Flashes of gold
Writer Alan Chazaro compares the undulating qualities of two living dynasties, between Xalapa, Mexico's los Halcones, and The Bay's Golden State.
In southern Mexico, a huddle of concrete-and-tin roofs stack precariously along a steep, half-paved road. Open-bed trucks and motorcycles wrapped with Deadpool-themed kits rumble and zoom by. The climate is tropical, with cloud-splitting rainfall and an ever-present mist that somehow, scientifically, traps heat like a giant greenhouse.
Here, you’re likely to encounter fake Mercedes emblems slapped across Toyotas, bootleg Nikes with a backwards swoosh stitched on, and copycat Adidas with four stripes. Here, you have to look twice to confirm whatever you think reality is. Nothing is permanent; nothing certain.
I’ve spent the majority of my years traveling between this place — Xalapa, the capital city of Veracruz, where both of my parents were raised — and my hometown in the San Francisco Bay Area. They’re nothing alike on the exterior, and are about as far apart in the interior as you can fathom for being North American neighbors.
And yet, in both metro regions, basketball reigns.
Xalapa is home to the Halcones, among the winningest franchises in Mexico’s Liga Nacional de Baloncesto Profesional history, bagging four championships in five seasons, beginning in 2005. During that stretch, they were impervious in the same way the Golden State Warriors were back in the Bay, between 2015 and 2019, regularly appearing in the finals with a cast of top-tier ballers and, in the case of los Halcones, a dominant interior presence.
By all metrics, los Halcones de Xalapa formed a dynasty out of Mexico’s basketball cosmos, an organization whose winning ways shifted the tectonics of their contemporaries who tried to keep pace.
Anchored by Lorenzo Mata — a 6’11” Mexican American center who sharpened his craft at UCLA alongside future NBA hoopers like Arron Afflalo, Darren Collison and Jordan Farmar — and Gustavo Ayon — a Mexican-born big man who went on to become a mainstay on the Mexican national team for nearly two decades — the Halcones were able to dictate the better part of a decade. Glorified role players were imported, mostly from the States, to bolster the core unit. Guys like Robert ‘The Tractor’ Traylor, a former NBA lottery pick of Michigan Wolverines fame, and Orlando Mendez, a San Antonio legend who would become the LNBP’s Rookie of the Year in Xalapa, and who is now an Assistant GM in the NBA G League.
But with every high comes a low. And the lowest point for the Halcones arrived in 2015, five seasons after their last trophy was hoisted, when the team withdrew from the LNBP due to scandalous financial reasons (it wouldn’t be the last time a professional Veracruz-based sports franchise would be ousted for financial corruption). Just like that, Mexico’s best team — whose winning ways were reminiscent of the 1996 Chicago Bulls — no longer existed, and Xalapeños (Xalapa, formerly known as Jalapa, is also the namesake of the mildly spicy jalapeños you put on your nachos) had no team to rally behind.
The Warriors aren’t quite at the stage of financial crisis. Not yet, at least. In fact, having become one of the globe’s most valuable sports entities, they’re far from it. But entering the tail end of a dynastic run? That’s palpable. The Dubs are currently somewhere along the downward curvature of their run — two years removed from their previous Larry O’B.
The thing about a dynasty though — even after the parades have paraded, and the champagne has champagne’d — is that a team’s continuity may fluctuate, and even snap at moments, but it unexpectedly regenerates. And with each faltering disaster, there’s potential for redemption.
This Warriors season has been among my favorites to watch as a lifelong fan. As the organization stumbles through their delicate transition away from all the winning, new excitements have emerged — a reminder that everything is impermanent, even our once-fallible stars. The Dubs, after redefining modern basketball with the distance-warping range and hive mind cerebralism of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, are again at a crossroads. In the past 10 seasons, their rise and decline and rise has taken place more times than I’d like to count. And because of that, perhaps not since 2009, when the NBA fans first became acquainted with Steph’s mercurial ankles and tantalizing potential, have the Warriors ever felt as exciting and unknown to me as they do right now, with the 2023-24 regular season entering its waning phase, and their dynasty in a stage of devolvement.
