Title-Contending Warriors of Today a Reflection of Past Teammates and Coaches
They tower over everyone in the hallway leading to the Golden State Warriors' practice floor. Rick Barry. Sleepy Floyd. Purvis Short. Larry Smith. Wilt Chamberlain. Tim Hardaway. Manute Bol. Mitch Richmond. Chris Mullin. Nate Thurmond. Don Nelson. Baron Davis. Antawn Jamison. Jason Richardson. The most notable figures in the franchise's history, both glorious and less so, are prominently displayed in a parade of oversized action photos for media and visitors alike to admire knowingly or, in a few cases, ponder quizzically.
A different roster though, populates the internal walls of acclaim for current Warriors. Stroll down the mental hallways of Stephen Curry or Draymond Green or Klay Thompson, and you'll find names that aren't quite as synonymous with the franchise.
Jermaine O'Neal. Jarrett Jack. Carl Landry. Pete Myers. And, yes, Mark Jackson. These, they say, are the men whose time with the organization might've been relatively recent and short—men who weren't around to receive championship rings—but men, nonetheless, who were indispensable in helping them get theirs.
"They brought a certain toughness and identity that, except for a few bright spots, was so far removed from all the teams in the past," said Curry on the eve of the Warriors taking a 2-0 lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. "It gave us an expectation that we could be a winning team if we focus on the important details every night. I already had the mindset [that we could make the playoffs and eventually be a champion], but when you have teammates who understand how they can play their role and it all leads to winning—with no agendas, no ulterior motives other than winning—you can talk about it in the right way. It just made winning seem realistic and obtainable."
The contributions of Jackson, O'Neal and Jack et al., as defined by the current Warriors, underscored that building a championship team takes far more than championship talent or experience. Sometimes a veteran with an unrequited hunger for a ring and the knowledge of what not to do can be just as valuable as one who does.
Case in point: O'Neal. His run with the Warriors in 2013-14 would be the last of his 18 seasons. The zenith of his career came in Indiana, where he was a six-time All-Star and made six playoff appearances. He got as far as the Eastern Conference Finals, where he and the Pacers lost to the eventual champion Detroit Pistons in six games in 2003-04. His gift to the Warriors: Prepare every day as if your last title shot is tomorrow. Because it very well could be.
"If you think you have tomorrow to do what you can today, you are sadly mistaken," O'Neal said. "When I was in Indiana, I didn't do a good job as a franchise guy to say, 'The time is now.' I thought we had a five-year window. Then the Detroit brawl happened and changed everything. Hirings, firings, injuries—you're never always going to have that window. It opens and it closes and you have no control over it."
Plenty of young players trying to make their mark in the league might've looked at O'Neal's ringless fingers and inability to stay healthy over his final few seasons and simply tuned him out.
Not the Warriors.
It's not clear who was more astonished: Thompson when O'Neal told him he was one of the best two-way players in the league and the Warriors could handle him joining Curry in superstardom, or O'Neal when Thompson seemed genuinely shocked an accomplished veteran such as O'Neal would say that.
"Besides chasing a ring, he didn't have to be here," Thompson said. "He wanted to be here because he loved to play the game. I'd always see him in here on an off day. I'd see him staying an hour after practice, just getting up jumpers. Harrison [Barnes], Draymond and Festus [Ezeli] were all second-year players. I was in my third year. We all learned from him. I thought, 'If a guy can do that after 17 seasons, after making a boatload of money and is still so hungry…' That made a big impression on all of us."
As much on fellow big man Ezeli as anyone. He missed his entire second season after undergoing knee surgery in the summer of 2013, which in part created the opening for O'Neal to join the team.
Ezeli still was battling knee trouble last season and could have taken a cautious approach to rehabilitation, but O'Neal's example convinced him to do everything he could to be ready to contribute. Ezeli missed all of January and big chunks of December and February but contributed in all but one of the Warriors' 21 postseason games last year.
"He asked me a lot about dealing with injuries," said O'Neal, who appeared in 44 games with the Warriors. "He could've just laid down and taken the check but he fought through it."
Ezeli only appeared in 46 regular-season games this year, but he has rallied once more as a postseason mainstay, playing in 20 of 21 playoff games.
"With Jermaine, we could feel the hunger for a championship from him," Ezeli said. "He was at the end of his career and he was still chasing it. The wheels are falling off and he still wanted it. It made us even hungrier. We didn't want to be in that situation where we were at the end of our careers and never felt a championship. He was definitely a big part of us."
O'Neal, in turn, was struck by his young teammates' appetite, both to learn and improve.
"I'd come into the practice facility at all hours and there would either be guys here or you'd see their gear lying around, telling you they'd just left," O'Neal said. "I was blown away by how hard they worked. You might have one or two guys, but not a group. I saw a lot of things you don't typically see from guys under five years in the league. They'd sit around the locker room and ask questions about what it takes to be successful. They took advantage of the situation. I wasn't surprised when they won it. I expected it."
Jarrett Jack, now a combo guard for the Brooklyn Nets, arrived in a three-team trade before the 2012-13 season, a year before O'Neal. He has now played for seven different teams in 11 seasons. His stint with the Warriors—one season, 79 games, four starts—is his shortest. Yet, he paired with then-head coach Mark Jackson to stare down forecasts that the Warriors would be an afterthought once more. He had a profound effect on both Curry and Green, who bonded to end the Warriors' then-five-year playoff drought.
Jack's persistent message was simple: Expect to be successful, but don't take it for granted. He recognized Curry and Green's leadership qualities and made a point to encourage them to speak up, saying his piece only when it felt necessary.
