The Warriors are playing in their sixth NBA Finals in the past eight seasons, a feat last accomplished by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
On Thursday, the day of Game 1 between Golden State and the Boston Celtics, the Giants will be embarking on a four-game series against the Marlins in Miami.
Separated by half a mile on the shore of the San Francisco Bay, there are parallels between the two teams.
Each has won three championships in the 21st Century. Both franchises emphasize team culture. They’re each run by analytically minded front offices and former players as coaches. This year, the Warriors have the fifth oldest roster in the NBA; the Giants have the second-oldest order and 13th most veteran pitching staff.
The goal, for each club, is to contend for a title. The Warriors have held up their end of the bargain this year. Although cross-sport comparisons rarely lend themselves to perfect 1:1 applications, lessons from the Warriors can be applied to the team currently in third place of the National League West — both for the current 2022 MLB campaign and more broadly.
“We can definitely learn from them,” Giants general manager Scott Harris told KNBR. “They’ve built a dynasty.”
Harris is friendly with a few members of the Warriors’ front office, he said. Although there are different constraints within the two sports, he still values having conversations with them about roster construction, team culture and player development.
“It’d be foolish for us not to ask questions,” Harris, a Redwood City native, said.
Warriors general manager Bob Myers and Harris aren’t going to be telling each other how to run their teams. The sports are just too different. In basketball, a team can draft a player as great as Stephen Curry and be set for the next decade. That’s much more rare, if not impossible in baseball. Given that, there’s probably not much the Giants can glean from Golden State’s parallel timeline strategy.
Giants manager Gabe Kapler said one aspect of the Warriors franchise he strives to replicate is leadership with empathy. This past week, GSW head coach Steve Kerr made an impassioned plea to enact gun control legislation in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Before he penned his own essay on the subject and announced he won’t stand for the National Anthem until he feels better about the direction of America, Kapler told KNBR that Kerr’s message was “perfectly on point.”
Kerr has since said he supports Kapler’s decision, citing peaceful protest as a principle in which America is “founded on.”
“The thing that I find most inspirational is how Steve Kerr cares about things unrelated to basketball,” Kapler said. “The way he speaks so passionately on important topics, I find it really endearing and really inspirational. It just feels like a human being-led organization. Led by people, not just basketball savants.”
There’s no shortage of savants at 1 Warriors Way, however. Curry and the Warriors won three NBA titles — 2015, 2017 and 2018 — and are embarking on their third additional trip. The Giants, meanwhile, haven’t won a playoff series since the 2016 Wild Card game.
Current Giants players, as athletes and competitors, admire what the Warriors have accomplished. They marvel at the championship pedigree of Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
“You have guys over there in Steph, Klay and Draymond — those guys are champions,” relief pitcher Dominic Leone said. “They’ve been to the peak of their professional sport. Obviously that’s the goal that we want here. Our sport takes a little bit longer. But I think the mentality is always the same. Just the mindset of a champion is something you can always learn from.”
This regular season, the Curry-Thompson-Green trio shared the court for a total of 11 minutes. Thompson’s recovery from Achilles and knee injuries delayed the start of his season. A foot injury disrupted the final push of Curry’s season. Green’s back limited him to 46 games. GSW’s starting lineup and rotations were constantly in flux.
The Giants are dealing with similar injuries to key players. Their best hitter, Brandon Belt, has already missed significant time with a nagging knee injury. Anthony DeSclafani, a key rotation member, is out until at least late June with ankle soreness. Evan Longoria and Tommy La Stella’s seasons started late and several others have spent time on the injured list.
San Francisco’s pile-up of injuries, coupled with uneven performance from the pitching staff, made May the club’s first sub-.500 month since 2020.
“I guess if you want to draw a parallel: you’re never out of it,” Leone said. “They’re obviously playing really well and on the biggest stage, turned it on at the right time. We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve obviously had a lot of guys banged up. We don’t have all of our pieces together at the same time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get on a roll and get back to where we need to be.”
The 2021-22 Warriors reached the Finals because their trio got healthy for the playoffs, but also because that core mentored younger players to prepare them for the moment. Jordan Poole, Kevon Looney and Andrew Wiggins each blossomed to prop up the team.
That concept of veterans guiding younger players is something that can transcend any sport. The Giants don’t have a Steph Curry, — although the Curry-Posey career arcs were striking — but they do have veterans to help guide their Logan Webbs and Joey Barts.
“That’s why the Warriors are so good, because when you have a core group of guys — they have three superstar players,” Evan Longoria, a Warriors fan since joining the Giants, said.
“When they had KD, they could’ve won 10 championships if they kept him around,” Longoria added. “When you have three guys like that, same way with when the Giants had Craw, Belt and Buster here early on, with Lincecum and Cain — just a very good group of core players — and then they insert these other guys in and bring them along. You start to see teams blossom into championship contenders every year.”
