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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarc Stein On BasketballSaying Goodbye to the Trips of a LifetimeThe Warriors dynasty allowed a reporter to spend some unexpected, and extremely welcome, time with his dad.The dynastic Golden State Warriors of 2015 to 2019 may never be seen again, but their run of N.B.A. finals appearances was memorable in many ways.Credit…Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesDec. 9, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETMarc Stein is away this week.I’m not ready to say goodbye to the Golden State Warriors.I find myself pining for the splendor of Steph Curry, the snarl of Draymond Green, the beautiful basketball, the sheer dominance. I fear we may never see it again — at least, not at the level we once did.Klay Thompson’s shredded Achilles’ tendon probably means a second straight lost season, and possibly a fatal blow to the Warriors’ hopes for a revival. And that’s where I truly become wistful.I don’t miss the Warriors as a fan would (my San Jose roots notwithstanding). It’s not just that I’ll miss writing about their roundball artistry (though that’s certainly true, too). It’s more personal than that.To their fans, the Warriors provided endless basketball bliss — a montage of deep 3s and shimmies and raucous parades. To others, they provided a standard of selfless play and joyful domination. They defined an era, and redefined the formula for building a superteam.But they gave me something far more precious: a final few hours with my father. I just didn’t know it at the time.From 2015 to 2019, the Warriors were a fixture in the N.B.A. finals. So for five straight Junes, I got a bonus trip to see my parents, who reside outside Sacramento, about two hours from the Bay Area. The detour became a cherished annual tradition.We don’t root for teams in this business. But we do (quietly) root for results out of self-interest. We root for great stories and historic performances — and against games going to overtime on deadline.And so I’ll admit I smiled a bit each spring, as the Warriors finished off Houston or Oklahoma City or San Antonio, because it meant another trip home.In 2019, I squeezed in the visit on June 3, as the N.B.A. finals shifted from Toronto to Oakland, the series tied at one game each. Curry was humming. Thompson was still healthy. Kevin Durant was on the mend, and looming. The dynasty was still intact.I arrived at Mom and Dad’s in time for dinner, then settled in for “Jeopardy!,” my father’s favorite show. James Holzhauer, a dynasty in his own right, was primed for his 33rd straight game.The next morning, I said my goodbyes and headed back to Oakland. I planned to see them again in August, for my dad’s 84th birthday.Howard Beck and his dad, Sy, shared of a love of newspapers. Trips to California to cover the N.B.A. finals from 2015 to 2019 got Howard some extra time with his family.Credit…Howard BeckMy dad was neither a journalist nor a serious sports fan, but he loved newspapers, enjoyed watching the occasional 49ers game with me and was one of my greatest cheerleaders from the moment I chose the sportswriting path.If I’m tracing my career to a single moment, it’s “The Catch” — Joe Montana to Dwight Clark, in the N.F.C. championship game in 1982 — which sent a mighty dopamine jolt through my preteen brain and ignited my fandom. (The Warriors were an afterthought back then, although I did once serve as ball boy for a day, at age 9, after winning a drawing at a children’s shoe store.)I spent my mornings immersed in the San Jose Mercury News sports section. And for that I can thank my dad, a voracious reader who religiously subscribed to The Merc and The Wall Street Journal, and instilled in his three sons the same curiosity about the world.Sy Beck, of Pelham Parkway, was a proud Bronx native who grew up at a time when New York had a dozen daily newspapers — and by his telling, he read them all. He would boast, in that New York way of his, that none of our local papers could measure up to his favorite, The New York Times.So it was surely a bittersweet moment when I broke the news in 2004: I was moving to New York to cover the Knicks for The Times.I know there was sadness about the distance, but I also know Dad was thrilled and proud. Fifty years earlier, he’d taken a school field trip to the old Times building on West 43rd Street, marveling over the printing presses and Linotype machines. Now here I was, walking into that same newsroom for the biggest opportunity of my career.Dad didn’t watch a lot of basketball, but I knew he was following my work from the periodic emails he’d send to comment on a particular lede or turn of phrase.