With two winning seasons and one playoff appearance between 1994 and 2013, the Golden State Warriors were locked in the NBA’s junkyard. Incumbent stars wanted out. Available free agents routinely ignored their overtures unless the contract offer included hazard pay. Cool region in which to live, yes, but a profoundly dysfunctional organization.
When Joe Lacob and Peter Guber assembled a group to rescue the franchise from the misguidance of besieged owner Chris Cohan in 2010, they understood the mission. Introduced to crooner Michael Bublé singing the Nina Simone song, ‘Feeling Good (It’s a New Day),” they committed to a dramatic makeover.
New ownership inherited burgeoning superstar Stephen Curry and then raised the franchise's profile by recruiting individuals such as Jerry West, Mark Jackson and Rick Welts, men of prominence within the NBA. The New Warriors were aiming high and hitting targets.
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SIGN UP HERE After posting back-to-back playoff seasons (2012-13 and 2013-14) for the first time since 1994, the Warriors were methodically shedding their image as inept and irrelevant. They were gaining credibility, and their next quest was for competitive and financial prosperity.
Three days after losing a grueling 2014 first-round series to the Los Angeles Clippers in seven games, Golden State dismissed Jackson as head coach. A little more than a week later, Steve Kerr was the new head coach. The move invited skepticism, as much of the roster supported Jackson and was wary of changes likely to come with another first-time head coach.
Winning the 2015 NBA Finals in six games over the Cleveland Cavaliers gave the Warriors their first championship in 40 years and the biggest throne in the room reserved for the league’s elite. The series was clinched on June 16, 2015, with Kerr becoming the third rookie coach to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.
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To celebrate the 10th anniversary, NBC Sports Bay Area reached out to some of the participants willing to share their memories of that remarkable journey. This is an oral history of the season that dropped the first pillar of what became a dynasty that has made the Warriors the most valuable team in the NBA:
TRAINING CAMP
Kerr brought a staff of veteran assistants, with Alvin Gentry focusing on offense and Ron Adams fine-tuning the defense. After a developmental camp, the Warriors coalesced and set their sights toward a lofty goal.
Shaun Livingston (first season with the Warriors): "You had a group of guys that had been together in this war, this battle going back and forth with, at the time, the Clippers. They were kind of like the top team of the West. OKC, they were fighting for position, fighting for the respect, but they had some continuity; they'd been together a couple years, been in some playoffs. And we had this changing of leadership from the coaching standpoint. You had the newness of Steve Kerr and his staff. Alvin Gentry, kind of the senior associate coach with experience. Steve Kerr’s first time as a coach. It’s an unknown. But then you had this known. Steph is coming. Klay (Thompson) is coming. You had David Lee, former All-Star. Andre Iguodala, former All-Star. Andrew Bogut. You had some veterans mixed with this kind of gasoline, this flame of Steph and Klay, the star power that was rising."
Adams: "I had analyzed the team coming in here, which I thought they had a lot of potential. Our shortest player was Leandro Barbosa. Barbosa is a big guy. He's a healthy 6-3. He's strong. He's long. That's the shortest guy we have on our team. So, for a guy who loves length and athleticism and all that, we had an interesting team before the first day of practice. We had this nice roster of length and good athleticism, and on top of all of that, good intelligence. A very smart team."
Kerr: "It was total chaos. I was really trying to push the idea of tempo and ball movement, player movement. And the players, the first few days, were trying to do that. But as is usually the case in camp, it's a little wild, even for veteran teams. The first couple of days are a little wild because everyone's rusty. But because I was a first-year coach and I was trying to implement a lot of this stuff, I was terrified because it was awful. The ball was flying all over the gym."
Bogut (fourth season as a Warrior): "Steve was probably the hardest on Steph, because Steph plays so free and loose. Which is why he’s so good. But at times, he would turn the ball over. He would tell him, ‘Hey, you're our guy. We can't afford having you throwing over-the-head passes that get deflected for transition layups.’ And I remember numerous times Steve would stop practice and get into Steph in front of the group, which, Steph responded to very well."
