knocked out much earlier than expected. Instead of moping and walking off the court at Oracle Arena, Iguodala immediately found Curry. The two embraced for a hug that should be cemented in NBA history.
A message was sent: Iguodala saw the vision before anybody else.
“Well, I played with him in 2010,” Iguodala said Sunday during his pregame press conference hours ahead of having his No. 9 Warriors jersey retired and hung in the Chase Center rafters. “It was tough for him to just get on the court in the world championships. Just because he was small-framed, he was young and they were kind of grooming him into the potential part of it.
“We knew he was good. He could shoot it. There’s no potential in shooting, so he’s had that.”
Curry and Iguodala, three years before becoming Warriors teammates, were on Team USA together in the 2010 FIBA World Championship. Though they won gold, Curry averaged only 10.6 minutes and 4.6 points per game. Even as someone low on the totem pole, Curry had a player to look up to in Iguodala during their first time together on the same side.
He witnessed what it took to win after a rookie season in which the Warriors won 26 games. What it meant to build a culture. What it meant to set a standard. What it meant to be a leader. Iguodala gave Curry the blueprint ahead of them both wearing Warriors colors.
In that 2013 first-round series, Iguodala saw a new side of Curry. A side nobody had seen yet. A side that now is celebrated globally. Curry’s no-look 3-pointer was birthed prior to anybody understanding what had just happened.
“Jordan Hamilton, my guy,” Iguodala remembered. “It was a timeout and I came back to the bench and he’s still going crazy. He’s like, ‘Yo, did you see what happened?’ What do you mean, I was in the game. Steph took a shot at the bench and that was the first time he looked away.
“He looked at the bench and told them to shut up. The ball was still in midair. If you go back and look at that moment, their reaction – JaVale McGee was there, Jordan Hamilton and a few other guys were looking at each other. They’ve never seen that. But I think it was more than just him as a basketball player.”
Steve Kerr wasn’t Warriors coach when Iguodala hopped aboard Golden State’s train to four titles. That role still belonged to Marc Jackson. Kerr did watch the entirety of the Warriors-Nuggets series and read Iguodala’s comments about why he wanted the Bay Area to be his next destination.
From afar, Kerr knew what a special player the Warriors were adding.
“That was a coup,” Kerr said Sunday. “The Warriors weren’t exactly getting a lot of free agents. To sign Andre was obviously one of the key moves to this whole thing.”
Former Warriors general manager Bob Myers, Kerr and Curry all spoke during Iguodala’s jersey retirement ceremony after the team’s win against the Dallas Mavericks. Just before the two-minute mark of his five-minute speech, Curry went back to 2013, saying “You were the first one to choose us, and that meant the world to a team that was trying to figure it out.”
After the ceremony, Curry emphasized how much that moment meant to him and the Warriors as a whole.
“It unlocked a confidence,” Curry said. “When you have a star that was the face of a franchise in Philly, helped a really powerful Denver team and then he had a choice to make at a really important part of his career: Where do I want to play for the next four years and where can I win? Where can I fit into a group that is coming into their own identity? And that was us.
“I remember the moment we beat them in the playoffs in 2013. We had had a history of playing together with that Team USA team. That was the first time I noticed, or was aware, like, guys see what we’re capable of and a guy like Andre, who’s one of the smartest guys in any room he walks into, and when he came with that energy of, ‘I love what you’re doing, I love how y’all do it,’ to get him in free agency that just unlocked so much confidence for us that we’re on the right path.
“The rest is history.”
Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Co. poured the cement. Iguodala laid down the first brick. At 29 years old, in his prime and only one season removed from his lone NBA All-Star Game, a path was paved by a proven two-way star from the outside who wanted inside the building.
Andre Iguodala is a visionary. The best prediction he conjured within his personal crystal ball wasn’t what the Warriors were, but what they would become. Without his arrival in 2013, the Warriors’ dynasty would be nothing more than a silly dream.
Dreamers become doers behind enough belief. The Warriors needed someone to believe, and nobody was more perfect for the job than Iguodala.
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