How to accept a Warriors dynasty without hating the NBA playoffs

Here are the complaints I saw about the NBA playoffs: Too few games were close; the close games didn’t matter because too few series were ever in doubt; the tight series didn’t matter because the Finals were destined to be a rubber match between the Cavs and Warriors; the Cavs’ presence didn’t matter because a team that went 73-9 last year added Kevin freaking Durant. Drama comes from uncertainty, and NBA fans hoping for a different outcome may as well have spent the last six weeks watching time-lapse videos of the tide eroding a beach.

The Warriors present a problem for fans who require uncertain outcomes to feel invested in the game. This is normal: What makes sports so compelling in the first place is the idea that anything can happen. But your NBA playoff malaise can be cured by accepting the sure thing. Imagine going to the beach and saying, “Ugh, waves AGAIN?!?” You wouldn’t bemoan the reeds’ lack of effort on defense; only Skip Bayless would ruin everyone’s vacation like that.

This is a big ask, I know. The impossibility of any other outcome is the greatest narrative crime in sports. Almost every sports discussion relies on a reasonable alternate reality that can never play out — but might have! It is what keeps fans awake at night after a loss, and it is the dark antimatter that fuels sports talk radio and whatever argument is happening around a table on ESPN or FS1.

What if? What if Kyle Korver had sunk that open look at the end of Game 3? What if the refs hadn’t blown the whistle early on the Predators’ Game 6 goal? What if the Falcons had just run the ball? What if the Warriors played the ’96 Bulls?

The event itself is rarely enough anymore. If a sport’s highlights are the topography of reality, then the atmosphere between them is everything we hoped could happen but didn’t. And at the Warriors’ heights, the air is too thin for imagination. What if Kawhi Leonard didn’t land on Zaza Pachulia’s foot? Uh, the Warriors get one less record on the way to a 16-3 postseason? If Kevin Durant cared about his legacy, he shouldn’t have signed with the Warriors. It’s fair to say the Finals MVP cares about his legacy, and he appears more comfortable with it than ever.

Here is the only hypothetical that gives me any ease: What if we adjusted our expectations of the NBA playoffs to fit the gravity-bending reality of the Warriors? What if a foregone conclusion could make us more appreciative of the fight against it? What if we redefined athletic greatness not with championships, but with tenacity and bravery? Because, yes, the Warriors finished their 16-1 postseason run with a gentleman’s sweep of the Cavs, but LeBron’s greatness made the Dubs’ addition of Durant seem more essential than extravagant.

Durant’s transition three in the final minute of Game 3 will probably live as the most defining moment of the series, but what of LeBron’s alley-oop to himself during the Cavaliers’ Game 4 supernova? What about J.R. Smith’s three-point barrage in Game 5? Or Kyrie Irving finishing from every impossible angle in Game 3? If Golden State’s championship was never in doubt, Cleveland didn’t get the memo.

My default setting for watching the Warriors is awe. I’ll happily watch them blow teams off the court, but my affinity for shameless ass-kickings is a recessive trait in sports fan DNA. I’ve got a sadistic streak and a taste for speed runs through the NBA’s lesser Koopas; that doesn’t mean YOU should listen to me prattle on about a leviathan “playing the right way,” whatever that means. (I’d rather take an Aaron Judge swing to the ribs than revisit all the times I was told to appreciate Mariano Rivera’s dominance.) Watching sports is both tribal and emotional, and you can’t be told what to like any more than you can change the color of your skin.

But: You can tweak what to expect in this Warriors epoch. Do not arrive at Los Alamos expecting a boxing match. Bring your blast goggles, and watch in awe at the terrible beauty on the outskirts of human ingenuity. If that’s too tall an order, you can triumph in the smaller moments of brilliance and bravery, the courage of quelled uprisings and Pyrrhic victories.

And should that fail, too, just wait. Dynasties are more fragile than they appear, and time is undefeated. Be patient, and you’ll see that the Warriors aren’t the waves. They’re the beachhead.