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OAKLAND — Oracle Arena has been so loud with cheers for the Golden State Warriors — even with two losses last week that put the team in a harrowing 3-1 hole — that their fans, hoping for another NBA championship, were reluctant to consider a troubling question: Could this really be it?
Could Friday’s 105-92 loss to the Toronto Raptors have been the very last Warriors game played at Oracle Arena? After 47 years in Oakland, the team will start next season in a new, billion-dollar facility in San Francisco. But to longtime local fans, the team will be leaving its heart in Oakland.
The Warriors will have to win Game 5 in Toronto on Monday to return for one last game in Oakland on Thursday. A win back here would mean a seventh — winner-take-all — game in Toronto on Father’s Day.
Win or lose, even the players were getting sentimental this week as the end of the Oracle era drew near.
“This has been my home for 10 years,” said Steph Curry, whose three children were born during his Warriors years and whose oldest daughter, Riley, became a media sensation on his lap here. “I learned how to be an NBA player in this arena. It means everything.”
Even Nicole Lacob, wife of Warriors owner Joe Lacob, is misty over the move.
“As you can see, there’s so much love here,” she said during Friday night’s game. “I love everyone and everything about this place. I’ll never move on in my heart.”
Instead of Oracle Arena’s acres of asphalt, the glistening new Chase Center will be surrounded by waterfront parks, offices, restaurants and retail when it opens in September — an economic necessity for major league franchises now. And it’s just a BART ride away. But from Coach Steve Kerr to the attendant selling cotton candy for 42 years, from the fans with courtside seats to the die-hards in the last row on the third deck, there’s a feeling of nostalgia and a flicker of worry: Can the magic cross the bridge?
“It remains to be seen,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a lifetime Oaklander who said in an interview Friday she is “devastated” by the move. “There’s a gritty authenticity, a scrappy fighter ethos in Oakland that San Francisco will never have.”
Oakland fans are legendary for their loyalty to the Warriors, for filling the stands throughout the lean years when the Warriors were one of the losingest franchises in the league and still cheering so loud that Oracle Arena was nicknamed “Roaracle.”
Take last Wednesday night for starters. Final few minutes. Warriors down. And there’s Debbie Price, who drove up Highway 880 from Fremont, leaning forward in her usual seat up behind the hoop: “You’re champions!” she shouted. “Come on! Come on! We believe!”
Nearly 70 percent of season ticket holders are renewing their tickets for Chase Center — another sign of the fans’ devotion. But not Price — they’re too expensive.
Same for Aaron Schleifer of Castro Valley, who isn’t so sure that the fan loyalty will translate across the Bay.
“If the Warriors keep winning, you won’t know the difference,” he said. “But if they’re struggling, are they going to get that loyalty? I hope we don’t know that for another decade.”
Draymond Green — whose superfan, “Sweetie,” was probably the oldest Warriors devotee in the NBA when she died in 2016 at 107 — is optimistic.
“Warriors fans are great all over the Bay,” he said in the locker room after Game 3 against the Raptors.
But Oakland?
“Oakland’s become a second home for me,” said Green, who grew up in the blue-collar town of Saginaw, Michigan, and has always felt an affinity for this city. “The support we get from this town on a nightly basis, the support we get from the entire city of Oakland, it’s been fantastic.”
The move comes at a conflicted time for Oakland, a city trying to hold on to its creative, working-class roots while tech companies and their workers with big salaries are pricing out longtime residents. Oakland was named one of the “most exciting destinations” for its “vibrant and diverse culture” by National Geographic this year. But the city’s charms didn’t stop the Oakland A’s from trying to leave (a federal judge denied their departure), the Raiders from heading to Las Vegas (the city is suing the team on its way out) and the Warriors from moving across the Bay.
Some locals can’t help but take it personally.
“The thing that hurts the most — at a time when Oakland is developing and there’s construction everywhere, the ownership still doesn’t feel the need to stay here,” said John Jones III, a community activist who was born and raised in Oakland and remembers paying $20 for a pair of Warriors tickets. “It’s as if we’re not good enough. Being in the shadow of San Francisco, we’ve always been the unglamorous side of the bay.”
Warriors President Rick Welts understands the pain, but insists that “we’re leaving a building, not a city.”
The team’s practice facility downtown will be converted to a community center with space for nonprofits and its youth basketball programs will be expanded there. The Warriors Foundation will remain in Oakland and continue to split its donations between Oakland and San Francisco. And next season, although the team will be playing in “The City,” the players will be wearing “The Town” jerseys to honor their 47 years in Oakland.
“It’s not without bittersweet memories. We love Oakland. I love Oakland. Our players love Oakland,” Welts said. “But we’re really excited about our future.”
The move and the new streams of revenue beyond ticket sales that will come with it, he said, will position them “to compete for championships as far into the future as we can see.”
Steph Curry’s father, Dell, in an interview from the stands, thanked the Oakland fans “for wrapping their arms around our son. We’ll always be indebted to Oakland.”
Although many locals believe the Dubs belong to Oakland, the team is the Golden State Warriors, after all, with the idea that the Bay Area’s only NBA team was meant to be shared. The franchise got its start in Philadelphia, moved to San Francisco for nine years in the 1960s and during a renovation of the Oakland arena in the 1990s, the team spent a season in San Jose.
Kelly Ong, 33, whose family has had season tickets since before she was born, is fine with the move.
“The Bay Area is the Bay Area,” she said. “My thing is I want to win.”
Still, for Cynthia Royer of Hayward, who has been cheering on the Warriors for all 47 years in Oakland, “I’m loyal to here.”
In some ways, longtime fans have seen this change coming, little by little. The more successful the team, the pricier the tickets. Fewer longtime fans could afford them and the makeup of the crowd started to shift.
Jones III, the community activist, remembers the day he considers a cultural turning point: Game 2 in the NBA West finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016. Diving for a ball, Steph Curry flew two rows into the courtside seats and disappeared in a heap behind them.
“Nobody caught him,” Jones said. “Everyday fans, we intuitively know we protect our players, we want to embrace them, break that fall. People in the front rows, they parted like Moses and the Red Sea. As the Beatles said, ‘Money can’t buy you love.’”
To have someone in one of those front seats — a minority owner of the Warriors no less — actually shove a Raptors player who fell into the seats during Wednesday’s game was a final affront to Jones. It was an embarrassment to the Warriors organization and the NBA, which banned Mark Stevens, who later apologized, from all games and team events for a full year and fined him $500,000.
For the entire season, the team has been saying thank you to Oakland, honoring former players during games, including members of the 1975 championship team. Ushers handed out Baron Davis bobbleheads, commemorating the guard’s key play during the 2007 playoffs. Mayor Schaaf has wished them well.
Ushers, security officers and other staff are being invited to join the team at Chase Center. Gerald Flynn, 70, who has been selling cotton candy for the Warriors for 42 years, plans to move with them. Usher Kirkham Torney, who is so beloved that some fans have given him gift cards and a tea kettle for Christmas, isn’t sure whether he will.
The atmosphere will be different in San Francisco, but team leaders are trying to retain the best of Oakland.
To keep it intimate, they’re limiting the number of seats to 18,000, about 1,500 less than Oracle Arena. And to keep it loud, they’re designing the ceiling to remain relatively low. That way, they hope, the cheers will still sound like a roar.
