The 2024-2025 season for the Golden State Warriors ended with a 121-110 loss in Game Five of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Minnesota Timberwolves. After 101 games that began with a preseason win against the Clippers way back on October 5, 2024, there will be no more NBA basketball for the locals this year. Eight months of hoops, thousands of shots, millions of dribbles, now done. The rest is silence.
For we who watch and care about such things, for the nearly 500 who filled the seats of the historic Alameda Theatre to watch playoff game after playoff game, wearing blue and gold with hopeful hearts, there is a feeling of loss, a feeling a little close to death. There is disappointment for what might have been. There was and will be speculation over what went wrong, what other choices could have been made that would have possibly brought a fifth ring to the fingers of Steph Curry and Draymond Green. The Bay Area radio talk shows, the bars, and the coffee shops will vibrate for weeks with chatter about the season now past and what might be done before our guys lace ‘em up five months from now.
To be a sports fan is to read a very long book, with new and familiar characters, chapter after chapter, paragraph upon paragraph, and for the most dedicated, obsessing line by line by line. The degree to which we care for these athletes, attend their performances on the court, glow and grimace at their successes and failures, is an intense and peculiar phenomenon. Many of us wear jerseys and shirts with our favorite player’s name and number on the front and back. We know the backstory of our heroes, where #30 went to college (Davidson), how many championships coach Steve Kerr has won as player and coach (5+4), and struggle with the complexity of the intense and sometimes violent team leader nicknamed Day-Day.
And we ache for them. Steph Curry, once known as the Baby-Faced Assassin, began his career with ankle issues, overcame that, became the greatest shooter ever, won the Larry O’Brien Trophy four times, helped Team USA defeat France in the Olympics last summer, and then suddenly—and for the first time—injured his hamstring in Game One of the series against Minnesota. Running as he does game after game, eluding defenders, getting himself open for shots, he suddenly reached behind and grabbed the back of his upper left leg. He played a bit longer, then no more. Instead of being in the game he watched the game, alongside his teammates, writing poems of woe with his facial expressions. If we could, we’d pull him into our arms, assure him everything is going to be OK, then say I love you.
The world only spins forward. There is work and family and global warming and democracy that need our attention. But this book, this season, did not end in the glory we hoped for when we started on the first page. So it goes on the shelf, alongside others of the genre, revered for our having carried it with such care, already eager for the sequel.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
Editorials and Letters to the Editor
All opinions expressed on this page are the author's alone and do not reflect those of the Alameda Post, nor does our organization endorse any views the author may present. Our objective as an independent news source is to fully reflect our community's varied opinions without giving preference to a particular viewpoint.
If you disagree with an opinion that we have published, please submit a rebuttal or differing opinion in a letter to the Editor for publication. Review our policies page for more information.
