How the Golden State Warriors won the 2022 NBA championship

It was loud and ultra-clear in almost every interview and every exultant gesture, and maybe the accumulation of it all surprised you Thursday night, but it didn’t surprise anybody who has been around Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson even a little bit the past decade.

This was the Warriors’ F— You championship.

I mean that in a good way.

Bob Myers, barefoot with a champagne bottle full of Michelob Ultra, settled into a courtside chair near the visiting bench at TD Garden. This was about an hour after his Warriors had clinched a fourth title on the parquet floor. Myers, a minute earlier, had spilled a splash of beer near the free-throw line. Cigar smoke filled the air. The arena had turned into a rager.

Parties like these morph into a time of reflection. Conversations turn to pivotal moments in the climb. Myers’ mind was directed toward last year’s draft. The Warriors had two valuable lottery picks, established stars who preferred veteran help and a coach who wouldn’t have minded any additional rookies be selected with the current task in mind. Trade? Reach for an older prospect?

None of this happens without Draymond Green.

The four Golden State titles. The eight finals appearances. The Kevin Durant chapter and everything that came before and after it.

This latest Warriors feat will be forever remembered as Steph Curry’s crowning achievement — and with good reason. But the beauty of this Warriors dynasty, this journey that was born out of a special bond between Curry, Green and Klay Thompson above everything else, is that all of them are vital to the cause. And after all the talk about Green’s struggles in these finals against Boston, his one-of-a-kind impact, intensity and two-way value were there for all to see when it mattered most.

(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)

Game 6 was in the bag. The Celtics emptied their bench, resigned to the dominance of Golden State. In any other situation, Warriors coach Steve Kerr would’ve emptied his, too.

But not on this night. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green remained on the court Thursday though victory was well secured. They earned this, the right to bathe in the silence they’d spawned in TD Garden, the privilege to soak in their anointing. For they are the pillars on which this Warriors dynasty was built. They are the common denominators on the court as the franchise elevated from the cellar to the suites.

The Warriors will have its championship parade on Monday in San Francisco. The festivities will begin at 11:20 a.m. (PT).

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The clocked ticked toward another Golden State Warriors title, perhaps the crowning achievement of this remarkable run due to the depths they plummeted to before rising again, and Andrew Wiggins looked to the sideline to get subbed out.

His work in these NBA Finals was done. His improbable ascendance to a player worthy of being Steph Curry’s wing man was complete.

The idea of a legend has lost some of its luster in modernity. Not because greatness is less prominent but because little is left to the imagination. Everything is recorded, preserved for consumption, observable. But legends, real legends, are born of scarce witnesses. They survive through storytelling. They grow as time spreads its wingspan between the moment and the oration.

But feelings are difficult to behold through modern mediums. The emotion of experience doesn’t always translate through highlights, leaving lore with a job to do.

Stephen Curry is No. 15 on The Athletic’s ranking of 75 greatest players ever because his accomplishments are wholly impressive.

(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)

It was sixth-period math in Mr. Lawson’s classroom when Jack Bienvenue said he had a premonition. He remembers it was exactly 2:15 p.m. on March 21 when his life completely changed.

Bienvenue, an 18-year-old who graduated from Cape Cod Technical High School last weekend, had seen his beloved Boston Celtics climb from the basement of the Eastern Conference all the way to fourth place. So when his friends were arguing over who was going to win the title, he didn’t understand what there was to debate.

“I said, ‘I’m so confident the Celtics will win it, I’ll get a tattoo of the (2022 banner),” Bienvenue told The Athletic. “My friend said, ‘No you wouldn’t’. So I was like, ‘Screw you guys, I’m getting it done.’”

Klay Thompson is always good for an amusing soundbite or two, especially after the euphoria of winning another championship and especially considering the injuries he overcame. His postgame press conference didn't disappoint. It seemed hard to believe he would top the amusing "holy cannoli" line from his ESPN interview, but he did just that by calling out an unlikely foe: Grizzlies big man Jaren Jackson Jr.

Specifically, a tweet Jackson put out in late March.

"There was this one player on the Grizzlies who tweeted 'Strength in Numbers' after they beat us in the regular season, and it pissed me off so much," Thompson told reporters. "I can't wait to retweet that thing."

Thompson hasn't retweeted it yet – at least as of 9:30 a.m. ET. But his next few lines served a similar function.

"Freakin' bum. I had to watch that, and I was like, 'This freakin' clown," a smiling Thompson said. "OK. OK. OK. Sorry, that memory just popped up. You're gonna mock us? You ain't even been there before, bruh. We've been there before. We know what it takes. So to be here again? HOLD THAT. Twitter fingers, can you believe it."

"I got a memory like an elephant. I don't forget," Thompson added. "And there were a lot of people kicking us when we were down."

This will certainly add spice to the budding Warriors-Grizzlies rivalry, which amped up during the Warriors' six-game second-round series victory. That series featured several flagrant fouls, allegations of code-breaking by the Warriors after Dillon Brooks' shove on Gary Payton II, and counter claims from the Grizzlies suggesting the Warriors intentionally tried to injure star Ja Morant. (Morant, for what it's worth, seemingly responded to Thompson's latest dig on Twitter).

In 2018, in the first moments after his team’s third NBA championship in a four-year stretch, Golden State GM Bob Myers was asked how he hoped to keep the Warriors’ regular-season journeys as fresh as their hoped-for championship outcomes.

“You’ve got to like each other,” he said then. “You’ve got to really like each other. You have to respect each other. You have to understand some days, you don’t have it, and your teammates have to pick you up. It’s the houseguest that stays too long. You try to find people who are decent people in the worst moments. Sometimes you just need space. And it’s nobody’s fault. You need to yell at each other; you have to tell each other how you’re feeling. There’s acrimony, there’s division, there’s everything.

“But as long as you don’t break. You have to view it almost as like a family — that no matter what happens, we’re blood, and we’re going to see it through. But that’s a challenge because you’re really not blood, but you’re as close as you can get, ’cause you’re with each other all the time. Sometimes you see people more than you do your own family. So you try to find people that are decent people in the worst moments, is all you can do. Because the worst moments come.”

And that was four years ago!

• Golden State's seventh title breaks a tie with the Bulls for sole possession of third place behind the Celtics and Lakers (17 each).
• The Warriors are the first team to win four NBA titles in an eight-year span since the Bulls won six from the 1991-98.
• Steve Kerr is the sixth head coach to win four or more NBA titles, joining Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (9), John Kundla (5), Gregg Popovich (5) and Pat Riley (5).

Curry is the seventh player to win at least four NBA championships and two regular-season MVP awards, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Bill Russell.

All except for Russell have also been named Finals MVP — his last season (1968-69) was the first year the award was presented.