So, I was scrolling through some stuff online the other day, and the same old topic popped up: the Golden State Warriors being the ‘villains’ of the NBA. It got me thinking, you know?
It’s funny how teams get these labels. With the Warriors, it feels like it really ramped up during their peak domination years. People just got tired of them winning, I guess. And yeah, you gotta talk about certain players.
The Obvious Suspects
Draymond Green, right? He’s gotta be the first name that comes up for most folks. The technical fouls, the kicking incident, the yelling… he plays with that edge, and it definitely rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Can’t deny he’s effective, but man, does he make it easy for people to slap that villain label on him.
Then there was the whole Kevin Durant move. Oh boy. When he joined a team that already won 73 games? The internet basically exploded. It felt like cheating to a lot of fans. Suddenly, the fun, exciting Warriors became this unbeatable juggernaut, and people hated it. They weren’t just good; they felt inevitable, and that took the fun out of it for neutrals and rivals.
But is it That Simple?
Thinking about it though, it reminds me of this situation I had at an old job. Not sports, totally different field. We had this project, right? And my team, we found this loophole, totally legal, totally within the rules, that let us finish way faster and better than anyone else. We crushed it.
Well, let me tell you, the other teams were furious. Suddenly we were the bad guys. We were ‘gaming the system’, ‘not playing fair’, all that noise. Management even gave us a talking to, even though we technically did nothing wrong. We just found a smarter way, worked hard, and got results. But because we disrupted the ‘normal’ way and made others look slow, we became the villains.
It kind of feels the same with the Warriors sometimes.
- They changed the game with shooting.
- They won. A lot.
- They had players who weren’t afraid to be loud or make controversial moves.
Does that make them villains? I don’t know. Maybe Draymond leans into it a bit, sure. And the KD move definitely felt like overkill. But mostly, it feels like they just got really good, changed how things were done, and people don’t like that kind of dominance unless it’s their team. Just like my old project team – we weren’t trying to be villains, we were just trying to win within the rules we were given. Success just paints a target on your back, I guess.