CRUCIAL MOVES
Kerr made two significant lineup changes. First, he persuaded starting small forward Iguodala to accept the role of Sixth Man, with Harrison Barnes sliding into the starting lineup.
When Lee sustained a hamstring injury in the preseason finale, Kerr turned to Draymond Green as his replacement. With the Warriors winning their first five games and 21 of their first 23, the changes became permanent.
Livingston: "Andre has started every game of his career before that season. That's 10 years in the league of starting, and then you ask him to come off the bench? That's a big domino, right? He's been an All-Star. He's a highly sought-after free agent. To come in and put your ego to the side, understanding this could, this could shift your career, that's a big buy-in. From there, you saw Draymond Green was kind of coming into his own and taking that starter slot. The way that we took off, and the way that we all responded to that move. That slot was David Lee’s, who was a former All-Star. Having buy-in from that standpoint matters. Winning helps, right? Because if we don't have those wins, maybe it turns out different."
Kerr: "It wasn't seamless with Andre. He accepted it. I wouldn't say he embraced it, but he understood. I told him my vision was that he was sort of like (Manu) Ginobili, who came off the bench, even though he was the second-best player on the Spurs. And I think Andre was at the point of his career where he understood that, and he didn't worry too much about starting. He wanted to win, but he wasn't sure it was going to work. It took a couple of months. But once it started to click, it was pretty powerful. Yeah. I mean, when you're winning like that, the results kind of speak for themselves, and I guess any skepticism kind of fades away."
(The swap at power forward lifted Golden State’s defense from good to the best in the NBA.)
Bogut: "The thing about Draymond is he observes everything, and he listens. When he's learning something new, he takes it in. You tell him once he's got it, and then he'll watch and learn from that. Our chemistry is not something that we practiced. It was just automatic. He had a great feel for the game, spatial awareness, rotation awareness. If I was out of position or messed up something, he'd have my back, and vice versa."
Festus Ezeli (third season): "I loved watching the way that they covered for each other, like the IQ, the combined IQ of both is unmatched, and to see them on the floor working was special. Draymond blocking shots, Bogut blocking shots. Draymond is getting out in the passing lanes, getting steals, talking to people, telling them where to go and switching. I'm watching Bogut, this big guy in the middle, blocking shots. I tried to emulate that."
THE SEASON
The 2014-15 Warriors finished 67-15, the best record in the NBA and the best in franchise history. Curry earned his first MVP award. Thompson joined him in the backcourt as All-Star Game starters.
Livingston: "Just watching this team, the way that they had chemistry, the way there was connectivity, even with the new coaching staff, they already knew what they were capable of. They were already on string. They had a feel for each other. We started probably 10-1 (21-2), and I might be playing 10 minutes a game. I'm like, ‘Damn, do they need me?’ And I'm coming off a season where, where I was starting and had a bigger role. I was observing once I got there."
Kerr:" It's not like I didn't know I was taking over a good team. They had won like 50 games two years in a row (47 and 51) and been in the playoffs. And we knew we were already good. It was just a matter of, could we take the next step and continue the growth that they had already been on. And I think at that point, when we were 21-2, it felt like the identity of the team offensively was forming. And that was really my main goal. When we started, we didn't change the defense much at all. Mark had really changed the identity of the team, the personnel moves, getting Bogut. Everything was really in place on the defensive end. So, we were really focused on the offensive evolution, just trying to incorporate more ball movement and play through our bigs a little bit more because Bogues and David Lee and Draymond were all such good passers."
Ezeli: "I remember really enjoying our style of play. Because the year before, we went from this “iso” style of basketball, which was working because we got Steph Curry on the team. With that dude, you just put the ball in his hands. Now, it was like everybody touches the ball. Iguodala throwing lobs to me. Draymond moving the ball to Klay. It was so smooth, the starting rotation, the bench rotations, all those things together were incredible."
