SAN FRANCISCO – It’s been two years since the Bay Area hosted the Championship Parade, but neither the city nor the Warriors have forgotten how to capture the moment.
Stephen Curry Mooney climbed a banister at the train station stop and started hitting the sign next to them.
“MVP!” Echoes of mantras could be heard from all directions, like blue and golden confetti raining down from the sky.
Before pouring a bottle of champagne and spraying it on her husband, Ayesha pointed to the sign saying “Ayesha can cook”. It inspired Curry and Damien Lee. So he emptied a seat in the crowd and opened his bottle, taking a shower on a fan standing in his way.
“We represent you. The life, the inspiration, you give us is all that matters. That’s all,” Curry told the small crowd of team and arena workers at the pre-parade rally. “To entertain you, to give you something to enjoy, with passion. It gives us a platform to do things like never before in history and to represent the entire Gulf region in the process. We’re back, there’s a parade in San Francisco, let’s do it. “
The Warriors were in a double-decker bus, but it didn’t take long for them to leave the bus and immerse themselves in the thousands of fans waiting for them before sunrise.
Clay Thompson held the Larry O’Brien Trophy to the ground, took a step back, and was followed by a Michael Jackson-inspired dance. He then picked up the trophy and started running, high-flying and dancing with the fans following him.
Behind a few buses, Jordan Poole grabbed a super soccer water gun and a pool float as he got off his bus. He ran up and down the obstacles on the way to Market St. in downtown San Francisco, enough to get anyone wet. He grabbed his friend’s camera and began taking videos and pictures so he could document himself while doing so.
“Pool parties are long in the summer,” he shrugged.
His bus-companion, Andrew Wiggins, grabbed a bottle of fan champagne, shook it, and sprayed it all over his face.
Next, Gary Payton II was on his way to the 90 percent parade. Prior to the parade, referring to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ parade in 2016, when Smith was shirtless for the entire Cavs celebration, he said “go to the full JR Smith” during the parade.
Payton was a man of his words, throwing off his shirt early in the day.
Drummond Green said, “The thing that makes me happiest … is watching people win for the first time.” “In your journey, you always want to experience the first time again. The reality is that you will never get it again and the only way to get it back is to experience it through Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, Otto Porter, Bailey, Moses. GP … you feel it through those people and that’s why you get that feeling again. “
Green had no problem regaining that feeling. As he finished his rally speech, saying, “Thank you all, and it’s always f— all,” Green stood in the middle of the street, pointing to the crowd. Boston Celtics fans responded by shouting “F—, Drummond” to Green, and copied what the Warriors did at their locker room celebration after winning the title.
Green ran around the high-five fans, even throwing a bottle of champagne over his head. Before returning to his bus, he took instant intermission to get ice cream at Garidelli.
It was clear that after two years away from the top spot in the league and two years without a parade, the Warriors wanted to enjoy as much as possible. Golden State fans did.
People sat on trees, on lamp posts, and hung from the windows of skyscrapers in San Francisco.
Despite obstacles in the way of the parade, people jumped to get as close to their favorite players as possible. As the buses reached the final stages of the route, crowd control seemed to be a foreign concept, as fans took to the streets after the last bus left.
But no one seemed to mind.
“It’s been an amazing year,” Green said. “I told you all, don’t let us win the championship and to be honest, no one can stop it.”
