One Last Roaracle

June 13th, 2019, the curtain came down on the Golden State Warriors era at Oracle Arena.  

47 seasons of wins, losses, and all the shit that can happen between those two. 

Going into next season, my heart will pick the Dubs to take out the chip, however my head is quickly catching up, and poo pooing my fantasy of seeing Steph win his 5th ring.  

So, when I'm at a fork like this, I can't help but revisit the dynastic (fuck you Bill, it's a dynasty) highs.  

Remembering the game clock expire at Oracle for the last time makes me wonder... 

How the fuck did we even get here? 

Long, long ago, in the 1971 season, Al Attles had the Chairman of the Board living up to his name to the tune of 21 and 16 rebounds per game, marking it his...nah I'm just fucking with you, we're not going back that far. 

With as much respect as I could possibly give to everything that came before them, to Run TMC, to the We Believe Warriors, everyone knows that this story really starts with the skinny kid from Davidson, who was shooting the piss out of the ball and had ankles made of Weet-Bix, arriving in 2009.  

The franchise was starved of success, and run like a dyslexic bloke running a taxation firm, unfortunately more of a common trend of the teams I follow than I care for. 

When David Kahn, bless his cotton socks, had picks 5 & 6 in the draft, and made the educated and informed decision to draft 2-point guards, neither of whom was Wardell Curry, it marked the start of everything that was about to follow. 

Now – side note: I love Ricky Rubio. Seriously. Despite being a Dubs fan, his was the first jersey I owned. A black Minnesota #5. I used to love watching him and K-Love make a 41-win team must watch TV every season, and always believed if he just landed in the right spot, he could fully capitalise on his strengths – vision, passing, and defence – and have his weaknesses written off – shooting. How ironic it is that in a different universe, it was him who would have ended up with Klay Thompson, feeding him with a constant stream of catch and shoot threes. I could tell, with absolutely no knowledge of him as a person, that he was a good dude. And anyone at the very least who has seen the video of his interaction with Alexy Shved can see the same. IYKYK. 

Johnny Flynn…sorry, I don’t have as many thoughts on. 

But I digress, because David Kahn had an all-time “hold my beer” moment. 

Pick 7. Wardell Curry. Davidson University. 

And it begins. 

To think there was a season where Steph was so restrained that he only shot 4.8 3’s per game (he made 2.1 of them for a 44% clip but) is wild to think about. I feel it goes to show how willing he has always been to play within a team and within the flow of the offence, something that has been a constant throughout his career.

A lot of places do their stock standard top 10 or top 20 player draft. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is have a top 10 team mate draft. The guys who just complete their teams for all the right reasons. Think Jrue Holiday, or Josh Hart. Despite the ego it has to take to be not just one of the 450 players in the league, but a pretty consensus all-time top 10 player, Steph has always belonged in this list, and in my view, he’s always going top 3, and it isn’t picks 2 or 3.

In his rookie season he still played 36 minutes a game, and you know he knows he could have bombed far more threes, and made far more, but it wasn’t what Mark Jackson thought was best for the team, so he put the team first. Worth noting – he did still surpass 30 points 8 times his rookie year. His second year saw him start every game he played, and set a new NBA mark for free throw shooting. Stats increasing across the board. Steph was coming…until he wasn’t. 

He missed 40 games in his third year because of the Weet-Bix ankles, but in hindsight, those Sanitarium sponsored ankles saved us from making a horrific mistake when we offered him in the trade for Bogues. Thankfully, Milwaukee was the recipient of the aforementioned beer that David Kahn passed off to hold, and took a big old swig of it. 

Pfft, we’re not taking Steph, give us Monta. 

Done and done.

That same ankle shortened season introduced another domino that would help complete the set. You may have heard of him – Klay Alexander Thompson. 

That same off-season, with the injury cloud circling, Steph signed a 4-year, $44M extension. What he didn’t know at the time, was that signing would have monumental implications later, but, fuck you, you can keep reading to get to that. That also landed a came-into-the-league-already-pissed-off-and-disrespected Draymond Green, which, thankfully, is the best version of Draymond Green. 

The next season is also where Oracle started to grow again. 24 additional wins from the season prior and even a first-round playoff win against the Nuggets. Oracle recognised early what the rest of the league would find out. Total attendance that season was just shy of 800,000 people, good for 5th most in the league. For a team that was fresh off a 23-win season, Oracle could smell the banana bread before it rose. 

