ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA — The scene couldn’t have been more heart-breaking for someone who bleeds blue and gold.
A defeated, downtrodden Stephen Curry, still wearing his Golden State Warriors uniform, in full gear with ankle braces and Under Armours still on, finished his postgame press conference and walked by the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ locker room on the way back to his own.
LeBron James happened to emerge at that moment from the visitors’ celebration, wearing a basketball net for a necklace, with a cigar dangling from his mouth and brandishing an open bottle of champagne in one hand.
Man, this stings.
With the family rooms just before the hallway to the locker room, rather than head back to the Warriors’ locker room for a shower, Curry took a detour and spent the next half-hour with relatives who tried to soothe his hurt, although he later admitted he couldn’t get his mind off the game.
Back at the Warriors locker room, our nation’s finest NBA reporters including Tim Kawakami, Marcus Thompson, Marc Stein, Sam Amick and Mike Schumann awaited any Warriors players that were still available.
Only thing was, everyone seemingly had already left. Everyone except Draymond Green, who spent a little extra time with Marc Spears to document his thoughts in his diary series for Undefeated.
As that conversation went on, we waited. Klay Thompson, who earlier had walked down the tunnel to the parking lot alone, was gone — after perhaps the most despondent postgame interview ever conducted at Oracle.
Harrison Barnes was gone. Before his departure and after a quiet post-game on camera, Festus Ezeli had come by his locker to give him a hug before heading to the family rooms, then Ezeli he bumped into Andre Iguodala and they said their goodbyes in the hallway.
Two days later, Warriors general manager Bob Myers would tell reporters at the season post-mortem and NBA Draft prep interviews, “The players are the ones that see it the clearest. They know whether they’re in a good locker room or not. For them, it was clear whether we won or lost, they had a good experience together.
“I did hear from a lot of them — or all of them — that they were happy,” said Myers. “To a man, they all said, ‘I hope I can be here a long time and come back.’ I can tell you that that’s probably not the case in most exit interviews, if you’re being honest.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWZt3xBYYKU&w=560&h=315]And so the journey took an unexpected turn — the team experienced elation then pain, rather than the other way around — but at the end, there were still the relationships. No matter who gets traded or is wearing different colors next year, there will always be camaraderie among this special group.
As we reporters waited till the very last moment before Oracle cleared out, Luke Walton turned the corner and said his goodbyes. He was already a step or two on his way out when we had an opportunity to thank him. The newly minted Los Angeles Lakers head coach turned back with a tap to our chest.
The Warriors will see Walton and his Lakers in a short four months, on October 15th in Las Vegas for a 2016-17 preseason game.
As Green finished his lengthy sum-up with Spears and walked down the tunnel, we yelled out, “DubNation thanks you Draymond!”
He turned and said, “Thank you.”
And after that, Curry finally appeared and we thanked him as well as he returned the appreciation with a final slap of the hand. The franchise player walked through the big blue-and-silver front doors of the Warriors locker room for the last time this season.
In doing so, we waved a painful goodbye to 2015-16, but we knew that 2016-17 would draw us even closer to the team. We can’t wait to lace them up again when training camp starts in September, and we’re sure we’ll be able to savor every moment that awaits us as the team embarks on another journey, this time on a mission to restore its greatness.
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via @_joewallace)
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