What would it take for you to start hating the Golden State Warriors?
Before you answer, I want to make clear that I’m talking about generic sports-hate. Nothing more serious than that. And, it’s entirely possible that you’re already there.
With a few exceptions, sports-hate is connected to competitive playoff series and, to an ever-shrinking degree, historic rivalries. For most basketball fans, the strongest distaste is reserved for the opponents who beat their team most recently, or most frequently during a formative era. So here, it’s understandable if fans of the Los Angeles Clippers or the Cleveland Cavaliers might root with malice against the Warriors. There are a few other variables that can elicit a deep and passionately negative reaction to a team, like cocksure swagger or an overwhelming and well-earned favorite status, both of which would seem to set the world against the Warriors. They already have one record-breaking win streak under their belt this year and would likely lay double-digits, even on the road, against anyone excepting the San Antonio Spurs. They know they’re good and don’t mind if you know that they know. Stephen Curry’s regular transmutation of impossible to possible has taken on an increasingly loose and casual aesthetic; he’s transforming the game and still looks like he’s just goofing around in the driveway. Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut can’t stop talking. They beat you and let you know about it.
No one in NBA history has won more through their first 33 games, and the Warriors have done it in ways that usually breed vitriol — loudly, brashly, and by huge margins. And yet, there has been precious little backlash. The Warriors are, by and large, still beloved. Coming out of the summer there were a few pieces written about them embracing a heel turn, but that conversation has mostly evaporated under the heat of all their wins. No one in the media seems to be rushing to analyze Golden State’s flaws and secret weaknesses (possibly because it’s a really hard job). They’ve been subjected to no significant condescending lectures about carrying themselves like champions and proper attitudes and all that nonsense. The #hottake factory on social media has mostly been churning out laudatory praise for the highlights on highlights on highlights.
Presenting public opinion as monolithic in any direction is problematic but there is usually a pattern to these things in sports. A team becomes good and, once good to a certain degree, is subjected to a backlash of general sports-hate, both because they’re good and because being good highlights whatever other failings of aesthetics or personality can be nit-picked. The Golden State Warriors seem to have been mostly spared that indiscriminate lobbing of criticism and disgust.
Which leaves two questions — why have they been spared to this point and what, if anything, could bring it to bear?
As I wrote a few weeks ago, the Warriors are dominance in a package we’ve never quite seen before:
They are the Bad News Bears here. Physically, they don’t look like dominating basketball players. Collectively, they don’t play the way dominating teams are supposed to play (just ask Charles Barkley). They are too short, or too thin, or too awkward, or too limited, or too slow. Their style is all variance and illusion, touch, skill and finesse. Any casting director worth their salt would take one look at this roster and slot them as the hapless underdogs, not the invincible super team. Their aura is not woven with tangible threads like size, strength, or will. It is born from the repetitive process of making the impossible seem mundane.
To a man, they are everymen.
I think a great deal of their relative popularity can be traced back to this aesthetic. They look like underdogs. They play with underdog strategies. The response to their dominance has been somewhat distorted because it is so unfamiliar. They are a steady stream of highlights but the highlights don’t seem physically alien — like a Jordan dunk or a Shaq drop-step — so they just seem magical. And everyone likes magic.
Every good team has to emphasize some element of their identity, elements that are often visually grating. For the Bulls it was Jordan isolations. For the San Antonio Spurs it was, initially, suffocating defense. What makes a team great and what makes them fun to watch is not always the same thing. It just so happens that this is not the case for the Warriors. They have doubled down on all the things that make the game shine as a visual medium — ball movement, pace, shot-making. Think of them as the White Chocolate Kings or the Nash Suns, just much better. The way the Warriors play is objectively fun, and it’s hard to root against fun. It helps too that they seem to be a fun group of guys. They enjoy themselves and each other, on and off the court, which takes the edge off some of their brash assuredness.
So, is it possible that the Warriors are immune to the phenomenon of sports-hate, at least the kind that is generally reserved for the teams in the spotlight? I mean, short of fistfights and arrests (which both seem as plausible as a unicorn starting in place of the injured Harrison Barnes) what could this team do to turn you? As a fan of basketball, can you ever imagine tiring of impossible off-the-dribble three-pointers? Or ball-movement so crisp it could preserve produce? You can always mute Green’s post game interviews but would that burden be enough to sour you?
The Warriors keep doing things we’ve never seen before, re-molding our understanding of what kind of lineups can win championships, what constitutes a good shot, and at what pace an elite defense can function. Perhaps they’re also redefining how we, as fans, relate to greatness. A little sugar to the sour batches of haterade our social media and digital world are used to mixing up. That alone seems like something worth rooting for.