After two difficult seasons without even making the playoffs, the goal for the Golden State Warriors was enormous: Return to professional basketball's mountaintop.
And now with that monumental task complete, their fourth NBA title in eight seasons in hand, the champions already have a new objective: Stay up there for a while.
The victory cigars hadn't been extinguished after Thursday night's title-clinching win against the Boston Celtics, the last celebratory bottles of Moët & Chandon hadn't been emptied, and the topic was already coming up.
Can the Warriors win it all again next season?
They have been installed by FanDuel Sportsbook as the favorites for the 2023 title, and with NBA Finals MVP Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson all back, it would be foolish to think their chance at a fifth championship in nine years isn't very real.
"It still has not been proven that when we're whole that anybody can stop it," Green said.
That's true, and that's why it makes sense for the Warriors to carry the burden of being favorites into next season. With as many championships in the past eight seasons as the rest of the league combined - the Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks won the other titles in that stretch - they know what it takes. The last run that was better than this was put together by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, who won six in an eight-year span of the 1990s.
Golden State coach Steve Kerr was a point guard on three of those Chicago title teams and won two championships as a player for the San Antonio Spurs, and he has been at the helm throughout the Warriors' current dynastic stretch that includes two NBA Finals appearances without a crown. Thanks to a bit of resilience in the best-of-seven championship series this year, the Warriors are kings again.
The Celtics won the opener in San Francisco to put the Warriors on their heels, then took a 2-1 edge with a 116-10 victory in Boston, but Golden State wouldn't lose again, winning twice on the road. That included Thursday's 103-90 victory in which Curry scored 34 points.
"They are all unique. They are all special," Kerr said of the championships. "I think this one may have been the most unlikely just from the standpoint of where we've been the last couple years. A lot of unknowns."
Indeed, there were questions. The Warriors answered them all.
No, the core wasn't too old. Yes, Thompson would come back from more than 900 days on the sidelines with injuries. And absolutely, Curry can still be unstoppable in the biggest moments.
They took that core and fortified it with a new group of talent. At the top of the list is 27-year-old Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 pick of the 2014 draft who, two years after being traded by the Minnesota Timberwolves, has come into his own and was nothing less than a star in the NBA Finals. Another key figure was Jordan Poole, who turns 23 on Sunday and will celebrate as a champion who has blossomed after facing off against Curry in practice all the time. And then there's Jonathan Kuminga, the 19-year-old who got into 86 games and is raved about by teammates.
"And we ain't done," Thompson said early Friday while appearing on "The Draymond Green Show," his teammate's podcast. "That's the beautiful thing about it. We've got these young bucks behind us, and we've got the same squad coming back? That's scary for the NBA."
Green concurred: "It is very scary."
They earned another championship moment after going through an NBA Finals series loss in 2019 to the Raptors and then two seasons with a combined 54-83 record, a million miles away from meeting the Golden State standard.
The Warriors had the NBA's worst record in 2019-20 in large part because of roster turnover - two-time NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant left to join the Brooklyn Nets - and injuries. Thompson didn't play that season because of a knee injury incurred in the final game of the 2019 title series. Curry played in just five games. It was a lost year.
The 2020-21 season was supposed to be the Warriors' bounceback campaign, but Thompson had to sit out again - this time because of a torn Achilles' tendon - and the Warriors lost in the play-in tournament. Still, the seeds were planted for something great; how great, even Golden State wasn't sure, but Curry insisted something was brewing.
"You don't want to see us next year," he said.
Prophetic words.
Thompson came back in January, and the Golden State goal was clear: Win it all again. The Warriors have played 24 playoff series with Curry, Thompson and Green together in the past eight years. They've won 22 of them, with the exceptions the NBA Finals in 2016 and 2019 as injuries took a toll.
This time, there was no stopping them.
"I saw it in the beginning of season," Thompson said. "People called me crazy. I said 'championship or bust' because I saw how we came out of the gate, 18-2. And playing just that Warriors brand of basketball that made us so successful, and then knowing I was going to be inserted in that, I knew we had a chance to do something special, and here we are. It's so incredible. Wow."
Training camp is only three months away, so the revving-up process for next season will start sooner rather than later. The Warriors know they'll be right back in the center of the NBA spotlight, playing on national TV often, getting every opponent's best shot, drawing massive attention everywhere they go.
It will be just like old times, though for many Warriors, it will be a first. For the old guard, the core of four-time champions Curry, Green and Thompson - plus Andre Iguodala, if he decides to postpone retirement for one more year - it will be familiar territory.
"I think this one is definitely different because of the three years of baggage we carried coming out of that Game 6 in 2019," Curry said. "I can say it now: I don't know how many teams could carry that as long as we have with the expectations of comparing us now to teams of past and make it to the mountaintop again."
His team did.
And next year, the Warriors will try to do it again.