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OAKLAND, Calif. – Three years ago, as the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated the first NBA championship in the Golden State Warriors franchise, Draymond Green sat in front of his locker and sent Kevin Durant an SMS. .
Green wanted to let Durant know that – even at his worst moment, just an hour after losing a seventh game in the final – he was thinking of Durant. That the warriors needed Durant. And that he would be welcome in a team that had already won a title and 73 games in the regular season.
At the time, they knew each other only as competitors. But Green's instinct was doomed to failure – outreach work was doing its job. A few weeks later, Durant joined the Warriors as a free agent, forever changing the landscape of the NBA.
Three years later, as the Warriors again absorbed the ignominy of watching a team – this time the Toronto Raptors – celebrating its first title at Oracle Arena, Durant was the one who was moving forward.
Klay Thompson was in the Warriors' locker room, his left knee wrapped in ice, in the hope that the injury he had just suffered was not as serious as the doctors suspected him.
Thompson had come into this game thinking that the Warriors still had some magic. That they would win this last match in Oracle Arena for Durant, who had had an Achilles tendon break in the fifth game. "We all know it's a minor setback for a major comeback," Thompson wrote in a post on Instagram with the hashtags #doitforK and #onelastdance.
Find all you need to know about the first NBA title in Toronto.
But this injury, already described by doctors as a likely tear in the ACL, was not considered by Thompson. It was the end of the road. For this season, and perhaps for the warrior dynasty.
Then his phone rang.
Durant was online, FaceTiming coming to him from New York, where he is recovering from an operation at Achilles torn apart.
"I heard them talking," said Klay's father, Mychal, about the conversation. "But I do not think they would like me to disclose it."
Durant was probably the only person in the world who could understand exactly what Thompson was feeling at the time. His father knew how to give them space.
"They were encouraging them to come back strong," said Mychal Thompson. "They have outstanding business."
This season has been a war of attrition and attention for the warriors. At times, the team seemed to be dragging themselves – too talented and proud to surrender, but too tired and hurt to organize the type of fight for which she is known.
Five consecutive years to breathe the same air with the same group of human beings can bear on the sweetest soul. It's been five years since the pipe began to burst into the spotlight as part of the NBA's best team.
But the way things finally ended, with Durant and Thompson, who suffered catastrophic injuries that will keep each of them a big part of next year, will make every other problem around the Warriors less important.
Before the fifth game in Toronto Monday, General Manager Bob Myers spent half an hour talking to Durant's agent, Rich Kleiman, in the field. The cameras dissected each of their actions, knowing the immense pressure exerted by Durant and the Warriors over the last few weeks to release him medically.
"How are you?" Myers was asked.
"Tired," he says.
C & # 39; was before During it's hurt again and broke his Achilles in the game 5. And before Thompson crashed to the floor during the next match, the guard standing left knee after landing awkwardly as a result of a dunk attempt.
The Warriors had spent almost two weeks managing the story surrounding Durant's recovery from a calf injury. But when Durant stayed outside longer than expected, they had begun to lose control. Myers said the Warriors' internal target had always been the fifth game of the final, with a very small chance in Game 4. But the Warriors never said it explicitly, and this led to a constant feeling, at the beginning of the finale, that Durant's return was just around the corner.
There were daily questions and reports on his progress. Players have read and reacted to these reports. Then, they saw Durant attend individual training sessions at the team's practice center and thought he looked handsome. Thus, after the fourth game, when Thompson was re-seized after a thigh injury and Kevon Looney returned to play with a fractured cartilage near the collarbone, the narrative and optics of the athlete's body were not clear. Durant's absence had the favor of stealing the word of Stephen Curry.
"It is at this time of year that you are being watched," said Myers before Durant returned in Game Five. "For us, if we get to the fifth game … it would still be Kevin's business, but I can not control what you write and all the stories out there.
"But what's good with being part of a team, is that you know what's going on within the team."
If only that was the case. According to several team sources, several players expressed their frustration at the prolonged uncertainty of Durant's situation.
It's different than being frustrated by him or questioning his desire to play. But as one source put it, "It's like you're swimming in the ocean and somebody was saying," We buy you a lifejacket soon. "Well, until you get that lifejacket, you wait for it, and I think it has created tremendous anxiety."
This concern was exacerbated by all that this could mean for Durant's free will this summer. Throughout the season, uncertainty about Durant's future with the team has been a fascinating and frustrating ride. Most people have learned to compartmentalize it. Accept everything that comes. Even make peace with her.
But the specter of Durant's departure was still there. It was difficult for some members of the organization not to take personally, not to wonder what Durant might wish for beyond what the warriors had given him in recent years.
But when Durant was injured in the fifth game, everything changed. All this anxiety went out the window and turned into a real concern.
The vice president of public relations, Raymond Ridder, said that he knew right away how serious the injury was, without even having to ask for it.
"There was a lot of raw emotion out there," Ridder said about the scene in the locker room during Durant's examination. "Bob Myers had his head in his hands and it was very calm."
A few hours after the win in Game 5, Warriors players, owners, and staff members went to a team dinner at The Chase Restaurant in Toronto. It had been planned, won or lost.
"We won the game, but I was very very depressed at dinner," said Joe Lacob, owner of the Warriors, after the sixth game. "It was a devastating injury, I'm not so depressed tonight because I do not know how much more depressed I can have, we just have to move forward now."
