NBA All-Star honored the old Oracle Arena; made Oakland proud

TOWN BIDNESS WAS FRONT AND CENTER AT ALL-STAR WEEKEND 2025!

For us Bay Area natives, seeing NBA All-Star Weekend bridge the Bay feels like basketball poetry in motion. While Chase Center hosted Sunday night’s marquee events, it’s the NBA’s decision to resurrect Oracle Arena for All-Star Friday and Saturday that hit different. That’s where I spent countless nights watching the Warriors when they were NBA punchlines, when Warriors tickets were literally being passed out in the streets just to get folks to come. That’s when being a Dubs fan meant explaining to people that yes, we actually had an NBA team in Oakland.

The symmetry is almost too perfect: The NBA’s elite gathered in San Francisco to celebrate how the Warriors changed basketball forever, but they also payed homage to the building where that revolution was born. Oracle Arena, a.k.a. “Roaracle” to those of us who lived through the We Believe era, wasn’t just a stadium. It was Oakland’s basketball cathedral, where the faithful gathered to show their love and support despite decades of evidence suggesting we were crazy to keep showing up. To see Steph Curry back in that building for All-Star festivities, man, that’s the kind of full-circle moment that makes you realize sports can write stories Hollywood wouldn’t dare pitch.

We missed you Oracle: the concrete coliseum where a franchise and a city forged an unbreakable bond through decades of heartbreak and eventual glory.

For younger NBA fans who only know the Warriors as the dynasty that changed basketball forever, it might be hard to comprehend what Oracle meant. This wasn’t just a building. It was Oakland’s beating heart, a place where 19,596 true believers would transform into a living, breathing organism that could will an underdog team to victory through sheer force of collective determination.

That’s the thing about Oracle that the pristine confines of Chase Center still haven’t quite replicated. It wasn’t just loud, it was defiant. The building embodied Oakland’s identity: blue-collar, overlooked, and absolutely unwilling to back down. When Baron Davis detonated on Andrei Kirilenko in the 2007 playoffs, the roar lasted over a minute not just because of the dunk’s ferocity, but because it represented Oakland showing the basketball world they wouldn’t be ignored anymore.

The numbers tell the story of Oracle’s dominance: The Warriors went 218-43 at home during their last five seasons there, including the playoffs, with an absurd 11.5-point differential. They posted back-to-back 39-2 home records, the kind of statistical dominance that seems almost mythological. But the numbers only tell part of the story.

Oracle was where the Warriors transformed from laughingstock to legend. It’s where Curry became a supernova, where Klay Thompson scored 37 points in a quarter, where “We Believe” morphed into “We Dominant.” The building’s acoustics were perfect for amplifying crowd noise, but what made it special was how the fans understood the game’s rhythms. They didn’t just cheer – they anticipated. When the Warriors would start cooking, the upper deck would begin a low rumble, like a thunderstorm gathering force. By the time the lightning struck (usually a Curry three or a Green-to-Iguodala alley-oop), the explosion would nearly lift the roof.

“This was the hardest place to play in the league,” said Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, and he’s right. But it wasn’t just about decibel levels. Oracle crowds had an almost metaphysical connection to their team. They’d stand for defensive possessions in close games without being prompted. They gave Chris Mullin a standing ovation when he returned from dealing with personal issues, showing that their loyalty went beyond just wins and losses.

The Warriors’ move to Chase Center was inevitable in today’s NBA economics. And while Chase is undeniably gorgeous, with its perfect sightlines and world-class amenities, it’s still working to find Oracle’s soul. The corporate crowds in well-appointed suites simply don’t generate the same sustained intensity. As Curry diplomatically put it, trying to draw parallels between Chase and Oracle remains “an unfair comparison.”

But here’s where it gets interesting for the current Warriors: If they want to return to championship glory, they might need to channel some of that Oracle energy. The team is at its best when playing with that chip-on-the-shoulder mentality that defined those Oakland years. When Curry’s shimmying, Green’s barking, and the whole squad is playing with that controlled chaos that makes opposing teams wilt – that’s when you see glimpses of the Oracle spirit living on.

A golden tangent: if there’s one current Warrior who embodies that Oracle Arena energy, it might be their newest addition Jimmy Butler. The six-time All-Star’s arrival feels almost cosmically aligned with the Warriors revisiting their Oakland roots this weekend. Butler’s entire career has been written in “We Believe” ink – the 30th pick who worked as a coffee barista during the NBA lockout, transformed himself into a superstar through pure determination, and has made a habit of walking into hostile arenas and leaving with victory through sheer force of will.

Local hero Damian Lillard, who grew up watching Warriors games at Oracle, summed up the building’s legacy perfectly: “Growing up close by here, driving by and looking at the Coliseum and seeing Oracle and how dead it is, when there was so much energy in it when I was a kid… I remember a lot about this parking lot.”

That’s the thing about Oracle – it wasn’t just about basketball. It was about community. While the Warriors have invested heavily in Oakland through their foundation work (particularly Curry’s “Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation”), there’s something bittersweet about seeing Oracle quiet most nights, a monument to an era when Oakland had all three major sports teams and an identity as one of America’s great sports cities.

But for one weekend, the old building roared again. And maybe that’s what the Warriors need to remember as they push for another title run – that Oakland underdog spirit never left them. It just moved across the Bay, waiting to be channeled once more. The Warriors may play in San Francisco now, but this Steph/Dray soul was forged in Oakland. And if they want to climb that mountain again, they’d do well to remember the lessons Oracle taught them: Stay hungry, stay dangerous, and never stop believing.

Just like Oakland never did.