“One especially devoted Warriors fan, a friend of a friend, said that watching your team win is like taking a hit of a drug: it ups your endorphins, makes you feel high, like you’ve accomplished something just by rooting for it. Losing, then, is coming down, facing the harsh reality you left behind. Eventually, everyone loses: athletes get traded, teams come apart, knees buckle, shots are missed, fans age. Early in April, I watched the Warriors play the Boston Celtics. It was the first time all season that any of us had seen the Warriors lose a game at home. People began filing out of the arena with fifteen seconds still left on the clock; it felt like the blood leaving the body of a corpse. When we are given something good, we want something great. When we are given something great, we want something impossible. Not only did we want the Warriors to surpass seventy-two wins, we wanted them never to lose again. We wanted to defy gravity, never to come down. The next day, at a practice, Steve Kerr talked about the kind of disappointment that is specific to greatness. “It’s like when Steph or Klay has an open three-pointer, and they miss at Oracle, the whole crowd groans because you can’t believe that they missed,” he said. “If we lose a game, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, they lost at home?’ ” (more…)