The Golden State Warriors Are Ready To Be The NBA's Perfect Villains

"You cannot disrespect the caterpillar by raving only about the butterfly." This is a sentence former Warriors coach Mark Jackson said on television, where everyone could hear it, as we watched the team he coached a year earlier streak to the NBA championship under Jackson's replacement.

Although this passive-aggressive nationally televised rejoinder to the praise heaped upon Steve Kerr wouldn't hold up particularly well to scrutiny in an AP English class, it does speak to the mystery of this team's metamorphosis. These Golden State Warriors lurched from scrappy League Pass charmers to upstart conquerors, and now appear to be embracing a new and prickly triumphalism as they prepare to mount their defense as a venture-capitalized Bay Area reboot of the Bad Boys Pistons. This is not quite a completely unexpected heel turn, though. It's more a long simmering flirtation with darkness finally making good its escape.

Over time, teams form identities that smooth the jagged edges of reality. The Spurs are the Borg, unstoppable evil aliens that play the right way. The Grizzlies are Reagan Democrats. The Clippers are a kid in a flat-brimmed Dodgers hat trying-but-not-trying to start a fight in an Orange County bar. The Warriors, thanks largely to the vanilla charisma and above-the-fray leadership of Stephen Curry, gave the impression of good buddies punching slightly above their weight, and they played joyous, magical basketball without appearing dominant in an unseemly or un-fun way. America's team, then, or something like it.

But it wasn't all redemption songs. Butterfly metaphor aficionado and actual pastor Mark Jackson is rightfully lauded for guiding the Warriors back to the playoffs, but he also brought with him a manichean chip-on-shoulder culture of saints and sinners, and an increasingly bleak us vs. them organizational mentality. They were the most explicitly evangelical team in the league, basically Templar Knights (and Bogut). Bay Area fans groaned quietly when Jackson gave tone deaf "I'll pray for him" support to Jason Collins, the NBA's first openly gay player. And then there were the mind games, the mysteriously sacked coaches and secret alliances; most disturbingly, there was Jackson's campaign to motivate his players by turning them against injured teammate Festus Ezeli. Grantland's Zach Lowe reported that Jackson told his team that Ezeli was rooting against them to make himself look better. He wasn't, and Ezeli wept when his teammates confronted him.

It was a poisonous climate, but the Warriors fought hard for Jackson until the end. Then Steve Kerr arrived, ironed out the kinks, turned some frowns upside down, and they won a championship. The end. Except, it wasn't of course, because this is the world and no one gets rockin' end credits.

And so the Warriors were left to deal with success. Mostly, they have seemed pretty peevish about it. There was Draymond's "Cool story, Glenn," a good, sassy response to Doc Rivers bemoaning Golden State's luck. There was Bogut's joke that he was getting his championship ring fitted for his middle finger (obvious, but okay). All around, glimpses of the Bad Boy Warriors started to peek through the righteous sheen.

And then Klay Thompson was caught cheating by his girlfriend, the Instagram star Hannah Stocking. That the broader public cared about Klay Thompson being caught naked in bed with a groupie is proof that the Warriors had achieved a new type of fame; even the British tabloid rag The Daily Mail devoted some digital real estate to the, um, news. The Warriors, tight bros that they are, quickly closed ranks. Andrew Bogut tweeted: "If I have a daughter and she is an 'Instagram model', FAIL FAIL FAIL Parenting."

That is not a good take, not to mention needlessly cruel and personal. Wall Street Journal reader Harrison Barnes retweeted Bogut with approving emojis. And Draymond Green, responding to critics who (stupidly) maintain that Golden State didn't deserve their title, tied it all together by comparing those complaining to a rancorous woman, stating "When you're dealing with a bitter female that's scorned, that's one of the worst things in the world. And God, that's bad." That is one of the worst comparisons in the world, Dray. God, it's bad.

The less said the better, probably, about porn legend Lisa Ann's on-air announcement that a well-known Warrior, "wants to be my Master P, you know, Master Pimp, but you know, no exchange of money of course. He wants to be my resource for anyone I want to meet." At any rate, it adds up. Consenting adults are consenting adults and all, but Master Pimps, philandering, and casual misogyny doesn't fit well with a team that we've heard again and again is built around "character guys."

Seen this way—seen clearly—the Warriors are not cardboard championship virtues in action. They are what they are, which is a great basketball team that also enfolds the general goonery and dirty play of Andrew Bogut, the dead-eyed branding experiment that is Harrison Barnes' public persona, owner Joe Lacob's dogs being named after Ayn Rand characters, and Draymond Green's full-throated adoration for thermonuclear shithead Floyd Mayweather. The Warriors are not tall choirboys. They're just a basketball team, and one with which everyone has to reckon.

As far as heel turns go, this offseason is not quite Sgt. Slaughter declaring allegiance for Iraq, but it's a start. Now that they've beaten the stuffing out of everyone in the league (except the Spurs), the Warriors can't ever be underdogs again in the Stephen Curry era. Which is why it was encouraging to see the MVP so deftly deal with the (again, insane) criticism that the Warriors were "lucky" to win the championship. Without saying anything shitty about women, Curry struck the perfect note of coiled irritation and an appreciation for the absurd, and rebranded the champs not as underdogs, but again as a team that must perpetually prove itself:

"I just want to say, I apologize for us being healthy. I apologize for us playing who's in front of us. I apologize for all the accolades we've received as a team and individually. I'm very, truly sorry. We'll rectify that situation this year."

You can think whatever you want about all this. But it has the ring of a team rounding into the role it was always meant to play. The Warriors were never simple. This season, they may well be occupying a space where warts and halos collide. Thy will be done.