Kerr: "I remember at that stage just thinking, 'All right, this thing starting to take shape.' We were tracking the number of passes per game. We were writing it on the board after every game. The next morning we'd come in and watch film, and we write on the board how many passes we had made. And we're trying to be up over 300. I remember one day we forgot to write it on the board. As soon as we sat down, Steph was like, ‘How many passes last night?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you guys were actually paying attention to that.’ And so that's kind of when I realized they understood the power of ball movement and the flow that we were searching for. And it became apparent we were one of the best teams in the league."
THE JOY OF BROTHERHOOD
On the road to a champagne celebration, there was plenty of singing and dancing and joking and group dinners that forged a unique bond.
Adams: "The most exciting thing about the team at that point in the season, starting with training camp, was how much fun they were having together. Steve is a devotee of (football coach) Pete Carroll and Pete is a marvelous guy, wonderful coach, but his style is one of not thinking too much about the past but thinking about the future and understanding that. The one abiding concept in sport, where I can't say that I always did as a young coach,h is that it's got to be fun. Everyone started playing the game because it was fun, right? And Steve really did a good job of capturing this early on."
Livingston: "We’re tight off the court, making those videos, the bus rides, clowning each other, the group chats, all those things. The team dinners, especially. That's when we started doing team dinners on the road nightly. And you're seeing guys that can't wait to get to the dinners, because we want to be around each other. And that's uncommon, especially because we spend so much time together."
Bogut: "Good chemistry is understanding the differences among us. Some people have family life. Some are single and ready to mingle. Some are out in the streets. Some like to play Xbox or PlayStation. Some guys politically are here and some are over there. Harrison and I used to disagree in a lot of things, but we had open debate, discussion, not to a point where we hate each other. It would just be civil, adult discussions, which is what we need in the world today. And most of the squad was like that. We understood that everyone's different, but on the court, we're together, and we enjoyed the time together. We spent a lot of time on the road together, restaurants and whatnot. It was a beautiful, beautiful group to be a part of.
"And It was nothing that was coach-driven or management-driven. Most trips there would be about eight or nine or 10 guys coming to dinner. We already kind of had a good group that enjoyed being around each other, had a good laugh, that bulls--t, that goofed off. And I think that's important. A lot of teams, 85-90 percent of teams, don't have that. We had that, and it just was special. And I think that actually helped the winning more than the winning part of that process, if that makes sense."
Ezeli: "At some point, maybe halfway through the season, Leandro Barbosa says, ‘We gonna be championship.’ And we're looking like, ‘Yo, you can't say that. You’re going to jinx us.’ But he felt it so strongly, like he had been on some talented teams, he felt it so strongly in the way that we were as a team, like we could play. But then we had this ability to also bounce back from bad times. And we were together. We were eating together. We're hanging out together, going out together, like everything we always wanted to do together.”
Kerr: "There was just a great vibe with the group, and that was just the quality of the type of people that we had on the roster. Obviously, Steph embodies that. But the new guys, Shaun Livingston and LB were great. LB was just pure joy every day. And I think Andre's willingness to take a step back early in the season and come off the bench helped in that regard too. Everyone saw the sacrifice that he made. There was an incredible sort of energy that emanated from the group."
Livingston: "Guys get hired and fired based on results. So, the winning obviously helped. But for me, personally, it took me back to high school. It gave me that feeling of joy again about playing the game."
ORACLE (or ROARACLE)
The Warriors lost two home games all season, to the Spurs on Nov. 11 and to the Bulls on Jan. 27 in overtime. They finished with a franchise-record 39-2 mark at Oracle Arena. The league’s most decisive home-court advantage was created.
Kerr: "It sounds trite, but we had a great team, a great crowd and a great venue. It was electric in that place. One coach told me that when the introductions would come on, and the Tupac song would come on, ‘California Love,’ and they're introducing the players, he said, ‘We're watching that. And we're just thinking, Man, I hope we don't lose by 40.’ "
Ezeli: "It was so loud in there we could barely hear ourselves. You're yelling, ‘Steph screen, right, right,’ and he can't hear me. So, you just got to play off feel. For us, it became normal. But I think for other teams coming in here, it's probably jarring. It's that extra battery that we had in our packs."
