A few weeks ago, as I watched the Golden State Warriors suffer a humiliating loss to the Sacramento Kings, my main feeling wasn't frustration, anger or shame. It was more like resignation: one day I will die.
The Warriors' three core players – Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green – have been together since 2012. I remember watching their first playoff run end at the hands of the dynastic San Antonio Spurs machine and reveling in their limitless potential. They'll be back, I thought, and I was right: over the next few years they grew into the defining team of their era, combining a swarming, ruthless defense with a beautiful, egalitarian attack. Curry became one of the greatest players of all time; Green, one of the best defenders; Thompson, one of the best shooters. They went to the final six times and won four.
How all this came to matter to me is a bit mysterious. But one of the charms of sports is that they have no inherent meaning: a ball going through an edge has no practical meaning or wider significance. But that emptiness makes them a perfect vessel for the entire spectrum of human emotions, and their bite is no less sharp for the low stakes. For me, the emotional tides of life as a Warriors fan have moved in a strange relationship with the ebb and flow of the rest of my life.
The professional lifespan of an NBA player is short. Players don't join until age 19 at the earliest, and in their early 30s they often consider retiring. Rooting for basketball players means being constantly aware that they are getting older. And now that the oldest players are my age, it means I'm constantly aware that I'm getting older too.
Stephen Curry was born into the NBA in 2009 at the age of 21. Six years later, he was the league's most valuable player. Nine years later, in 2024, it's clear the end is near, both for Curry and for this team. Parts of his playing that I fell in love with have faded; When I look at him, I can almost feel my own bones rubbing against each other. The quick burst that allowed him to slip past defenders or explode from a dribbler's haunches to a shooter's rack has all but been used up. He operates with narrower margins and tighter windows. Flashes of the old sorcery still shine through, but these days he's more of a craftsman than a wizard.
If there's one moment Klay Thompson will be remembered for, it's Game 6 of the 2016 conference finals. On the brink of playoff elimination, Thompson saved the season with a preternatural series of three-point shots: from diagonal angles, or with tilted legs in the air, or over forests with defensive arms. It was everything I had come to love about basketball, compressed into one game.
The Warriors won that game and the next, sending them to the Finals in a rematch against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The morning of Game 3, I took my pregnant wife to her first ultrasound appointment with great anticipation. What I remember most is the swelling silence as the nurse searched fruitlessly for signs of a viable fetus and the way my wife's palms felt so soft against mine. I didn't cry until we reached the safety of our home.
Later, without much discussion, we decided to go ahead with our plans to watch the match. It was a crushing defeat. I can't remember one half of this day without the other – the real tragedy associated with the ersatz. Eerily, one made the other hurt less, as if dull echoes canceled each other out.
Hampered by injuries and the weight of expectations, the Warriors would lose the series, with their historic success in the regular season turning to infamy in the playoffs. A few days later my wife suddenly and mysteriously became ill and was unable to stand without fainting. I carried her down the stairs of our apartment building; in the sunlight I noticed how pale she was and really started to get scared. What was diagnosed as a miscarriage turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy. My wife's fallopian tube ruptured. Emergency surgery saved her life. She was still in her recovery bed when we heard Kevin Durant would be joining the Warriors.
That next year, as the team barreled through the season, my wife's belly swelled with new promise. The Warriors won their second championship of this run. On her due date, we braved the crowds to watch the Larry O'Brien trophy being carried through the streets of Oakland.
The following year, my son woke up in my arms as the Warriors won their third title. We were at a watch party and the sight of the confetti falling around us fascinated him. Four years later, in 2022, I woke him up – and his new baby brother – to watch the Warriors win the fourth title of the run, a memory they remind me of often.
A few weeks ago I took my firstborn to a Warriors game: the first time I saw them in person and the last meaningful game of their elegiac regular season. Despite my nudges and suggestions, the younger Warriors players had no interest in him. He only had eyes for his favorite players: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. We arrived early to watch Curry warm up – he too was accompanied by his firstborn. Riley Curry was two when her father became a champion for the first time and made a name for himself by stealing the microphone and the show during the post-match press conferences. Now she was 11 and handed the ball to her father for a few trick shots at the end of his practice. My son, looking through binoculars, correctly declared Curry “the best.”
The Warriors played from behind for most of the evening. Curry conjured up some vintage late-game heroics, but it wasn't enough. My son, who had assigned world-changing meaning to every shot, accepted the narrow defeat with surprising equanimity. They had done their best and in the end they were quite close to victory. I asked him what his favorite part of the game had been. “You stand up and cheer,” he said. “I just liked it.” He doesn't know yet why Warriors basketball has come to mean something to me and to him. But he felt the current. This is how it starts, I thought to myself.