The season is over, the Raptors are champions, and the Golden State Warriors have no choice but to head into the great unknown.
After their performance this postseason, they can trudge forward with their heads held high.
But that doesn't make this summer any less daunting.
For more than a year now, this offseason _ and all that can happen in it _ has loomed over the Warriors. It was a dark cloud of uncertainty that they needed to compartmentalize en route to a fifth-straight NBA Finals appearance and, they hoped, a third-straight title; a fourth in five years.
Cloud? What cloud?
Well, it's come over the horizon now. Darker and far more ominous than expected, thanks to the tragic circumstances of the final two games of the Finals.
In the balance over the next few weeks, of course, is the Warriors' standing as the flagship of the league.
No one can take away the championship mettle the team showed over the course of this postseason. It's that heart _ that ineffable something more _ that takes a team with great talent and makes it elite; that turns it into a juggernaut that "ruins the league."
But what if the Warriors don't have that great talent moving forward?
Yeah... that cloud.
