Golden State Warriors Turned Opponents’ Trash Into Championship Treasure

Competitors will always claim otherwise, but two things I promise you: they all read what others say about them and the very best turn those words into chips that they proudly display on their shoulders. Witness the Golden State Warriors.

Do you think Warriors star Klay Thompson carried a chip on his shoulder en route to his NBA Finals glory?

Let’s ask Jaren Jackson, Jr.

Jackson, of the Memphis Grizzlies, must have gagged on his beer nuts sitting on his living room couch last Thursday when he saw himself being called out by Thompson on national television following Game 6, which Golden State won to clinch their fourth championship in eight seasons. Of all the things the four-time champion Thompson might have recalled in the flush of victory, he chose this: “There was the one player on the Grizzlies who Tweeted ‘strength in numbers’ after they beat us in regular season. It pissed me off so much. I can’t wait to retweet that thing,” he said to the snickers of his interviewer.

“You going to mock us?” the typically affable Thompson continued. “Like, you ain’t ever been there before, bro. We been there. We know what it takes. Hold that?”

And then the coup de grace: “I’ve got a memory like an elephant. I don’t forget. There were a lot of people kicking us when we were down.”

Ooh… ouchie!

Of course, they were also a lot of people picking Golden State to win, but that kind of thought wouldn’t have served to motivate much of anyone, would it?

And then there was the series Most Valuable Player Stephen Curry, himself, hugging close not only his Maurice Podoloff Trophy given to the MVP and the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, but also a bright, Celtic green shirt with the words, “Alesha Curry Can’t Cook” festooned across the front. What was this? An inexplicable inside joke he wanted to share with his wife, a celebrity chef and cookbook author who has a show on the Food Network called “Ayesha’s Homemade?”

Not on your life. The shirt was an in-your-face, fade-away three-point reminder of what the Boston sports bar Game On! Fenway said about his wife Ayesha's culinary skills. The restaurant posted a picture of a sign with the phrase "Ayesha Curry Can't Cook" ahead of games 3 and 4.

Ooh… going after family members, are we? Bad idea... And giving the greatest shooter in NBA history an additional motivation to want to beat you at home, in front of your rabid fan base? Worse idea, still.

Trash talking is fun until your sharp words come back to run you off the court in the form of Thompson, Draymond Green, Curry and the Golden State Warriors. After the Golden State Warriors won the NBA Finals Thursday night, their leaders reminded everyone that they had long memories as well as long jump shots as they cozied up to their interviewers’ mics to settle some old scores.

And speaking of “chips,” that edge, that chip, has played an outsized role in business as well. Once upon a time in corporate America, IBM enjoyed a status as the most powerful technology company in the world behind its computing systems. Then, along came Apple Computer, cultivating an outsider and underdog edge that took them all the way from bootstrappers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s basements to Silicon Valley as the most valuable brand in the world.

Nothing can take you so far and so fast as a meticulously-cultivated chip. If you live in the southern United States, you might have found yourself watching at least part of the NBA Finals on one of the many television screens lining the walls of a restaurant chain called Walk-Ons Sports Bistreaux. Founded as a beer and burger bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Walk-ons earned ESPN’s praise as the “Best Sports Bar in America” back in 2012. By 2020, the company had vastly improved its menu and expanded to dozens of locations and the top ranking in Entrepreneur’s 2020 list of new franchises.

Its founders Brandon Landry and Jack Warner were literally walk-on basketball players at the fabled Louisiana State University, where their jobs were helping their teammates get all the glory. The experience taught the pair some important business lessons. Chief among these involved taking pride in their unheralded contributions and proving themselves every day. They turned this underdog work ethic into a “celebration of the walk-on lifestyle” and extraordinary commercial success as centers of the growing list of communities where they operate.

As for the Warriors, their coach Steve Kerr has reserved a special place for the chip among the four principles he calls his leadership style, which includes joy, mindfulness, compassion, and competition. The chip is neatly tucked away in the fourth of these, which Kerr summarizes as, “We compete. We keep score. We make sure there are winners and losers.”

The Warriors were mindful and kept score alright, and those were certainly tears of joy Curry and his teammates were expressing after the game.

As for compassion, well, Green, who took the lion’s share of the trash-talking, did give the Celtic’s star Jayson Tatum a long hug after the game.

That was just plain good sportsmanship, of course. But it also left no chip for Tatum to remember when they meet again. And that, as the Warriors are wont to say, is championship DNA in action.