The exterior drum of Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors’ shimmering new home on the western shore of San Francisco Bay, was apparently designed to resemble a reassembled apple peel.
Last night Golden State completed an achievement to give that strange visual metaphor some semblance of sense. The Warriors’ sorry losers of 2019-21 have been reborn as champions.
The discards have been repurposed, the wreckage of seasons past transformed into beautiful victory. The has-beens are now have-rings; the apple peel is reassembled.
The Warriors are back. But if the end of the story seems familiar, there’s also something different about this Warriors championship. “I didn’t learn anything about myself, I knew I was resilient,” said Draymond Green, on the victory podium at Boston’s TD Garden, when asked to reflect on how his understanding of himself and his teammates had changed over the course of these finals.