As the regular season winds down the Warriors find themselves in a somewhat familiar spot: fighting for their lives on the edge of the playoffs. With two games left (against the Kings on Friday and the Blazers on Sunday), the Warriors could hold on to the fifth seed or fall screaming into the dreaded play-in.
This existential place that teams find themselves in every year is known as the bubble. If a team is in the bubble, then they earned the right to fight for glory. If a team is outside the bubble, they get to embrace their identities as losers on a private jet headed to Cabo.
Now in the past 20 years, the Warriors have mostly experienced the extreme highs of the championship years and the unfortunate lows of classic pre-Steph Warriors incompetence. Most recently, they had the ’19-’20 season where Marquese Chriss led the team in win-shares (Challenge your biggest Warriors fan friend with that piece of trivia) and notably OUT of the most famous bubble in NBA history. But there were a few years when the Warriors graced us with some of the most compelling playoff bubble storylines of all time.
We Believe
Let’s set the stage of January 2007: the iPhone is announced, Nick Saban resigns from the Dolphins and signs with Alabama, and Slovenia officially adopts the Euro (Luka celebrated his 2861st day on Earth, Woo).
On January 17, 2007, the Warriors traded Ike Diogu, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Troy Murphy, and Keith McLeod to the Indiana Pacers for Al Harrington, Stephen Jackson, Šarūnas Jasikevičius, and Josh Powell. At the time they were 19-21 while fully encapsulating the mantra of Warrior’s mediocrity that drew the disappointed acceptance of their fans and the indifference of NBA fans as a whole.
In the month after the trade, the Warriors struggled to jell, and they ended up going 7-14 to bring their record to a sorry 26-35. In February, key Warriors Baron Davis and Jason Richardson had gotten knee surgery and broken a hand respectively. It was looking like a classic Warriors descent to the lottery, but then something decidedly un-Warriors happened.
They started to win.
With 20 games left in the season, the Warriors went a league-best 15-5 and managed to sneak into the Playoffs as an 8 seed (the lowest possible seed). The team began to get healthy, the pieces started to fit together, and Roaracle was reaching peak volume.
Historically the 8 seed was nothing to write home about, as the 8 seed had lost to the 1 seed in 42 out of 44 series since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams, and an 8 seed had never beaten a 1 seed since the first round expanded from 5 to 7 games in 2003. Additionally, the Warriors were set to play the juggernaut of the league that year, the Dallas Mavericks, who lost in the championship the year prior and came back roaring with the best record in the league and the regular season MVP Dirk Nowitzki. But something about this Warriors team felt special, and the team made T-shirts to express that.
They were the hottest team in the league with the loudest fans, and stars were aligning. The Warrior’s coach Don Nelson had coached the opponent Mavericks from 1997-2005, so he was well acquainted with their strengths and weaknesses.
The story played out beautifully with the Warriors winning the series 4 games to 2, all the while becoming the first 8 seed to ever beat a 1 seed in a 7 game series. Destiny only goes so far however, and the Warriors ended up losing the the Utah Jazz in the next round.
This was undoubtably the most exhilarating season in most Warrior’s fans lifetimes, and it created life-long Warriors fans everywhere. It also created something quite rare in Warriors fandom, hope. But it also taught those new fans to never hold too closely to hope, or else the team will inevitably break their hearts again.
See the Warriors historically were not exactly seen as a model franchise for the majority of most fan’s lives. The team had not won a championship since Rick Barry led them to the promised land in 1975, and in the 31 seasons after that they only made the playoffs 7 times. The Warriors were great at being bad, so most OG fans, wisely, knew not to trust this flash of success.
What made the 2007 team so special was that each player brought so much confidence and swagger to the court, and slowly that identity began to peel away.
That summer the Warriors traded one of the longest tenured Warriors and fan-favorite Jason Richardson to Charlotte for the 7th pick in the draft that turned into Brandan Wright. J-Rich was the first domino in a series of terrible decisions that signaled the beginning of the end.
The Warriors started the 2007-2008 season with newly minted captain Stephen “Captain Jack” Jackson out with an injury. They lost their first 6 games, and after he returned they won 9 out of their next 10 games to bring their record to 9-7. Usually the first few games of the season are insignificant to the end result of the regular season, but this year’s slow start ended up costing the Warriors a spot in the playoffs.
The Warriors ended up winning 6 more games than the previous season with a record of 48-34 and they ended up making history again: they won the most games in a regular season without making the playoffs. To put this into perspective, the Atlanta Hawks made the Eastern conference playoffs with a 37-45 record, 11 less wins than the Warriors earned that season. For additional perspective to hammer in the absurdity of this, a 48-34 record would have given the Warriors a 4 seed in the east, right above Lebron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers who had a respectable 45-37 record.
And just like that, it was all over.
The Warriors’ best player Baron Davis left the team for the LA Clippers in free agency because according to him the Warriors offered less than half of what the Clippers offered.
In November of the 2008-2009 season the Warriors traded Al Harrington to the New York Knicks.
Captain Jack underwent surgery at the end of the season and was eventually traded to the Charlotte Bobcats in November of 2009.
The Warriors ended the season 29-53, and the brilliant flash in a pan that was the We Believe Warriors flamed out with barely a whisper.
It felt like the cruel hand of fate toying with the emotions of Warriors fans by giving them a few months of basketball bliss in 2007, followed by a season of must-watch basketball in 2008, to a screeching release back into the darkness of basketball mediocrity. Plenty of Warriors fans felt like these decisions were emblematic of the incompetent organization of the past, and the consequence was another era of awful Warriors basketball.
