The Golden State Warriors’ Achilles’ heel

The Golden State Warriors did not need to sign DeMarcus Cousins, better known as Boogie. Survival of the budding dynasty did not depend on it. But they signed him anyway. Teams do this — or at least attempt to do this. They amass talent. They build. Sometimes they sign players they don’t necessarily need, but when a player signs with one team, a player cannot sign with another. Golden State’s signing Boogie keeps him from signing with the empire’s enemies. It keeps the opposition weak.

Most teams, however, do not sign a player of Boogie’s caliber when they already boast a starting lineup replete with four All-Stars, including two MVP winners. Most teams do not boast so many All-Stars period, not in recent decades. But Golden State is not most teams. They are the new exceptionalism. They bring a Finals MVP off the bench as part of a Lineup of Death. Most teams possess neither the versatility nor the depth to perform fatalities in the third quarter of games. An omnipotent voice bellows: Finish him. And the Warriors do throw a harpoon to the gut. Most other teams are complacent in their victimhood. They accept video game theatrics as the new reality.

Signings such as the Boogie Cousins deal are brash. They respond to the critique of super teams by becoming more super. They embrace the mentality of a pro-wrestling villain. Bada bing bada boom, as Steph Curry tweets.

In other words, such moves are highly corporate in a Wolf of Wall Street or American Psycho sort of way. One can imagine the Warriors on a yacht comparing business cards and listening to an auto-tuned version of Sports by Huey Lewis and the News. Yes, these young dudes are also ax murderers. A lust for violence and carnage fuels their appetites, not just beauty. On the white Under Armor sneakers are drops of blood, sure, but there is also fear.

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The United States spends about $600 billion on military and defense expenditures, which is more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the United Kingdom and Japan combined. Such spending creates might and even cockiness — we’re America, bitches! But holding such power also means one fears losing such power, of having one’s spheres of influence burst like tiny champagne bubbles. To prevent such crises — to make the champagne last — simply order more champagne! The Warriors know how to do so, have done so, will continue doing so. The result is a game whose objective isn’t to win so much as to eliminate the possibility of losing. Signing Boogie is about safety, not heroism.

Love them or hate them, the Warriors have horded the talent, the infrastructure, the state secrets, to insulate themselves from competition. Fortune has played a role (as it always does), but they have also been smart and determined, even sacrificial to a degree. Boogie could have signed for more dollars somewhere else. Such a decision is always sold as being driven by love for the game, and maybe it is. But only one team could have talked the former Kentucky Wildcat into taking less and that team wears blue and yellow and already holds three championships. Winning buys more winning, but it also buys more winning for less than other teams can afford.

Boogie will help the Warriors win more, but he won’t be necessary to the winning. He probably knows that, though, and such intimacies should not be unfamiliar to him. When he joined a freshman class at Kentucky not even a decade ago, the class included future NBA stars John Wall and Eric Bledsoe. The circumstances and expectations were of a similar shape then as they are now. The commitment then as it is now was for one year. The winning now is even more of a certainty, and yet this may not be all about winning, just as it isn’t quite all about money.

Cousins will be in close proximity to the images and branding that make up Steph Curry, the little son of a former NBA sharpshooter that could, as a basketball icon and societal symbol. I think I can. I think I can. Bada bing bada boom. Everyone wins here, in Golden State that is, and the winning redeems the game’s wild prodigals. By being part of a system, players with reputations like a JaVale McGee before him and now a Boogie Cousins become might made right. They become less goofy and disgruntled. They become competitors with chips on their shoulders, and if they play their cards right, they can even become good according to the game’s Right Way principles.

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And the Warriors, for better or worse, are everything we hate, as well as everything we want to be. The Achilles heel of the whole venture, whether you’re for it or against it, is the dawning uniformity of it all; the notion that we can all be Warriors when the time is right.