“Just read your game 5 story or should i say poetry,” he wrote after a finals game in 2013. “I hope your bosses appreciate it much as mom and i do. I am sure most of your readers do.”From April 2017, when I wrote about Michael Jordan’s enduring shadow as the so-called greatest of all time: “Your GOAT story was sent out as a ‘Pocket’ favorite in todays email from them.”I once wrote about the simmering Knicks-Nets rivalry, and the tensions between the Knicks owner James L. Dolan and the Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, eliciting this email quip from Dad: “Dolan can get you sent to Staten Island, but Prokhorov might be able to send you to the Gulag.”Howard Beck’s father wrote to him after reading this N.B.A. finals gamer in 2013. He called it “poetry.”Credit…The New York TimesThe N.B.A. season will be underway again soon, although largely without fans in attendance, or in-person access for reporters, or any sense of normalcy.But I think I’ll miss the travel more than anything, even after two million miles and 2,000 hotel nights over the last 23 years. The beat has surely cost me many nights at home, but it has also kept me connected with far-flung friends and family.Trips to Portland meant getting drinks with an old high school friend. Going to Milwaukee meant dinner with a college newspaper buddy who is now a doctor. In Denver, it was an old newsroom pal who went on to cover the Afghanistan war and the 2008 Democratic primaries. Once I moved East, the beat got me frequent trips back to California.Sometimes, the beat has placed me in exactly the right place at the right time.In April 2011, I got to spend a morning with my Grandma Ruth, at a nursing home outside Sacramento — a trip I took to report on the Kings’ (seemingly) imminent move to Anaheim. She died a week later, at 94.In December 2016, after a trip to Milwaukee for a feature on the Bucks rookie Thon Maker, I detoured to Chicago, to visit my Aunt Judy, who had been battling a rare form of cancer for three years. She was gone three weeks later.Without the N.B.A., I never get those final moments.Call it synchronicity or fate or bashert. Maybe it was just the basketball gods looking out for me. I don’t know.But I know this: The Warriors got me a trip home in June 2019, at a time I never would have been there otherwise. We watched Holzhauer lose that night, and I think Dad was disappointed to see the streak end. In the days that followed, the Warriors would lose Durant to a torn Achilles’, Thompson to a ruptured A.C.L. and the title to the Raptors.The next week, Dad had a bad fall at home, breaking two bones in his neck. He spent the next few weeks recovering, rehabilitating and making plans to go home again. We had no reason to think he wouldn’t. But the fall set off a cascade of other problems, and one day I got a call that he’d been taken, unconscious, from the board-and-care facility to the hospital. Multiple organs were failing.By the time I arrived back in California, he was effectively in a coma. Two nights later, he was gone.At the time, I felt robbed of the chance to say goodbye or any of the things you imagine you might say when you know the end is coming. I guess I still sort of feel that way. But I am grateful for those final moments I got at his hospital bedside, and for one otherwise-ordinary evening in June, when the Warriors still reigned supreme, Holzhauer was undefeated and Dad could match wits with Alex Trebek from his recliner.I don’t know if the Warriors can regain the magic that made them great. I don’t know if we’ll ever see them dominating the N.B.A. again, or owning the finals spotlight. But I’m thankful they did for those five years, and although I never-ever-ever root for teams, I’m quietly hoping they do it again.Howard Beck covered the N.B.A. for The New York Times from 2004 to 2013.The Scoop @TheSteinLineDec. 7The Knicks are expected to hire Jaren Jackson Sr. for a role with the Knicks’ @nbagleague team in Westchester, league sources say Jackson played 12 seasons in the NBA, won a championship with San Antonio in 1999 and, of course, is the father of Grizzlies star Jaren Jackson Jr.The Knicks are targeting the late-in-training camp signings of the former Kings first-rounder Skal Labissiere and the former Celtics first-round pick James Young, league sources say, with both players expected to land with Westchester in the @nbagleagueDec. 4The NBA has officially suspended random marijuana testing for the 2020-21 season …Said NBA spokesman Mike Bass: “Due to the unusual circumstances in conjunction with the pandemic, we have agreed with the NBPA to suspend random testing for marijuana for the 2020-21 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse”Marijuana remains a banned substance in the NBA based on the current collective bargaining agreement and while random testing has been suspended … marijuana testing in cases of “cause” remains in placeMarc is away this week, but hit him up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More