Warriors do not relinquish their dynamic position

Memorable is not exactly the right word.

Painful, frustrating, demoralizing. Those words are closer to how Draymond Green would describe the two seasons between the Golden State Warriors’ last appearance in the 2019 NBA Finals and this season, being one game away from returning to the championship series after Sunday’s 109-100 win over the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals.

However, there is one memory from the past two seasons that remains.

“Really, none of these people took us out of this space,” Ohm Youngmisuk regarding the team not qualifying for the playoffs in the previous two seasons. “Toronto beat us, but nobody really came in and said, ‘All right, the Golden State Warriors era is over.'”

For all the attitude and swagger, it’s easy to forget that Green has always been one of the sharpest observers of the NBA landscape.

The Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 NBA title at the same time the Warriors stumbled to a league-worst record with Green, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry absent for the entire season or significant lapses due to injury. The Milwaukee Bucks won the title last season, while the Warriors were trying to build their next generation of players while giving their current core a chance to make it to the highest levels of the championship.

This season, rookie teams and superstars, as well as the last three teams the Warriors have faced in these playoffs, began to take their respective places in the NBA’s future. However, no team or organization has come close to replacing the Warriors and dislodging them from their dynastic place.

In the first round, Golden State finished with two-time Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. In the second round, they beat Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies, the team frequently compared to them (even outright, as Dillon Brooks blatantly did) during the early stages of their dynasty.

In these conference finals, the Warriors gave Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic the same kind of attention and treatment they used to give LeBron James: conceding his greatness and acknowledging that he would likely score 40-plus points no matter what defensive scheme they put in front of him.

“Luka is unbelievable,” Green said of the Mavericks All-Star, who scored 40 points Sunday despite finishing minus-19 in 40 minutes. “This is his moment. His moment is the future. He’s a great player and he’s going to be a great for a long time.”

The Warriors won, as they did in three of four Finals meetings against James, limiting all opponents. In Sunday’s matchup, they limited Doncic’s teammates to 36% shooting from the field and an atrocious 25% from the 3-point line.

It is the third time in these playoffs that Doncic has scored at least 40 points in a loss, tied with James (2009), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1977) and Jerry West (1965) for the best postseason output.

Over the next few weeks, much will be written and said about how the Warriors regrouped and reinvented themselves to get back to these stages of the tournament.

However, it’s probably best to ask: Did they abandon them at any point?

“We didn’t abandon the space because we got too old to still be here,” Green expressed in his remarks to Youngmisuk. “We didn’t leave this space because we all went our separate ways. We left the space because Klay Thompson was missing and then he was out of action again, and Andre [Iguodala] wasn’t here either.”

“Then Steph Curry was absent. We didn’t leave this space because we stopped being able to stay in this space.”

Obviously, there is one important figure from the Warriors dynasty that Green omitted from his analysis. We’re talking about the man awarded two consecutive Finals Most Valuable Player awards in 2017 and 2018, the same man who left the team as a free agent in 2019 for the Brooklyn Nets: Kevin Durant.

Perhaps it was a simple omission on Green’s part, or a subtle reminder that the Warriors won a championship in 2014-15 and reached a record 73 wins in 2015-16 before Durant’s arrival.

That style of play from the early years of the Warriors dynasty has returned in full force in this series.

These Warriors excelled by using their length, talent and intelligence to play suffocating defense while boasting the most democratic and aesthetically pleasing offense in the NBA.

All of this, along with absolutely destroying their opponents in the third period.