Livingston: "The building just feels like it's shaking. It feels like it's moving in there. It's so loud, and just the amount of fuel that it gave us when we went on a run. There's a vibe, there's an energy to the game. And you just kind of see the body language of your opponents would let out. Those shoulders start to slump, heads start to dip, guys start kind of going back and forth, bickering at each other. Coaches calling timeouts back-to-back. And then the crowd, they're just pouring gasoline on that thing. It's just, you know, it's insane in there."
Bogut: "Just watching the playoff atmosphere of the playoffs this year in San Francisco compared to Oakland, you can't compare the two. I understand it’s big business and all that, but I think the spirits were working with the Warriors. It was a real special place. The fans there were just great, so I have real good memories of that place. It was an awesome place to play basketball."
FIRST ROUND VS. PELICANS
Having earned the No. 1 overall seed, rallying behind the slogan “Strength in Numbers,” the Warriors swept New Orleans in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, toppled Memphis in six games in the conference semifinals, beat Houston and five in the conference finals and, in the NBA Finals, took down LeBron James and Cleveland in six.
Kerr: "Even though we handled New Orleans, it wasn't easy. We had to come back from 20 down in the fourth quarter in Game 3, and then I think Game 4 went down to the wire. (Pelicans late comeback fell short.) I felt like, in some ways, we were kind of where OKC is right now: Dominant regular season, but you got to prove it now."
Bogut: "The Pelicans didn't really pose that much of a threat. They were better than the seed they were, and they played good basketball, but they didn't have enough and weren’t deep enough to really mess with us. We started to realize how valuable our bench was. Mo Speights, Barbosa, Livingston, they came in and impacted a lot of games. They changed games sometimes. They’d come in with a two-point lead and Mo Speights, ‘Mo Buckets,’ would hit five straight jumpers and we’re up 15."
Ezeli: "Our bench was just so dynamic. We had Marreese Speights. We had offense. We had defense. Shaun Livingston was like a cheat code; when you put the ball his hands and he's on the block, that ball is going in the basket. And this is somebody who was coming in for Steph Curry, who is putting the ball in the basket from the 3-point line. We had different styles that we could play."
CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS VS. GRIZZLIES
Down 2-1 going into Game 4 in Memphis, Kerr made a crucial defensive adjustment, assigning 7-foot Bogut to guard 6-foot-5 guard Tony Allen.
Voila.
The Warriors won the next three games by an average of 16.7 points.
Livingston: "We were bleeding. And the series being down after being the favorites to win, being in a vulnerable position, with Steph, taking shots because of being the MVP and feeling like you have to come through. You're not playing the way you want to play. We're all not playing the way we want to play. And you start to hear all the noise, all the shots coming at you."
Kerr: "Every team that eventually breaks through, you have to have that moment of truth, moment of reckoning, whatever you want to call it. And that's what we had when they beat us up in Game 3 (a 10-point loss). Everybody was calling us soft and tweeting about us and saying, jump-shooting teams don't win all that stuff. Unless you're getting blown out the first couple games, you generally wait to make your big adjustment until at least Game 3, maybe Game 4. And we were maybe a game late in our adjustment to put Bogut on Tony Allen. Ron Adams had suggested it on the flight to Memphis when it was 1-1. But we agreed it was pretty extreme. And then we got blown out. It's like, ‘Oh s--t, we better do that.’ "
Bogut: "I just let Allen shoot the ball, really, and that's not his thing. That basically screwed up their spacing, because they had four bodies already running around paint with the Gasol and Randolph, whoever's guarding them. And then you’ve got me running around not guarding anyone. That just completely screwed up their offense, and they just couldn't find a rhythm. What that did, and what people don't realize, is it got Tony out of their lineup. He says he had a hamstring injury. I think he was going to be out of lineup anyway because their offense was so bad."
Adams: "I think it kind of disoriented Memphis a bit."
Kerr: "It was, it was the game. It was the seminal moment of that championship season."
