The Warriors are a rock in my shoe I can't shake out

Explaining why I really don't like Golden State these days.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Marie Antoinette With a Rose; Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun; 1783

Earlier this week, I got an email from a longtime reader that sparked some thoughts. From Michael:

I've been reading your stuff for years and am a happy subscriber. My basketball nerd buddies and I all appreciate your coverage and often the content of your newsletter kickstarts our daily convos about the league.

But I'm begging you to figure out a different way to cover the Warriors. I get it -- you don't like them. And you really don't like Draymond Green. The thing is...I don't think Draymond reads your stuff, but Warriors fans do. And this whole season has been kind of a bummer in both the overall tone and specific topics for our squad.

When they're doing well, your coverage is like "here's how they could soon be doing worse!" Even the game recaps are too often sour. Why look into a nice floor game from Pods when you could share another Draymond tech?

I've cheered for terrrrrrible Warriors teams, and incredible ones, and mediocre ones. I've had emotional stakes in Bimbo Coles and Bob Sura, man! Chill out on us. Please consider covering the Dubs as you would the Jazz or whatever. Because it's getting weird!!

Since I started writing about the entire NBA and not just the Kings in early 2006 for AOL FanHouse, I’ve tried to be as impartial and fair in my assessment about 28 teams. I was never going to be able to be dispassionate about the Kings (having grown up as a Kings fan because my suburb between Oakland and Sacramento got KMAX, which carried the Kings; lucky me) and I was never going to be able to be dispassionate about the Lakers. That was just a part of the deal.

Despite playing 90 minutes from each other, the Kings and Warriors had no rivalry whatsoever. Games were often entertaining, and you’d get Kings fans at Oracle Arena or Warriors fans at ARCO Arena, depending on which team was doing better. From the Kings’ Sacramento move in 1984 on, the two teams famously never made the playoffs in the same season until 2023. And that’s where we pick up our story, because yes, I became partial and unfair when that series happened two years ago. It broke my ability to be dispassionate about Draymond Green specifically and the Warriors broadly.

Green, of course, stomped on Domantas Sabonis’ chest and then acted like he was the victim of persecution. Steve Kerr, who has had a front row view of Green’s violent tendencies, backed him (which is his job but is still disappointing). Warriors fans and pro-Warriors analysts, high off the surprise 2022 championship and full of hubris, accused Sabonis of using the ball as a weapon and really went hard on Domas for his inability to rebound better than Kevon Looney. It felt deeply personal. And then, you know, Wardell Stephen Curry II ripped the still-beating hearts from Kings fans’ chests in Game 7 in one of the most soul-shredding ways possible.

Watching Steph do that to other teams is awe-inspiring and electric. Watching him do that to your team feels like a particularly painful death. He’s one of one, and so Warriors fans can’t possibly understand how it feels. It’s unlike Death By LeBron or Death By Jokic or anything else. It’s a unique feeling of despair and helplessness. It felt nearly as bad in the moment as anything that happened against the Lakers. (Nearly.)

Because I love and appreciate Steph as a player in a way I never liked Kobe or Shaq (who is a weird special case all his own), I thought I could get past what he and that team did to the Kings in 2023. But that was wrong, because the immense glee I felt when Sacramento destroyed the Warriors in the play-in last year despite knowing full well the Kings were wholly doomed was not natural.