The Warriors Chased Big Money to San Francisco and Left Their Soul in Oakland
What it feels like to have your team, your city’s heart, torn out and dragged across the Bay
This summer, I drove by the Oracle Arena on Interstate 880 and found myself faced with ghosts. As the arena grew larger on the horizon, so too did the massive headshots of various Golden State Warriors players. Stretched across the stadium windows, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant looked as big as gods. Which, of course, in Oakland, they are.
Those posters lingered following the team’s unexpected and crushing loss to the Toronto Raptors in the NBA Finals. In some ways, the exit from Oakland is fitting for the Warriors, a team whose five-year run of mega-success has overshadowed the struggles they faced during most of their time in Oakland. Their rise seemed to match that of this city, a place long treated with disdain and which has, in many ways, recently transformed beyond recognition. But for all Oakland gained, it may have lost just as much. Now it’s losing the Warriors, too, and Oracle lingers as a grim reminder of the city and people left behind.
For a half-century, the Warriors have been a quintessentially Oakland team. Sportswriters love pointing out that the Dubs were once a San Francisco…
