2019 NBA Finals Game 6 Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight. Again: 2019 NBA Finals Game 6 Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight. Once again: 2019 NBA Finals Game 6 Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight.
Let that sink in.
The headline “2019 NBA Finals Game 6, Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight”, is and will always be a sad end to a long tradition of sports in a city that many people looked down on: Oakland.
The fact is, 2019 NBA Finals Game 6, Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight, is happening not so much because Oakland didn’t do anything to keep the Golden State Warriors, as it was that the Warriors didn’t want to be in Oakland. Basically, the reason was and is that Oakland’s black. And even though the numbers of African Americans have shrank, for much of its post-war history, Oakland has been a black town that was ashamed of the title.
Far different from Atlanta, which is happy to be considered a black town, Oakland’s ran away from the nickname. Moreover, it’s allowed organizations that should be an indelible part of Oakland to make up reasons to leave it. Let’s face it: if the Warriors wanted to be in Oakland, the organization would have found a way to be in Oakland – even with the late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s work to draw the Warriors to “The City.”
And Warriors Managing Partner offered up the alternative reason for the move: lack of Oakland leadership:
The reality is, they just didn’t want to be in Oakland. If that were the case, Lacob could have used the media to call out Oakland’s problems, and then stayed in Oakland. See?
So what does that have to do with the game tonight? With “2019 NBA Finals Game 6, Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight”? Everything.
Take this scene over at Lake Chalet this morning:
.@maxkellerman with a decree to the Warriors faithful ? pic.twitter.com/1FEHs6TAsO
— First Take (@FirstTake) June 13, 2019
Yeah. That’s ESPN First Take’s Max Kellerman with a couple of would-be Toronto Raptors fans yelling “People of Oakland. Your time is up: Kawhi is coming for you.” He’s referring to Kawhi Leonard, or “Kawhi Anthony Leonard”, the standout “small” forward of the Toronto Raptors who many believe is the next LeBron James.
But the point of this is to explain that, after this week, you’re not going to hear Max Kellerman, or anyone else, baying to the “People of Oakland” about anything related to the Warriors.
The Golden State Warriors Will Forget About Oakland In San Francisco
Next year, it will be “People of San Francisco” and as if the Warriors time in Oakland never existed. in fact, my friend Ray Ratto wrote in Deadspin that “Oakland as a cultural entity has always felt like the dog to San Francisco’s walker, the wrong end of the Bay Bridge.” Why, Ray? It is because Oakland has a lot of black folks?
Shameful.
We can only hope the Warriors don’t hammer the final nail in Oakland’s sports coffin by changing the team’s name to the “San Francisco Warriors.” Given the fact that the Warriors could have been called “The Oakland Warriors”, but were not because it was mostly black, to do that is nothing less than an expression of pure racism.
This, then, is the epitaph of Oakland: So ashamed to be black it didn’t have enough civic pride to insist on better treatment, and then be ass-hole enough to get it. Oakland has evolved into a city that let’s things happen to it, rather than controlling what happens to it.
I wonder when this madness called racism will stop. It’s completely decimated Oakland’s culture, leaving it a mere shadow of what it once was. The Oakland that grew because of heavy industry like steel and ship-building and transportation, is now at war with forces that would clear out that activity for a more service-oriented, lower-wage-scale economy.
Heavy industry was a source of great jobs and great lives for many blacks in Oakland. The economy of today doesn’t offer the same promise for many African Americans. The talk of “tech-equity” is a symbol of this problem. Rather than mate black tech entrepreneurs with venture capitalists to help build their wealth, the idea with “tech-equity” is to encourage the white tech companies fueled by the same venture capitalists to just hire blacks.
San Francisco’s Seen As Home Of Tech Entrepreneurs, Not Oakland
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, there’s a ton of tech mixers where you can meet venture capitalists.
So, the modern pecking order of tech-induced institutional racism continues in Oakland: blacks are put in positions to work for whites, rather than build their own wealth by starting their own tech companies. African Americans are terrorized by BBQ Becky and Jogger Joe. Meanwhile, the Warriors leave black Oakland for the greener, whiter pastures of San Francisco.
The truth is that there are blacks in tech, in Oakland. (I’m one of them and Crunchbase says so.) Even if the Warriors, and the San Francisco-based media don’t think so.
So, have you sobered up now? Good.
“2019 NBA Finals Game 6, Last Warriors Game In Oakland, Tonight.”
Go Warriors!