Adams: "It was the biggest game of that sequence of playoff games. It was at the time, and as I look back on it. And it still is, in its own way, a pivotal moment in the success of our team that year in the playoffs. I always think back: What if we had not won that game? What would have been our route, our destiny as a team? What would it have been?"
CONFERENCE FINALS VS. ROCKETS
Bogut: "The Houston series didn't really pose that much of a threat."
Kerr: "I remember Game 2, where Harden had the ball in his hands down one with like five seconds left, and it just felt like, oh s--t. And then [Steph] and Klay (tied him up). To go up 2-0 was huge. And then we steamrolled them in Game 3. The series actually didn't feel close. Even though Game 2 was close, it felt like we were in control."
Adams: "You keep putting this, for lack of a better term, this ‘confidence coin’ in the bank. Each game that we were extracting from these wins, you keep putting it in the confidence bank. That process served us well leading into the championship round. In that we're a confident team, we kind of knew at that point we could do it."
THE FINALS
When the Warriors, now the betting favorite, lost two of the first three games, they were facing the same challenge they had conquered to oust the Grizzlies. Kerr made another Game 4 adjustment. Following the suggestion of staffer Nick U’Ren, the coach called on Iguodala to replace Bogut in the starting lineup – and be the primary defender on James – with Green sliding over to center. The “Death Lineup” was born.
Kerr: "That's the whole point of a seven-game series. You have time to adjust. You look at it, you study it, you make your adjustment, and you hope that it works. And in both cases, the adjustments really worked. Putting Bogut on Tony Allen, and then in the Finals, starting Andre for Bogut and going small."
Ezeli: "I just remember Andre Iguodala before our team meeting for Game 6. Andre's like, ‘Yo, guys, I don't have anything else in me, so this is the last game. I'm giving y'all everything I have after this. I'm done all right.’ He was talking about how LeBron just keeps coming."
Bogut: "We reeled off three in a row to win it. I think just the grind of a series, and knowing that we're always in it, we learned we're never out. That you’ve got to knock us out, that we're not going to fail by ourselves."
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Ezeli: "Winning a championship in Cleveland is the worst thing ever, because there's nowhere to celebrate. And the first thing that you do when the buzzer goes off, is you're looking around trying to find somebody to hug. And people don't realize we did this thing. And that's why you don't do this journey alone. They say if you want to go far, you go together. And to be able to do that with my brothers is still a special memory that I have in my heart. It never goes away. And forever, wherever I see them, anywhere around the world, even when we're 70 years old, we always have those special memories. Those are my brothers."
Adams: "We tore up that locker room. There's nothing better than winning on the road. Well, actually it's better for your fans to win at home if you're going to win a championship. But it's pretty sweet winning on the road. The celebration was immense, the guys going crazy and all that camaraderie that achieving something great brings with it. All of that is special. It is such an exhilarating feeling."
Livingston: "It was just ... it was insane. And then getting back to the Bay, you know, seeing the, just the outpouring of our fans, and all they went through, the 40 years without a championship. It was special, man."
Adams: "It's the pinnacle. So, when it happens, it has great meaning for anyone involved in it, whoever's on the team, whatever their association to the team might be. So that will always be really special. And the first one, of course, is the most special, I think."
Bogut: "Definitely the most special moment of my career. When you win a championship going through, individually, for me, going from a team Milwaukee that you thought never really had a real chance to win a championship; playoffs was kind of our gold medal. Going to Golden State, when I first arrived, was not in a great spot, not a lot of success. Then tasting a little bit of success, but knowing there was a still a bit more that we can get out of this group, then coming in and getting it. Yeah."
Kerr: "It was honestly the most gratifying moment of my professional life. Just to do that, to win the title in our first year, to see the joy in the locker room and to see that how happy everybody and their families were. Then we go over to Morton's (prime steakhouse) and have the celebration. All the owners, the happiest group of people on earth at that moment.
"That's an amazing, amazing liftoff. Yeah, the first of five straight runs to the Finals. Man, I don't know if we'll see that again anytime soon."