KLAY THOMPSON FOLLOWED the last quarter of Thursday's game 6 on the NBA application. In the fourth quarter, he had left the arena on crutches to get an MRI, always hoping his injury would not be as bad as the doctors feared. "He told me that he did not feel the noise," said Mychal Thompson. "Then I hoped maybe he just twisted it."
Klay had the same hope – after being helped off the pitch by his teammates, he ran back to take two free throws and made them both. He tried to return to the match by rushing to the other end of the field to defend himself before the Warriors committed an intentional foul to get him out of the match. While he was leaving the courthouse reluctantly, he told Warrior coach Steve Kerr that he would be back in a few minutes.
But a few minutes after returning to the locker room, Thompson knew something was really wrong. Everything in his knee stiffened and swelled. The pain became intense. He tried to stretch and walk. But the Warriors' medical staff told him that his knee was unstable and they suspected that it was an ACL tear.
"I was so hurt for him," said Mychal. "He wanted to be with his teammates … he was losing, he was falling with his teammates."
"I was back there when they told him he was missing on Thursday," Ridder said. "And all he said was:" Do you think I can play Sunday? " [in Game 7]? ""
Thompson's brother, Mychel drove to an imaging center in Berkeley. His parents followed in a separate car. The Warriors kept him close to the fourth quarter.
Just minutes from the end of the game, Thompson was integrated into the MRI machine. The game ended while he was there.
"What happened?" Thompson asked as soon as he finished. "Have we won?"
That's only when he learned that the Warriors had lost that he had begun to think about what this injury could mean for his career.
"Do you think it could affect my free agency?" He asked.
1:17
Brian Windhorst says the Warriors intend to offer Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant full contracts of up to five years.
BACK TO ORACLE Arena, in a small room adjacent to the Warriors' locker room, Myers and Lacob began talking about the issues that arose when the franchise would begin one of its biggest disadvantages ever. Thompson and Durant can both become unrestricted free agents. If they choose to go elsewhere, there is no way to replace them, that they are talented or with the few financial options that warriors will have at their disposal. . But keeping both could inflate the salary cape payments and luxury taxes of the team to the tune of $ 375 million.
"It's very complicated," said Lacob. "Once I'm depressed by injuries, I'm really excited about the challenge. How to stay competitive? What is our plan? Frankly, I have already made one. I've talked with Bob and myself. [assistant GM] Church [Lacob] and we have some ideas. "
Myers had come for half a dozen shirts and blazers that he had left during the season. They were no longer needed here or ever again. The season and the warrior race in Oakland are over. There he found Lacob, escaping the crowd that had drowned his sorrows at the bar of the Bridge Club, his exclusive suite near the family room of the Warriors.
"I do not drink," he says. "Or rather, I'm not going to drink now, I have too much work to do."
They have the draft next Thursday. They need to find out how to manage the free agencies of Durant and Thompson. They must decide how the devastating injuries that each player has suffered in the final affect the next season and beyond.
Lacob could not talk about his thoughts about potential free agents because of the NBA's falsification rules. He could however congratulate a player for his performances and his efforts during the series.
"We will win this match, in my opinion, it stays healthy," said Lacob in Thompson. "He is fantastic, unbelievable, I love him."
LIKE LACOB SPOKEN about the uncertain future of the Warriors and the work on the treatment of the end of this season that has experienced such a terrible end, Dell Curry has rushed down the hall with a bag of giant popcorn .
Normally, his son Stephen is the guy of the popcorn. He eats it after every game. But a little bag – nothing as loud as this giant plastic bag full of butter butters that his father was nibbling at.
"Doing it for five years, with the circumstances we've known, and still being there, I can not believe it," said Dell Curry. "We celebrated more tonight, in defeat than ever, because we knew how hard it is, we lost, but it's still a victory."
His son would have been favored to win the final player of the final if the Warriors had returned to win the series. In the sixth game, he missed an open shot that would have allowed the Warriors to score less than 10 seconds.
"I will live with that," said Stephen Curry in the locker room after the game. "We always talk about it – me and Klay – in terms of the shots we take, you live with it, and I'll shoot that shot every day of the week."
But by the time he left Oracle Arena for the last time, such things seemed to be the furthest thoughts from Curry's mind.
Curry spent more time putting away his locker before leaving. Then he stopped to say goodbye to every security guard, usher and guard who was working there. Many of them will not be working in the new San Francisco Arena next year. The choice was left to all employees, but the new ride proved prohibitively expensive for many.
When Curry finally left the arena where he had contributed to the history of the NBA, he returned home and spent time with a dozen members of his family. They ordered In-N-Out burgers and played golf late into the night.
He has always been the guardian of these warriors. They went as he did. They fed on his energy and his emotions. As the season ended so abruptly, the organization again followed suit.
"There are a lot of different emotions," Curry said. "No regrets about how this series ended.
"We had a lot of good memories in this building, I think it's iconic, in the sense of the whole history of this organization and how we got to this point." that I will drive there, I will keep very good memories of what we have lived. " have been able to accomplish.
"As we cross the bridge, we want to be able to continue this momentum and create new memories, so I hope all fans in this building will appreciate the trip and the ride."
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