Where do the Golden State Warriors of the 2010s/early 2020s rank among the NBA dynasties? Former NBA on NBC play-by-play voice Bob Costas says they’re up there as one of the greatest, but not in the same echelon as the 90s Chicago Bulls.
In an appearance on Willard and Dibs on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco on Friday, Costas was asked about the parallels between the Bulls and Warriors. He said you can’t compare the two without also considering the other dynasties between them with the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Lakers of the 2000s, but Golden State’s run is up there with the Michael Jordan-era Bulls.
“I think the Warriors come close to it,” Costas said. “But I think the Warriors are probably the closest to that Michael Jordan Bulls run. But there are differences which are not the Warriors’ fault.
Costas went on to say that Steph Curry is “one of the most compelling players to watch in the history of the NBA” and that he symbolizes everything Golden State in this era. But he said the reach of Jordan in the 90s to the American public is not the same as the reach that Curry and the Warriors have had some 30 years later.
“The Warriors run takes place during a period of time when the NBA is essentially – I’m not counting local television – a cable product,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with the presentation on cable. The studio show on TNT is the best studio show in the history of sports. Barkley and Shaq and Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson are terrific. And the games are well-called.”
“These games in the 21st century are less present in the general public imagination than they were in the 80s on CBS when it was Byrd and Magic and Dr. J,” Costas added.
Bob also went on to say that network TV at that time was the lifeblood of getting the NBA into the most homes possible.
“Those games were on NBC. We would show doubleheaders and sometimes tripleheaders on network television when the media landscape was much, much different,” he said. “And primetime games not just in the Finals, but in the early rounds of the playoffs on weeknights.”
“The Warriors do not have that platform on a national basis,” Costas continued. “In the Finals, yes, but even in the Finals, much of the country hasn’t followed them all the way through whereas that was the case with Jordan and the Bulls. Not just in any given season, but one season built upon another upon another. It was a decades or more-long epic story of Michael Jordan going back to his game-winning shot in 1982 for North Carolina.”
Bob also hit on the fact that the NBA of today has evolved so much since Michael Jordan won his sixth championship. He said the Warriors dynasty is just different and it’s hard to try to compare two different eras of basketball.
“It’s not fault of the Warriors or the Spurs or the early 2000s Lakers or whatever it might be,” Costas said. “There’s just something about Jordan and the Bulls that cannot be approached.”
