CLEVELAND -- Stephen Curry's shirt was soaking wet and smelling of champagne when the legacy question was posed: "Where do you rank your team amongst the greatest of all time?"
This NBA season started with a sense of inevitability around Curry's Golden State Warriors, a feeling that this season was a nine-month prelude to the certainty of crowning the Warriors as champions for the third time in four years. And as the clock crept toward midnight on Friday in Cleveland, that's exactly what we did. That narrative of certainty is too simple -- it ignores the ups and downs of this Warriors season as well as the very real challenge posed by the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference finals -- but the fact that one of the main talking points of this season was that the Warriors have ruined the competitive balance of the NBA only underscores this team's greatness.
Those conversations are not had about teams that are merely great.
Those conversations are only had about the rare teams that are all-time greats, the teams that are dynasties.
The truth about these Golden State Warriors is that on Friday night they entered the rarefied air of the top five NBA dynasties of all time. Jordan's Bulls still have them beat. So do the Showtime Lakers. And if you want to reach back to a long-ago era, the Boston Celtics of the 1950s and 1960s.
But the Warriors have entered that discussion. And unlike those other dynasties, the Warriors are still going.
"Not for me to answer that question," Curry shrugged in reply. "I just know what we've been able to accomplish is really meaningful and something that not many players have been able to experience. So wherever that puts us in the conversation in the history of the NBA or, you know, titles around dynasty and all that type of stuff, I'm a three-time champ. We've got a lot of three-time, two-time champs in there, and we'll have plenty of time in our lives to discuss that later. So want to keep this thing going as long as we can."
That's now the question: How long can the Warriors keep this thing going?
And what will it take for these Warriors -- this dynasty that has reshaped not just the NBA but how the modern-day game of basketball is played -- to surpass all the other dynasties before them?
"I haven't really thought about it, to be honest," Curry said. "You don't want to cheat the moment."
But at the risk of cheating the moment: What will it take?
The Warriors can't carry on like this forever. A franchise whose dynasty can bridge generations (like the San Antonio Spurs) is the rarest of breeds, and can only happen at the confluence of front-office brilliance, a self-sustaining culture and a good bit of luck. Championship windows close. Players don't get younger. Contracts don't get smaller.
Kevin Durant has already said he's likely coming back to the Warriors for next season. But after next season, Klay Thompson becomes a free agent, and Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala the year after that. Certainly some of the team's younger players will grow in their roles -- Jordan Bell, perhaps Patrick McCaw and Quinn Cook -- but it's difficult to imagine any of those three becoming superstars like the Warriors' homegrown trio of Curry, Thompson and Green. Championship windows begin to close slowly, and then it happens all at once, and you wonder whatever happened to that all-time great team.
In order to grab that mantle of all-time greatness, which still belongs to Michael Jordan's Bulls, the Warriors certainly will need to win the next two championships. That would give them five championships in six years. They might even need three more to satisfy the people who point to the Bulls' six titles as evidence of that dynasty's G.O.A.T. status. There are plenty of subtleties in the all-time great conversation. It's why the fact that the Warriors swept the Cavaliers matters; that's something that only eight teams in NBA history have done in the Finals, and something Jordan's Bulls never did. And it's why the context of this NBA era matters; no matter what Charles Barkley and his cohorts tell you that their era was better than this era, they are wrong. This is the best the NBA has ever been, and the Warriors are the kings of this era.
"I remember sitting in this room three years ago, it seemed like a dream," Steve Kerr said. "This feels more like reality. And I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. It's just that's the talent we have, and that's the experience we've gained. But it's a very different feeling. It's still euphoric, but three years ago was I can't believe this happened, and now it's I can definitely believe this happened, but it was hard, and it gets more and more difficult as you go through."
The road won't get easier for the Warriors. Powers are rising in the East. The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers are legit title contenders. The Rockets were worthy challengers to these Warriors. And wherever LeBron James decides to take his talents will be an immediate threat to the Warriors' throne.
But the Warriors' championship window is still wide open, and it will be for at least three more years. Perhaps now isn't the time to discuss this. Perhaps it is, like Steph said, cheating the moment. But over the next three years we will get to find out whether the greatness we're watching with these Warriors is one of a handful of NBA dynasties -- or if it's the greatest of them all.