Iggy seeing the vision and coming in free agency, and Steve Kerr taking over as the CEO after Mark Jackson did the hard yards of realising the potential and building the start-up - essentially the same story of when Coffee Otis sells out to the highest bidder – were the last pieces to land. Dominos falling is generally a metaphor for disaster. Not in this case. Every one of these dominos had to fall exactly as it did to complete the basketball nirvana to come. 

And just like that, the banana bread was out the oven, and Oracle was about to go 19,000 screaming fans deep every game, with a freshly baked slice in hand. 

Now full disclosure, I never went to Oracle. I’ve only been to America once, and I caught two games at then Staples Arena. It was the middling Lakers team that did have LeBron, but it was before he managed to get the Lakers to go full “fuck them kids” mode, and he was still surrounded by the likes of Ingram, Lonzo, Josh Hart (great shout out in my Knicks piece if you got time after this rambling) and Julius Randle (probably not going to be as much of a shout out candidate).

Going there was an incredible site. You could feel the history, but something about it felt so...manufactured. One of the games I attended was a nationally televised game, so they had people hooting and hollering from all angles trying to amp up the crowd. They did to a certain extent, but again, it felt so manufactured.

I may have never been to Oracle, but I’ve watched enough sport, and every sport, with every type of crowd, to know the real ones when I saw them and when I heard them.

This Oracle crowd? Fuck me, they were real.

You could feel the atmosphere drenching the players like sweat. When you watched it, you felt like the crowd was on top of the court. Everyone in that arena made it feel like the Dubs were playing 5 on 19,005 every damn game.

To steal a line from OPSM and compare the pair (hope that's not trademarked, if it is I'll bluff and say I have a really good lawyer) Staples entertained me for a brief moment, but Oracle? Oracle stayed with me.

Everyone (law of averages) remembers THAT pub. That pub you went to, and maybe still do. The pub that had an air about it. You couldn't exactly put your finger on it. Depending on the pub, it may have been that the air was part oxygen, part ciggie smoke. It's the pub that's kind of shit, but you forgive it, because it's your pub. It's the place you go to get a drink you can technically get anywhere, but you go there because it tastes better because of the history you have with the place.

That's what I pictured Oracle as.

Bill Simmons has an ongoing thing about crowd silencers. The guys who thrive going into other teams’ buildings and shutting up the home crowd through displays of sheer basketball excellence, demoralising them to the point of stupefied silence - what up Steph.

I just could not imagine this happening in Oracle. The place would sway and heave until the last second before folding to a road player or team. It may have bent, but it would have never broken.

I’ve come to realise that the antithesis to this player is the crowd hyper. The guy who can seemingly walk into another team’s building and turn that away crowd into their personal cheer squad. No one was better than this than Klay Thompson. When he went on a heater, you could almost see the home crowd flip against their own team, because Klay's heaters had an extra caveat of ridiculousness to them.

Oracle would not stand for that nonsense. If anyone even attempted to hit it with a crowd hyper Klay wannabe routine, they would roar through it, not for it. 

And the noise of the crowd in another team’s arena watching Klay have a full crowd hyper heater?

Shit, that was nothing compared to Oracle. When he lit up in Oracle, it felt like my fucking TV in Australia was going to come off the wall.

That was Oracle. It was sweat, noise and passion.

That arena didn't get to see the triumph of 2015. The team everyone bar Oracle thought it was too soon for. It didn't get to see the birth of Game 6 Klay - my favourite game of all time, featuring my favourite shot of all time – the from the hip top of the arc heat check over Russ.

Here’s what I predict was going through Klay’s head in that moment: "shit I'm two inches taller than this guy and I'm pretty fucking hot...BUCKET"

Sorry* side tangent

*Not sorry.

Oracle was witness to the greatest regular season team in NBA history, then had to deal with the heartbreak of 2016, watching LeBron James pick on Festus Ezeli like James was playing basketball and Ezeli was playing badminton.

This then led to all worlds, stars, moons and suns lining up, and the last delayed domino falling. That contract Steph signed earlier? Well, that turned into the most team friendly superstar contract in league history, and that, combined with the sudden cap spike that the league for some reason decided to drop in one fell swoop? Well, that resulted in Kevin fucking Durant.

The league in shambles from the KD move, and Golden State, with this Hamptons 5 line-up loaded and Oracle at its back, was undeniable for the next two seasons. Basketball viewing ecstasy was achieved. Seemingly every game played to the same script. A team would be in with a chance at the half, hell that might have even had more points on the board.

