The Golden State Warriors: A Decade of Dominance and Revolutionary Success

Luis Salazar | ESPN Digital November 8, 2023, 8:00 a.m. ETLread: 6 min.

A stellar Curry gives the Warriors the victory

Stephen Curry scored 41 points, including a 3-pointer late in the game, as Golden State beat the Kings on their visit to Sacramento.

In just 13 years, the Warriors won four NBA titles with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green as leaders, revolutionized the game and went from being worth $450 million to $7 billion. What is your secret?

In just over a decade, the Golden State Warriors went from being a losing team to transforming the NBA with their style of play, to winning four championships with a historic trident, to building a new arena and to being the most valuable team in the league. , superior even to historical franchises.

It all started with two investors, three draft picks, a rookie coach and a three-point revolution.

The third most valuable sports team… in the world

Investors Joe Lacob and Peter Guber purchased the Warriors for $450 million on July 15, 2010.

His vision was simple: innovate and build.

“I am incredibly excited to have the opportunity to be the next manager of this historic NBA franchise. This is my dream come true,” Lacob said at the time. “Peter and I intend to do what we do best: innovate and build. Our passion is to return the Warriors to greatness and build nothing less than a championship organization that makes all of us in the Bay Area proud.”

At that time, the Warriors – a historic franchise with three titles – had only qualified for the playoffs once in 18 seasons and had not been NBA champions in 35 years.

At that time the NBA West was dominated by the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, and Dallas Mavericks.

Golden State was not a successful franchise and the investment had its risk.

Today, after being champion four times in the NBA in 13 years, the Warriors are the third most valuable sports franchise in the world with a value of $7 billion dollars, according to “The World’s 50 Most Valuable Sports Teams 2023” most valuable sports cars in the world 2023) from Forbes.

The Warriors’ value growth in 13 years has been 1,455%.

An important part of the increase in value was the construction of its new Chase Center arena, with capacity for 18 thousand people, located in San Francisco and valued at $1.4 billion.

According to the Forbes ranking, the Warriors surpass the 29 remaining NBA franchises, especially historical ones such as the New York Knicks ($6.1 billion), Los Angeles Lakers ($5.9 billion), Chicago Bulls ($4.1 billion) and Boston Celtics ( $4 billion).

The average value of a league franchise is $4.9 billion, according to Forbes.

And the Warriors are just $100 million away from tying the value of the New York Yankees ($7.1 billion), who are the most valuable franchise in MLB and the second most valuable in the world.

Based on the trend, it is possible that the Warriors surpass the Yankees in value in 2024.

Innovate an All Star trio selected in the draft

The Warriors’ sporting success was not built with a million-dollar checkbook to hire the best NBA players on the market.

In fact, they didn’t even hire the best – in theory – NBA draft picks to form their team.

In 2009, the previous Golden State management selected Stephen Curry at position seven in the draft. Only Blake Griffin and James Harden, who were selected earlier, have been All Stars.

Two years later, the Warriors – under new owners – selected Klay Thompson with the 11th overall pick. Only two players selected before (Kyrie Irving and Kemba Walker) have been All Stars.

And in 2012, Golden State selected Dryamond Green in position 35, already in the second round of the draft. Only four of the players who were selected earlier (Anthony Davis, Bradley Beal, Damian Lillard and Andre Drummond) have been at least one All-Star.

The team’s improvement with the Splash Brothers was immediate in the balance of wins and losses, but it did not achieve success with coach Mark Jackson, who was fired in 2014.

Steve Kerr: the leader

The hiring of Kerr as coach of the Warriors in 2014 was the missing piece for this franchise to take the final step towards the championship.

Kerr, a former student of Phil Jackson in the Chicago Bulls and Gregg Popovich in the San Antonio Spurs, with five titles as a player (three with Chicago and two with San Antonio), learned the secrets of his teachers to lead the Golden State quintet to the top of the NBA and designed a strategy based on scoring triples – which was his specialty as a player – with a strong defense of his basket.

In the previous nine seasons, the Warriors have been in the top 10 of NBA teams with the greatest differential between the points they score and the points they allow six times, according to ESPN. This shows Golden State’s balance.

With Curry and Thompson as the expert snipers, plus Green as the leader on defense, the Warriors core has remained at the top of the NBA – with some star reinforcements like Kevin Durant – with four titles since 2014-2015.

“He is not the one who is going to say that he is the main cause of something, even though he has been extremely (we all know this) extremely valuable to us and our success,” Curry described Kerr in an interview with NBC Sports.

The triple revolution

The Warriors’ impact on the NBA has not only been about winning titles and being worth more as a franchise. They revolutionized the game.

The NBA went from teams trying to win with big men who dominated the paint or skilled superstars who were able to surpass their rivals to attack the basket, to shooting from outside the area with increasing frequency and effectiveness.

In fact, in the Splash Brothers era (2014-2015 to the previous season), the number of three-point attempts in an entire campaign went from 55,137 to 84,164, a 52% increase, according to data from ESPN Stats & Info.

And the Warriors have the best three-point shooter in NBA history: Stephen Curry.

Two more rings?

As time passes, these Warriors will be remembered as historic, as revolutionaries of the game. Just like today fans long for the Bulls of the nineties, the Lakers of the eighties or the Celtics of the sixties.

But the story of these Warriors still has some chapters left to write.

Curry, 35, has a contract through the 2025-26 season; Green, 33, until the 2026-2027 campaign; while Thompson, 33, expires at the end of this season but it would be logical for him to extend it.

“I don’t necessarily like to put a number on things,” Green told ESPN. “But I don’t see why we can’t get two more championships. Why not?”.

With four rings so far, the goal of the Warriors of Curry, Thompson, Green and Kerr is to be champion at least two more times to tie Michael Jordan’s Bulls dynasty for titles.

This way they can not only be considered the Warriors who revolutionized the game, but also the best team in NBA history.

2023-11-08 05:35:40
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