Steph is still — miraculously, incomprehensibly — doing Steph things. No other superstar in the post-South Beach Heatles era has constantly had to reload everything around him in a singular location, while ushering in a fresh crop of young talent, season after season after season (I’ll never forget you, Patrick McCaw). The pieces around Steph have mostly come and gone like a coastal tide, and there’s no telling how strong this next wave into the playoffs will (or won’t) surge for Golden State.
Klay — a captain of waves in his own right — was just weeks ago talked about on local radio and internet outlets as being dispensable. Earlier this season, we witnessed Draymond choke and slap grown men like he was on a WWE pay-per-view, earning him an indefinite suspension. At one point, I was tuning in to see Dario Šarić catch-and-shoot off a kick out from just-acquired G Leaguers. At one point, this season felt like the definitive end of the Warriors as we’ve known them.
Everything can change, at any point. Some might say that the worst had finally arrived to collect its debt from Steve Kerr and company. And yet, for any Warriors fan who has followed this season — an especially mercurial campaign with nothing besides a prime Steph to helm the ship — it has been a year of disappointment, but also of upswing and, dare I say, mid-season rebirth. As uncertainty has festered among the aging core of veterans, a completely new dynamic has been able to emerge. I guess that’s what makes a dynasty worth watching until the absolute end; I guess sometimes leaving behind the once-reliable leads to the tantalizing promise of more.
As Draymond’s availability and Kevon Looney’s stamina have stepped back, Trayce Jackson-Davis — a big, quick rookie you’ve no doubt seen flush an authoritative dunk down Victor Wembanyama’s throat ad nauseam — has stepped up. The Hoosier has shown more flashes of gold at the five spot than any neophyte center — lottery pick or otherwise — I can recall as a forever-member of Dub Nation.
When Klay’s bandwidth momentarily retreated, the aforementioned Podziemski advanced. Podz, or 2Podz (ala Bay Area legend 2Pac), is a veritable junkyard dog who played college ball at Santa Clara University, 49 miles south of Chase Center, and who knows more ways to be utilized than a survival pocket knife.
While Wiggins’ has gone M.I.A. for nebulous reasons, a mix of Jonathan Kuminga, Lester Quinones and, for a thrilling stretch of this season, Gui Santos — an international trio of energizers — have injected the roster with dynamic play at the wing spots.
And that doesn’t account for the departure of Jordan Poole (RIP in Washington), the arrival of Chris Paul, and the revival of Gary Payton II, who have each, in different ways, alchemized the second unit.
Certainly, this isn’t the famed Death Lineup of yesteryears. But it doesn’t have to be. Somehow, the Warriors have reinvented themselves towards just enough relevancy, staving off just enough defeat in ways very few franchises — outside of the sports’ all-time greatest — have done for this long.
I’m looking out the window of my family member’s apartment in Xalapa, a couple exits away from the current home of the Halcones. After disbanding in 2015, the team eventually returned in a newer form to new and old fans alike. The players, coaches and even the arena they played inside of have changed. And somehow, they’ve found a way to be relevant again.
Right now, los Halcones de Xalapa are in the semifinal of Basketball Champions League Americas, a two-continent basketball tournament for the best Latin American teams. On March 10, the Halcones defeated Uruguay’s Nacional squad in a three game series to advance. Though the team literally fell apart after orchestrating a dynastic run in the late-aughts, they’re now back and crossing over into their next chapter with new blood. It’s a certain type of longevity: one that is unbound by the gravity of time and personnel, moving freely and morphing iterations with a rotating cast of characters who are expected to deliver heroic victories, no matter the calendarian restrictions.
The Warriors more than likely won’t win a chip this season, and may not even survive beyond the first round of the playoffs. And for me, I’m okay with that. The fact that the team has a player who dates back to 2009 in a Warriors jersey and is still finding ways to win with another generation of teammates is dynastic. Watching Podz flourish while Klay accepts his role on the bench is poetic. Seeing Draymond move around the floor with his trademark intellect while openly discussing his off-court struggles is refreshing. It’s not something we get to appreciate very often for as long as we already have. To put it in perspective, it would be like watching Nikola Jokic still dominate on the Denver Nuggets or Joel Embiid still receive peripheral consideration for MVP while hooping for the Sixers in the year 2034. That’s how long Curry and his crew have been doing it.
It’s an important reminder to appreciate greatness while it’s in front of you. To never take that smallest window of victory and opportunity for granted while you’re swimming in it.
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