"I'm always cracking jokes, but I don't like to talk too much," Jack said. "I didn't want it to be, 'Oh, here's Mr. Positive about to take the podium,' or 'Here comes Mr. Know It All.' I thought we could lead by committee. I remember specifically telling Dray as a rookie, 'Don't be afraid to speak up. It doesn't matter if you're not playing or starting. The leader isn't always the best player. It's not just relegated to one person or years of service.'"
The perception back then was that Curry remained a bit of a quiet wild card, particularly in the fourth quarter.
"[Jarrett] was kind of a fourth-quarter sure-handed guy," Curry recalled. "Everybody seemed to think I would turn the ball over, so put the ball in Jarrett's hands, and he was going to make the right play. Whether he scored or if I scored, his presence out there would make us better. When he left they were like, 'Oh, OK, Steph is going to get more opportunities in the fourth quarter.' It sucked to see him leave because we had great chemistry and all that, but I felt like I was going to continue to get better and keep that work ethic regardless of what the situation was."
As does Jack. He doesn't buy the notion that he had to leave to force Curry to assume more responsibility.
"I don't believe anybody being there would've held him back," Jack said. "That's something people who weren't in the locker room every day would say. And maybe that's how you justify making a change. It was paramount, though, for Steph's voice to be heard. His perspective and insight are spot-on. They come from a very pure space. Draymond is the same way. His method is just a little different, a little more harsh. But guys have to learn not to listen to tone of voice, just listen to the message."
While Jack encouraged Green to speak up, assistant coach Pete Myers encouraged him to show out, even when everyone else was on him to tone down his exuberance on the court. Green's willingness to leave no trash talk unsaid or physical challenge unmet peaked on Christmas Day against the Clippers in 2013, when he was ejected for throwing an elbow at Blake Griffin.
"He made me feel it was OK to be me, to be that dog," Green said. "He gave me the belief, like 'I love you being that, stay that, don't change that.' There were times when everyone was trying to change me and he was like, 'Nah, you be you.' Whether it was stuff coming out in the media, people saying such and such about my intensity or I need to calm down, it didn't matter. I'm thrown out of the game against the Clippers and everybody is bashing me about it. He was like, 'Nah, you keep being that dude.'"
His battle with LeBron James in this season's Finals, which resulted in him receiving a retroactive flagrant-1 foul after Game 4 and thus a suspension for Game 5, began the first time they met, 22 games into Green's rookie year. James, then with the Miami Heat, scored 31, but Green nailed the game-winner on a backdoor cut in a 97-95 win.
"For the majority of the second half, I guarded LeBron," Green said. "It was a battle. He talked junk to me, I talked junk to him. I embraced that challenge. And then to walk off and be able to say, 'Yeah, I just hit the game-winning shot,' I felt like I had arrived at that moment. At the same time, my career still took so many little turns after that, I still wasn't really there."
If you want to start a healthy barroom debate, raise the question about Jackson's part in the Warriors becoming champions. Some contend that he was holding them back and that their subsequent championship after his firing was proof; others insist that he put them on the right path and, blessed with the same roster improvements and support from ownership, he could have closed the deal. Since his firing, reports have offered salacious details that insinuate Jackson fomented unrest and distrust within the coaching staff and the locker room, making it seem miraculous that the team reached the playoffs in back-to-back years for the first time in two decades under his guidance.
Curry, Green, Ezeli and Thompson paint a different picture.
"He was a big reason we were able to do what we did," said Ezeli, insisting that reports he and Jackson didn't get along were overblown.
"Mark Jackson made every guy who played for him believe we could take ourselves to another level," Green said.
No one, though, may have benefited more from Jackson's presence than Curry.
"He gave me the ball, basically," Curry said. "Going into my fourth year in the league, coming off two surgeries, he gave me confidence and told me I was the guy who could lead the team to the next level. He helped elevate my individual game. We obviously have faith as a common bridge, and we had plenty of conversations outside of basketball. But then on the court I always knew he had my back and every single guy's back. It obviously didn't end the right way after his three-year stint, but the position he helped put us in was invaluable, for sure. That's why it was such a rocky transition that summer. Because we were on that trajectory and you go a different direction. That's why I was so outspoken about what he meant to me as a coach."
Since then, questions about the relationship between Curry and Jackson, who declined to be interviewed, have been raised after Jackson said he thought James Harden deserved to be the 2014-15 league MVP over Curry, per The Dan Patrick Show (h/t Bleacher Report's Dan Carson). He later added, during a national TV broadcast, that kids infatuated with Curry's three-point shooting is "hurting the game," per Micah Peters of USA Today's For The Win (h/t Bleacher Report's Danny Webster).
"Anytime that happens, I get a phone call from him or a text; we talk about it and he lets me know what he means by what he said," Curry explains. "We have that kind of relationship, which is helpful. He's calling our games, which is still weird, but that's about it."
Those who played a role in the Warriors' climb don't carry any bitterness over the fact that they were not able to reap the rewards of their work. Carl Landry, now with the 76ers, joined forces with Jack that first season to provide a strong but quieter veteran presence. He said, via text from out of the country, that he is simply grateful that the Warriors gave him a chance to be part of a winning situation on the eve of free agency, which he then parlayed into a four-year, $26 million deal with the Sacramento Kings.
"He'd fit in right now," said assistant coach Chris DeMarco, the lone holdover from Jackson's staff. "Great teammate. People liked being around him."
The same can be said for Jack, but he is just fine watching his former teammates chase back-to-back titles without him.
"I like watching from afar," he said. "There's a piece of me that's always with those guys."
They would agree. Some might even say you can find that piece somewhere near the diamond-encrusted hunks of metal on their fingers.
Ric Bucher covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.
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