Impossibly Fast-Moving And Veritably Flawless

Stephen Curry and The Warriors are no underdogs.

There’s nothing fair about the Splash Brothers, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, both legacy NBA players. Like lab-grown meat, they were created with a lot of money, time, and sterile conditions; they’ve turned out technically perfect but mild-mannered and bland. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to appreciate about their road to a record-setting season, unanimous MVP, and bid for the 2016 Championship. Carvell Wallace takes a precise, Angellian look at every factor—including Curry’s perfect jump shot and Thompson’s pure shooting as well as Joe Lacob’s venture-capital approach to team-building and Oakland’s rapid gentrification.

There’s also the thrill of the possibility that they might just lose:

One especially devoted Warriors fan, a friend of a friend, said that watching your team win is like taking a hit from drug: it ups your endorphins, makes you feel high, like you’ve accomplished something just by rooting for them. Losing, then, is coming down, facing the harsh reality you left behind. Eventually, everyone loses: athletes get traded, teams come apart, knees buckle, shots are missed, fans age. Early in April, I watched the Warriors play the Boston Celtics. It was the first time all season that any of us had seen the Warriors lose a game at home. People began filing out of the arena with fifteen seconds still left on the game clock; it felt like the blood leaving the body of a corpse. When we are given something good, we want something great. When we are given something great, we want something impossible. Not only did we want the Warriors to surpass seventy-two wins, we wanted them to never lose again. We wanted to defy gravity, to never come down. The next day, at a practice, Steve Kerr talked about the kind of disappointment that is specific to greatness. “It’s like when Steph or Klay has an open three-pointer, and they miss at Oracle, the whole crowd groans because you can’t believe that they missed,” he said. “If we lose a game, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, they lost at home?’ ”

But they’ll probably win. Read the whole thing.