Why Warriors Fans Get To Say “We”

By: Jared Williams

I don’t attend Warriors games often but Monday night (vs. Washington) I was fortunate enough to possess a seat inside Oracle. Sitting to my right were a father and son embarking on the holy grail of trips: every NBA arena in 90 days. The Warriors were their 23rd stop, so I asked how Oracle compared to other arenas, and the son professed “we’ve been looking forward to this for weeks”, with the father adding “Oracle’s the loudest by far”.

This was during a blowout. Oracle was definitely hyped, but this wasn’t a Richter scale altering evening. Yet, the father and son could feel the uniqueness of it all. What makes the Warriors different? What makes for that unique feeling? I believe almost 4 decades of failure and occasional mediocrity has forged a franchise whose identity is its fan base. For Warriors fans the team isn’t “they” or “them”, it’s “we”. Quantifying feelings is just as difficult as accurately quantifying the depths of the Warriors’ past -in this piece I’ll attempt to do both.

The history of the Warriors reads like an “absolutely-positively-at-all-costs don’t do this” section out of Managing A NBA Team For Dummies.

-Don’t trade lottery picks for aging or injured declining players. A cherished Warriors management technique, the Dubs have most notably done this twice: 1979 when they flipped the 9th overall pick for JoJo White who played a whopping 120 games for the Warriors before retiring, and 1990 when they traded their 2nd overall pick to Seattle for Alton Lister -Seattle would go on to draft some guy named Gary Payton.

-Don’t blow up your team following your most successful season in a decade. Excluding the current team, this has happened to every successful core group the Warriors have had since the 1970s; in other words, this has happened twice. In 1991 when the Warriors blew up the Run TMC team by trading a 25 year-old shooting guard averaging 23.9 points per game, Mitch Richmond.In a reprisal of this “destroy the best thing you’ve had in years motto”, the Warriors let Baron Davis sign with the Clippers one year after the “We Believe” season ended.  On a recent BS Report podcast (with Bill Simmons) Davis proclaimed the Clippers offered two times more (5 years, $65 million) than the Warriors because ya know, that’s how we roll.

-Don’t draft generically named players. This is a proven NBA law -the best players have the best names. Outside of Bill Russell (because a man with 11 rings is always an exception), think of the all-time greats: Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor was cool too), Bird, Magic, Wilt, West, Hakeem, Shaq, Kobe, and Lebron. Those names are first-ballot hall of famers in the Hall of Name! Now, look at the Warriors’ biggest draft misses: in 1978 the Warriors draft Purvis Short one pick ahead of Larry Bird, in 1980 the Warriors draft Joe Carroll over Kevin McHale, in 1995 the Warriors draft Joe Smith with their #1 overall pick ahead of Kevin Garnett, and in 1996 the Warriors draft Todd Fuller two picks ahead of Kobe and four ahead of Nash. While the law of names never fails (just look at the current team: Curry, Klay, Draymond, Iguodala, Bogut, and more), the real point is the Warriors’ drafting -or lack thereof. For those keeping track at home, that was Purvis Short, Joe Carroll, Joe Smith, and Todd Fuller instead of Bird, McHale, Garnett, and Kobe/Nash.

-Don’t give your best draft pick in decades an out after his rookie season. This is literately insane to imagine now -let’s call it getting Webbered. In 1994 the Warriors drafted Chris Webber who immediately began redefining NBA offense, won Rookie of the Year, and possessed a rookie deal that somehow gave him an out after his rookie season (via a one-year option that would force the Warriors into a trade). Webber demanded such trade and the Warriors averaged 33 wins for the next decade.

And to think none of those top four “definitely do not do this” moves included, letting an all-time great head coach leave your organization (Gregg Popovich was a Warriors assistant in 1992), solving your big-man issue by drafting Ike Diogu, Patrick O’Bryant, Brandon Wright (via draft day trade), and Anthony Randolph in successive years, or employing a player who choked his coach (Lawrell Sprewell).

Warriors fans have had every reason to ditch this franchise. Instead, they’ve turned Oracle Arena into the NBA’s version of Rucker Park. A place where fans cheer for more than 3s and dunks, they cheer effective defensive rotations and notice subtle improvements in their players. A place where coaches such as Gregg Popovich openly admit to calling timeouts quicker during a Warriors run because the crowd’s delirium can begin affecting the game. A place with a season ticket waitlist (10,000) nearly exceeding the number of the season tickets distributed per year (12,000).

Imagine if the logo of a team derived from its identity: Cleveland’s would be Lebron manically attempting to erase the city’s sports history, Houston’s would be a calculator morphed with an oversized beard, San Antonio’s would just be Popovich, and Golden State’s would be lifelong fans with jerseys from a decade ago going absolutely berserk during a somewhat meaningless game.

An old proverb states, “It takes a village to raise a child”.

For close to 40 years, Warriors fans have played the role of the village; at long last the child has begun to mature. The fans and team aren’t independent of each other, they’re incredibly connected by a history of futility and unwavering support. The Warriors are the story of a franchise defined not by a player, coach, or owner, but by their supporters. That’s incredibly unique in modern sports. That’s why Warriors fans get to say “we”.