In hindsight, every Warriors fan, no matter how damaged by the dissolution of the We Believe Warriors, wouldn’t change this outcome. By mismanaging the roster and losing this many games in this exact year, the Warriors were able to get the 7th pick in the 2009 NBA draft.
We all know what that turned out to be.
Dynasty Hangover
Fast forward ten years and the Warriors found themselves in an eerily similar situation. They had just spent a few years at the summit of the NBA having won three championships in four years, with the possibility of a fourth. However all that changed in the 2019 championship against the Toronto Raptors.
Kevin Durant tore his achilles tendon in Game 5 after returning quickly from a calf injury, and Klay Thompson tore his ACL in Game 6 after being fouled in mid-air.
Sports dynasties usually fade away slowly with star players age past their primes. Young upstart teams start to speed up while aging champions watch them pass by, desperately clutching to past victories.
However in this moment, it felt like two distinct record scratches as loud as the screams of Roaracle back in the day. In two games and two catastrophic injuries, it felt like the Warriors dynasty was over for good.
The Warriors ended up losing game 6, and the Raptors took home the championship.
Kevin Durant left the Warriors for the Nets in the off season, and Klay Thompson was out for the entirety of the next season.
The 2019-2020 season didn’t feel like a complete reset like the end of the We Believe era since Stephen Curry was still on the roster, but the Warriors soon channeled the Warriors of old.
Quiz time: do you remember which player led the Warriors in win-shares this season?
If you can remember the fun fact from the beginning of this article you’d remember that it was Marquese Chriss who led the team instead of Curry. This exciting bit of trivia was made possible because Steph only played 5 games because of a broken hand and a global pandemic.
Now you might also remember that this season the Warriors had absolutely nothing to do with A bubble or THE bubble because they went an astounding 15-50. This record was good for the worst record in the league, and earned them the honor of not being invited to the Covid bubble playoffs.
You also might remember that the last time the Warriors fell from relative grace they landed the 7th pick in the draft which ended up being the franchise savior Stephen Curry. Hope filled the hearts of all the Warriors fans again.
Klay will come back better than ever!
Steph is still in his prime!
Draymond might start trying again!
This time around they ended up with the 2nd pick of the draft, James Wiseman, who less than three years later probably didn’t save the Warriors and is now on the Detroit Pistons.
Let’s reel it back a bit from this unfortunate present day reality, and focus on the day of the 2020 NBA draft. The Warriors had the second overall pick and everyone believed that this pick could be the chip that brought them back to the contenders table.
That afternoon the news was reported that Klay Thompson tore his achilles in a pickup game and he would be out for another year.
Devastation. Sadness. Anger.
All these feelings swept over Warriors nation as a night that was supposed to be celebrating the next generation’s Warrior superstar was dampened by the news.
What followed was an NBA season that was unique on two fronts. First, the season was shortened by 10 games due to starting later because of the aforementioned pandemic, and second, the league implemented the play-in tournament for the first time.
For the entire history of the sport, teams on the playoff bubble either got into the playoffs, or they went home losers. With the implementation of the play-in tournament, these bubble teams got to battle each other gladiator style to determine who got the 7 and 8 seed and whose season got stabbed through the heart with a gladius.
The Warriors finished the season with a 39-33 record which was good for the 8th best record in the west, so they earned the opportunity to play in the inaugural play-in tournament.
This was an exciting time. A first time single elimination death match between bubble teams that would give them the honor of probable humiliation against the 1 and 2 seeds of the western conference. Although the Warriors didn’t have Klay Thompson, they did have their future championship winning core of Curry, Green, and newly acquired Andrew “Maple Jordan” Wiggins.
Everything was set up for their eventual date with destiny… and they ended up losing back to back games to the Lakers and Grizzlies which ended their season.
Blowing Bubbles
Warriors fans got to experience three seasons on the bubble from 2007-2008, and in 2021, and the results couldn’t have been more different. The first began with a taste of hope followed by the sweet payoff of making history. The second fully embraced that hope while ending up crushed on the wrong side of history. The third was the first of its kind, but it ended anticlimactically
These tastes of playoff bubble are extraordinarily unique, as most bubble dwellers are the type of team that chases mediocrity year after year to appease their fans with a barely watchable product. It is widely known that one of the main ways for most NBA teams to become a great team is to lose a lot of games and hope they get a great player in the draft.
However, some teams end up on the fringes of the playoffs year after year because they are scared that their fans won’t come to the games if they commit to losing for a few years.
“What is a franchise’s goal? If the owner wants the team to be consistently competitive, then of course it’s OK to build a team that is optimized for that goal: one with a lower ceiling than other teams but a much higher floor. In the abstract, it’s reasonable to say that a goal of being in the playoffs every season and always giving your fans a reason to follow the team is a worthy one.” – Ben Falk, previously the Philadelphia 76ers vice president of basketball strategy.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/1/11/16875180/middle-class-heat-bucks-pistons-wizards
Luckily the Warriors have not entered basketball purgatory during my lifetime, as they have either been one of the most poorly run teams, or the class of the entire NBA.
This year the Warriors find themselves fighting to avoid the bubble again. If history does indeed repeat itself, then the Warriors are in for some amazing excitement, excruciating heartbreak, or underwhelming disappointment. Whatever happens, fans will all be eagerly watching what transpires because regardless if they win it all or embarrass themselves they always find a way to be a part of something that has never happened before.
The Oracle 
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