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Why Livingston believes Warriors’ NBA domination won’t be matched originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
They were the right team at the right moment, with the right mentality and serendipitous financial timing. Which is why it will be decades, if ever, before another NBA team reaches the heights of the 2014-19 Warriors.
Five seasons, five trips to the NBA Finals.
Three championships – and a “five-peat” was conceivable if not for league intervention and a sadistic week from the gods of health.
The last five of Shaun Livingston’s 15 NBA seasons were with those Warriors. He owns four championship rings, three as a player and one in 2022 when he returned as an executive with the franchise. Five years into retirement, he leaned into the memories on NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dubs Talk podcast.
“How did we do it? Throw a little luck, sprinkle some luck in there with injuries,” he said. “Obviously, we got bit at the end.”
That’s a reference to Golden State losing Kevin Durant to a ruptured Achilles’ tendon in Game 5 of the 2019 Finals against the Raptors in Toronto and then losing Klay Thompson to a torn ACL in Game 6 at Oracle Arena in Oakland. The Warriors won Game 5 and had an 85-80 lead in Game 6 when Thompson limped off the floor late in the third quarter. Toronto came back for the series-clinching victory.
Nothing was ever the same with the Warriors. Except the memories.
“We had the right personnel,” Livingston said. “The personnel really mattered. Obviously great players, but also (our) locker room. We had a really solid foundation, which is super underrated in professional sports with the salaries and all the status that professional athletes have and the attention they garner.”
“And then I think it was just our time. At the end of the day, it was really our time.”
Livingston was 28 when his arrival in the summer of 2014 coincided with that of first-time coach Steve Kerr. Stephen Curry was 26. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green each 24. The incumbent veterans were David Lee (31), Andre Iguodala (30) and Andrew Bogut (29).
Kerr and his staff added a wrinkle or two to the solid defense…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/why-livingston-believes-warriors-nba-143056690.html
Author : NBC Sports BayArea
Publish date : 2024-08-06 14:30:56
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