WASHINGTON — Nobody likes a front-runner.
That’s the strange position the Golden State Warriors have found themselves in, despite not winning a championship in 40 years and making the playoffs for just the fourth time in the last 21 seasons. It’s just as odd of a position for their fans, of which I am one.
There’s the somewhat incorrect misperception that Warriors fans are mostly San Francisco Giants fans, already blessed with an embarrassment of recent postseason success in other sports. But many of us are not. Many are Raiders fans, whose last Super Bowl win came in 1983, after the team had moved to Los Angeles. Many of us are also Cal fans, a Power Five university whose last Rose Bowl trip came in 1959 and who last advanced past the Sweet Sixteen the next year. Nearly all of us are Sharks fans, a franchise with a history of recent postseason failure that rivals the home team here in Washington.
I grew up in the East Bay, 25 minutes north of the Coliseum complex and Oracle Arena. The three games in which I’ve sat in the stands as a fan at Verizon Center the past three seasons were when the Warriors came to town. As for my Oakland fandom, I was in the press box for this game, the far reaches of the second deck in right field for this one and the second level of the left-field bleachers for this one. My Oakland sports allegiances run deep.
But the only championship memory I have occurred when I was six and was interrupted by an act of God, as the Earth itself literally shook the World Series to a halt in 1989. Since then, I’ve watched as Tom Brady tucked, as Derek Jeter backhand flipped, as Aaron Rodgers came up short of the goal line at USC, as the Royals began their run to the American League pennant by steamrolling my heart (and no, I’m not linking highlights to any of those — look them up on your own, if you must).
But nothing compares to being a Cleveland sports fan. You already knew this, even before The New York Times reminded you of it last week. It doesn’t matter that Oakland checked in at number nine on that list. It just can’t compete.
And so, the one person who might understand my plight as I suffer through this series, hoping, praying that the drought might end, is also secretly wishing fire and death upon my team. That would be my boss, who is from Cleveland.
“So, how are you feeling?” I ask him Wednesday afternoon, following the 96-91 Cleveland victory in Game 3 that put the Cavaliers ahead two games to one.
“I’m feeling well, hopeful,” he replies. “More hopeful than last week.”
“You’re allowing yourself to be hopeful?”
“I’m allowing myself to get so emotionally involved that I will be crushed when they lose.”
This is what it means to be a fan of teams of these towns. I ask him if it’s worse that his team is up 2-1. The answer is simple and expected, as it would be from any Cleveland or Oakland fan.
“Yes.”
The Warriors should be America’s Team. The storylines are there, between Steph Curry’s ascent to stardom, the former All-Stars Andre Iguodala and David Lee re-emerging as key players, the impossible road back from injury for Shaun Livingston. Some in the Bay Area have convinced themselves that they are, but it has become apparent that such a declaration can no longer be made. We are the favorites, even while trailing the series, fighting our own playoff demons in obscurity, shadowed by LeBron’s self-manufactured narrative of returning home to win for the city he once spited.
That storyline is sealed through the collective shared sports misery of every Clevelander, one with which Oakland’s own infamous postseason history does not measure up.
“I watched The Fumble live. I watched The Drive live. I saw Elo’s shot, I saw that live, and same with the (1997) World Series,” my boss counters my list of tragedies. “That’s the height of my impressionable youth in sports.”
Nobody feels bad for the Warriors, or for their fans. When the Warriors fired Mark Jackson, hired Steve Kerr and raced to one of the greatest regular seasons in recent NBA history, the bandwagon started filling up quickly. The sweet-shooting Dubs are a tremendously fun team to watch, after all, with a highly marketable MVP and his spotlight-stealing daughter. But this team, the one this year, hasn’t suffered any real hardship or adversity.
Meanwhile, LeBron’s teammates are dropping off one-by-one, right on script, as if to add to his hero narrative. With Kevin Love previously relegated to the bench, Kyrie Irving pushed his already injured knee to its actual breaking point in Game 1. Iman Shumpert reinjured a shoulder in Game 3 that he had previously dislocated. Curry tormentor Matthew Dellavedova received IV treatments for cramps after Tuesday night’s game, eventually getting shuttled to the hospital for further treatment.
“I think at first it kind of provided you an easy out, a rationalization for why we’re going to lose,” my boss says, channeling both cities’ inner fatalism. “But the fact that they keep winning now, I’m buying into the fairy tale, and it’s been … it probably won’t be a happy ending.”
The Cleveland-Oakland dynamic is not like a New York-Boston rivalry, steeped in tradition and littered with championship moments. We don’t flash the bravado that fans of those cities often do, far more worried about the karmic implications of overconfidence. I can’t even bring myself to put Oakland first as I list the cities, telling myself I’m doing it for alphabetical reasons, but knowing deep down I’m doing anything I can to keep from tempting fate.
Naturally, my boss is doing the same.
“No one wants to jinx anything,” he says. “And historically, bravado works out very poorly for us.”
That’s true in Oakland, too. I was in the East Bay for Game 2, but not at the game itself. My single serving friend from my flight to California was far more confident than I was about Golden State’s prospects, as we rode the AirBart past the Coliseum complex and Oracle Arena a few hours before Game 2.
“Do you think the Warriors will sweep?” he asked me.
I cringed, the only response I know.
“As long as they win three of the next six, I don’t care how they do it,” I replied.
Now, of course, that’s become three of the next four. So while I may believe the Warriors can still come back, while I know they have it in them, I would never dare say it here. I wouldn’t be a real Oakland — or Cleveland — sports fan if I did. At least my boss and I can agree on that.