Then, the beast would awaken.

The third quarters of that Warriors team were the highest quality basketball you could witness. The opposition coach may as well have tried to cash his time outs in at the concession stand for some choccies and popcorn, because they weren't any good for stopping a Dubs avalanche.

It was 5 guys clicking in top gear simultaneously, and on both ends of the court.

And here’s the thing – every team knew it was coming.

I'm sure the entire half time break was like a fucking tornado preparation drill. Batten down the hatches, and just survive the storm.

No one did.

Oracle was witness to the KD back breaking three for 2017. It wasn’t witness to the same 2018 backbreaker, but you knew that it was feeling the culmination of that 2-season run.

Oracle wasn't witness to what I think is Steph's greatest game. 0 points at the half with KD in street clothes in Houston. That guy then went out and put the team on his fucking back with 33 second half points.

In another piece, I circle around the mental fortitude of James Hird. This game was a full-marks, aced the test, James Hird game. 

And just like that, Oracle would be hosting another Finals series, in what would be its last of the Golden State era.

I remember being invited to the city through a wholesaler to watch Game 1. Of course they had Gazey hosting. You know how they say never meet your heroes? Yeah, I saw him decline a beer for a water. Fucking heartbroken, and probably should have been a pre-emptive sign of what was to come.

I remember watching that Game 1 and thinking "oh shit Toronto have size, shooting and defence. That's meant to be our thing." The plan was always just to eke out a couple and keep some wind in the sails, ready for KD’s return, which was on the horizon…or wasn't…depending on which report you read that day.

When he did come back, all seemed right with the basketball world again. He didn't seem like a player coming back from injury, he looked like Kevin fucking Durant…right up until he whipped his head to look behind him like someone had kicked him in the back of the leg. At that moment, everyone knew that was it for KD.

Something happened after that incident however. The light that had been flickering while awaiting the return suddenly grew brighter, despite the injury. The whole series had been dictated on KD’s coming back, almost like they felt like they needed him to win.

When he went down, it's like Steph, Klay, Dray and Iggy all collectively decided at once that KD wasn't what defined the team, he was the addition to the core, and that is no hate on KD – I still ride for that guy. They gutted out that Game 5 win in Toronto to send the series back to Oracle one last time.

That crowd was fucking electric. They were running on nerves and probably a shit load of beer, and they were ready to play the 19,000th man one last time. And what game was it? Game 6 baby. It's Klay time. He stepped up as he had done so many times before in the big moments. 8 of 12 shooting against a team that had Kawhi Leonard, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Serge Ibaka to throw at him. 4 triples, a couple of steals, and the best +/- in the team. He wasn’t up for the challenge; he was the challenge for Toronto. 

That is until, that dunk. I don't hold any ill feeling towards Danny Green. I don't think it was a dirty move, I just think it was a high intensity, high pressure moment, and it happened. 

But what happened next? That’s what has always stuck with me, and what has been rolling around in my head for 7 years now.

Hobbling off back to the rooms, Klay would have known that he was done, and with him gone, the series probably done as well. That's when a trainer ran down the race and told Klay that if he doesn't take the free throws, his night is done regardless.

Klay Thompson walking back up the race, and out onto the court is my most memorable basketball watching moment. I was sitting in a TAFE classroom, not even trying to hide the fact I was watching that game on my laptop. The roar of the crowd was deafening. It was courageous, and it embodied everything that the arena stood for. Klay walking back out to take those free throws was 47 seasons of blood, sweat and tears for Oracle. It was for every Warrior past, present and future, and every fan who had ever graced inside the walls of the peoples Colosseum.

Looking back now, I'm aware that the Dubs lost. And I think it's shit that it had to happen in Oracle. But what I’ve come to realise and appreciate is that I don't think winning is how the legacy at Oracle had to end. That arena needed a send-off fitting for its place in history, and what it meant for generations of fans.

That send-off was erupting one last time for one of the OGs. One of the day 1 guys of this era of overwhelming success for Golden State Warriors basketball.

For one last time, they were reminding everyone watching everywhere that it wasn't just about basketball in that joint, it was about family – shout out Dom Toretto.

In my eyes, that send off, no matter how tragic for the injury, and the resulting loss, was exactly the send-off Oracle deserved.

One. Last. Roaracle.