Got some intel I thought I’d share with paid subscribers of a bunch of current and former Golden State Warriors, one which might surprise you as he was a free agent from last year who wasn’t re-signed and has a residence far away from the Bay, who attended the Drake concerts the last two nights at Chase Center. Some of them attended both nights!
Not that this stuff is important — scroll all the way down to the paywall at the bottom for that. Who goes to a concert really isn’t huge news, although when it comes to Stephen Curry going on-stage to sing with Paramore or Gary Payton II joining Shaq aka DJ Diesel at Outside Lands, both over a week ago, that’s different:
Also icymi, Steph and Ayesha were at Drake’s concert in Brooklyn just a couple weeks ago during the Underrated press tour. Most of the video report on that is an inside look on a screening of the documentary at the NBPA offices in New York City:
None of that onstage-singing-with-Paramore kind of stuff happened with Drake, of course. So this is kind of just trivial news that I decided to post. I’m still figuring out how best to relay information. Obviously there’s the YouTube channel which remains the best way, this website, and I’ll make an announcement soon about the new Discord which will better track all the Warriors content that I come across. It’s a lot, surprisingly, even during the summer, and I’ve struggled with modifying the workflow to get that pipeline re-routed to my subscribers because not all of it is YouTube-able, shall we say. I know that during this off-season, along with personal responsibilities that you want to take care of away from the regular season, our YouTube and this website has been a slow-drip, but I promise you, there has been almost an equal — yes, equal — amount of Warriors content happening on a daily basis as during the regular season, although we can thank Steph for a good portion of that (don’t forget, future Hall-of-Famer Chris Paul is now on our team and he does a ton of stuff, too). It’s just a little hard to pivot from the regular season’s day-by-day interviews, practices, games, livestreams and exponential narratives to the purity of the behind-the-scenes nature of the off-season. I’m learning how best to transform the process of knowledge transfer, little by little. LetsGoWarriors will definitely continue to lean more towards information than entertainment. But then again I’ve always viewed the behind-the-scenes content as a better form of entertainment than all the stand-up comedy or finger-pointing on social media.
I also think that the deluge of content that crosses my path every day will help consumers get away from the outrage that apps like Twitter/X (“Twix?”) tend to make people become addicted to. So what I’ll put in place by the end of the summer should also help during the regular season.
And one thing won’t change: I still share nearly all of this pipeline on our occasional livestreams on YouTube, although it’s just me telling the audience or our loyal commenters commenting and sharing info that way, which is obviously not as good as consumption via the original format. Anyways, the next live chat will probably be either a Team USA or Dominican Republic game — supporting head coach Steve Kerr and, respectively, two-way signee Lester Quinones, who has been playing well and displaying good NBA and “Kerr system” qualities, btw — in the FIBA World Cup being held in the Philippines, late next week.
Also with the Drake concert, I started making a compilation video similar to the Curry-Paramore one, but I realized that some artists (hopefully not Paramore because our footage was mainly just the few minutes Steph spent on stage — legitimately fair use), or rather their billion-dollar-corporate partners, can get sensitive about concert footage and stage sets and the like, not to mention the tidbits of copyrighted music. So I had a 9-minute video ready to upload to YouTube but thought I probably didn’t want to ruffle any feathers on that platform.
So that video is below the paywall, uploaded to this Substack platform 👇 as is the information on which Warriors attended and two other former players that showed up, one that won’t surprise you and the other that will. Again, this is just more as a thank-you to our paid subscribers, giving you some “trivial” inside info — there is some good stuff around the corner on here/YouTube/Discord coming, I promise you.
The video really only has clips from the first night of Drake, with a bonus cameo. I had already uploaded the whole nine minutes here by the morning of the second day and the only differences were Drake’s clothing and a couple other set props. You’ll get the gist of it from the video. Per usual, you’ll feel like you attended the concert anyways, which is the whole point of LetsGoWarriors! 🤷🏻♂️
I should also mention another cool tidbit. As you can see on Chase Center’s Instagram Reels, Drake went out of his way to thank the Bay Area, referencing Too Short: “I’ve been a lot of places in the world, but not a lot of places have had the same impact on my life that the Bay Area has … the foundation that the Bay Area laid in hip hop music.”
You gotta think, those memories of Drake at Oracle, him meeting up Steph and Ayesha at the In-n-Out across the way off Hegenberger — Hegenberger/burger, I never thought of that 😝 — that’s gotta be part of the foundation of his love for the Bay. Come to think of it, I’ve got to make a Drake playlist for the YouTube channel!
Sorry for all the sloppy writing above. I’m thinking about how to improve that, too, for the future. And unfortunately keeping with the sloppy theme, paid subscribers need to keep scrolling down to the paywall for the aforementioned insider-y info and video, because in the absence of a Drake playlist — although you could just go search the Internet on “letsgowarriors drake” — I decided to list all the other previous encounters with Drake in the past, right here. Remember the one after Game 6 at Oracle, 2019 NBA Finals, when he FaceTime’d Steph? 😂 👇
Steph Curry FaceTimes Drake after Game 6; meets w/ Nav Bhatia; Ayesha gets emotional w/ Oracle staff
📱 Stephen Curry x Drake 🏀 in Toronto + drive-thru w. Ayesha + zoo + Canon sings ABCs + cooking!
Drake and Steph Curry, KD (Kevin Durant), DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins and more from Toronto postgame
Drake + MORE! from Warriors (0-1) postgame courtside after loss at Toronto in Game 1 NBA Finals
BTS [9:16] Warriors night off: Draymond on streets, Drake, Steph/Ayesha, Sonya Curry’s birthday