From the recruiting trip to The Hamptons in July to the champagne celebration 11 months later, no 21st century NBA team had more of the elements required of a compelling multi-part documentary than the 2016-17 Warriors.
Or, as they were referred to by many after the Kevin Durant signing, the “Super Villains,” a nickname/title no less captivating than “The Last Dance,” the ESPN documentary featuring Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls.
The Warriors had an in-house Hollywood mogul, as co-executive chairman Peter Guber is the CEO of an entertainment company and has been telling stories through movies, TV and music since the 1970s.
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They also had a direct line to NBA entertainment producer Andy Thompson, who 19 years earlier laid much of the groundwork for “The Last Dance.” He’s Klay’s uncle.
The idea of a Warriors documentary, however, never went beyond the consideration stage, according to the executive producer of “The Last Dance.” That would be Guber.
“They were putting a period at the end of their sentence, maybe an exclamation point,” Guber, in a phone interview with NBC Sports Bay Area, said of the Bulls. “They had a marker.
“For (the Warriors), it was the beginning. As a storyteller, you’re always looking for an interesting story. But the choice of when and how to tell it is different. The point in time when you choose to tell the story is a fixed point. It wasn’t the right time.”
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Oh, what might have been.
The 2016-17 Warriors were pre-heated by fury, more than a little bit determined to obscure the memories of losing the 2016 Finals.
They had an attractive cast, personalities spanning the full spectrum, under a global spotlight.
There could be no anticlimax for those Warriors, as the only available outcomes were glorious gratification or abject failure, with a bitter futility chaser.
Given the blockbuster addition of Durant, it was all or nothing.
As intriguing as the idea of cameras following Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, Durant, Thompson and the rest of the Warriors, consider the juicy nuggets that might have surfaced 20 years later, when the players and coaches have retired and have the benefit of and greater maturity and perspective. “The beauty of a show like this is you now have all of that,” Guber said of “The Last Dance.”
[RUNNIN' PLAYS PODCAST: Listen to the latest episode]
The story of the Warriors could have been riveting. The 2018-19 team collapsed under the weight of interpersonal melodrama, unrelenting curiosity and career-altering injuries.
There was, however, another factor for Guber or anyone else endeavoring to document those Warriors. The media landscape deep into the second decade of the millennium was dramatically different than it was 20 years earlier.
The ’98 Bulls existed before the age of social media and TMZ, which has been around for 15 years. Care to imagine the stories and video we all missed involving the nocturnal exploits of Dennis Rodman and Jordan?
The ’17 Warriors, dozens of cameras of all types stalking every move, had to wade through all of that. Every cell phone has a camera, and every camera must be viewed as having the potential to expose what might have been unseen and, therefore, untold in 1998.
If it happened to the Warriors, it likely was seen by millions. If it was said by a member of the Warriors, it likely was heard by millions.
“Exactly right,” Guber said. “With social media, people are telling their own perspective to the global audience. Years ago, there was no way to do that. Today, in real time, the narrative is unfolding in social media. It’s streaming. It’s in tweets. It’s in Instagram shots. It’s a living narrative.”
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“The Last Dance,” required thousands of hours of manpower and hundreds of miles of film. It steeped for almost 20 years before Jordan signed off on it.
Curry, Durant and Green won’t have to wait for the call that went to MJ. There is no vault containing potentially incriminating evidence.
The story of the 2016-17 Warriors and their championship will have to settle being told by a few social media posts, copious news and feature articles, video highlights and, daring to shed greater insight, few books.