Champions are immortal, or so the sports cliché goes. That’s a lie. When the Warriors won a championship in 2015, they were not gilded in gold and hoisted as monuments. The next season, despite making history, they were doubted, defeated, dismissed. So the Warriors returned, won it all again in 2017, and faced the same churn. Even repeating as champions couldn’t make the cliché true. If anything, as the Warriors raised another banner in 2018 and nearly three-peated in 2019, the innocence and joy of youth seemed to drain from them at a faster and faster rate. The later championship runs — superficially their easiest — seemed to accelerate their slide into old age and obsolescence, manifested by Kevin Durant’s abrupt departure, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry’s injuries, and the two playoff-less seasons that followed in 2020 and 2021.
Growing Old on Magic Mountain
