The View from the Top

My first baseball game took place on July 25, 1999 at Candlestick Park. It was a grand old stinkfest between the Reds and Giants, with then-future Giant Michael Tucker knocking in the winning run in a 13-inning 2-1 Reds victory. I can't point to my first Warriors game, but it would have taken place about the same year (give or take a few) and been every bit as ignominious. The Warriors of my early adolescence reliably won between 20 and 40 percent of their games per year. By 2000, I'd been following the team for long enough to be excited that Warrior legend Chris Mullin had resigned with the team, yet remained naive enough to believe he could play a hand in transforming a franchise not so much mired in perpetual crappiness as defined by it. And now, here we are: "the 2015 World Champion Golden State Warriors" is officially a factual descriptor, despite the franchise being only four seasons removed from starting Kwame Brown 3 distinct times.

Our recent Giants dynasty [1] holds a unique place in my heart. Giants radio broadcasts were an anchor for me when I was cast adrift after my vision failed, and the team that had already mattered more to me than any of the others suddenly meant much more than any of the others. By quirk of fate or otherwise, the team's fortunes subsequently mirrored my own, culminating in both cases in 2010 after years marked by struggle. The Franchise and I both had tough years in 2011 and 2013, and in both cases, as things turned around for me, the Giants found themselves making another charmed run through October. Each season, the roster changed and the team's identity evolved, yet through it all - and really, dating back to the drafting of Tim Lincecum and hiring of Bruce Bochy - it felt as though the ship was guided by a steady hand, just waiting for the pieces to fall back into place.

No words could ever have been further from the truth across the Bay. For a few years, my friends and I celebrated my birthday at Warriors games, each time understanding that odds were firmly against hanging around, much less winning. The early/mid-2000s saw the Warriors, 49ers, and Giants all enduring some of the worst years in their respective histories [2], each with little hope and even less direction for the future. Yet where the 49ers were (relatively) fresh off the strongest two decades in NFL history and the Giants played in a ballpark itself worth the price of admission, the Warriors housed their product - almost relentlessly mediocre since the Ford administration - in a trash can-shaped stadium whose ceiling obstructed views in the upper deck and whose parking lot took no less than an hour and a half to escape when the game was over. It was the perfect recipe for a fan experience no one could be excited about.

But man, should you have gone to a Warriors game. Taco Bell used to offer every fan in the stadium a free taco with show of ticket to a game in which the Warriors scored 100 points, a promotion that lasted for years on the strength of how infrequently anyone was able to call their bluff. You never would have known it sitting in that obstructed upper deck, invariably packed to the gills with fans whose screams would rattle that trash can's foundations with every Bimbo Coles free throw that pushed the team closer to that elusive .350 winning percentage. It never seemed to matter that nearly every move management ever made was wrong; no one stopped coming, or watching, or even talking themselves into the feverishly absurd notion that any of the franchise's bungled schemes could someday pay off.

And again, here we are in 2015, and the only one of my favorite teams I never in my heart of hearts believed (until three years ago) would ever pull it all together stands alone at the top of the heap. Part of me is basking in the afterglow: 27-year-old Steph Curry just reasonably (if remarkably) did with the best roster in basketball what 11-year-old me discovered 37-year-old Chris Mullin reasonably was unable to do with possibly the worst roster in basketball. This has, in other words, been a long time coming, and that in itself is cause for excitement. Another, probably older part of me, though, is marveling at the un-Warriorsy manner in which this feat was accomplished.

This championship lineup is the result of a note-perfect negotiation of roster building in modern sports, with irreplaceable parts having been culled by draft (Curry, Thompson, Barnes, Green, Ezeli), trade (Bogut, Lee), and free agency (Iguodala, Livingston, Speights, Barbosa). The coaching staff recognized and exacted the team's true potential, abandoning both Don Nelson's refusal to defend and Mark Jackson's indefensible unwillingness to liberate the league's most talented offense. A roster that is now [3] being heralded as a potential paradigm shifter in the evolution of the league was conceived, assembled, and managed to perfection by the same franchise which over the course of three consecutive years drafted Joe Smith over Kevin Garnett, Todd Fuller over Kobe Bryant, and Adonal Foyle over Tracy McGrady.

Since the modern-vintage Warriors' first playoff appearance in 2006-07, nearly everything has changed: even that magnificent trash can in which the Warriors still host their games won't be home for much longer. To outside observers - and occasionally, even to fans - the rise of this most successful incarnation has seemed sudden, and that would seem to fit best with the shot-in-the-dark mentality that's formed the core of this team's identity for most of the past four decades. Yet the actual assembly of this roster happened methodically, step by patient step, and still required a new coach and a huge vote of confidence in Klay Thompson to push the team over the edge.

I've followed the Warriors for nearly all of my conscious lifetime; I've won them championships in long-forgotten video games, and willfully purchased merchandise adorned with what I even then considered one of the worst logos in sports. They've provided some of my favorite memories, even as they made me wonder why nobody in the Bay Area - myself included - ever seemed to give up on them. In fact, as this recent run of success culminated in this recently concluded playoff run, I was surprised by how inevitable the long-in-waiting success felt. Only one aspect of this story has had me continuously shocked: that those sad sack Warriors could ever have quietly become the best-managed franchise in basketball.

This season was a joy to watch, as a student grateful for scant diversion, as a devotee of the game, and needless to say, as a fan whose dues were officially paid up at least a decade ago. It was also a reminder that patience - perhaps especially when unwarranted - can lead to surprises in the least expected of ways. There may be something to be said after all for waiting people out. The results can be electric.