Kendrick kismet? Warriors weigh in on their Kendrick Lamar-NBA title correlation
The Warriors won NBA championships in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022. During each of those seasons, Kendrick Lamar dropped a new album.
A couple months before the Warriors’ first title of the Steph Curry era, Lamar released “To Pimp a Butterfly.” Two years later, Lamar dropped his next studio album, “Damn.” The next year, Lamar’s “Black Panther” album debuted alongside the blockbuster by the same name. For the Warriors’ underdog 2022 run, Lamar’s record “Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers” broke the artist’s drought.
Levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate.
So does Lamar’s surprise album “GNX,” which dropped last Friday, destine a Warriors 2025 title?
“I mean, it’s crazy to think,” center Trayce Jackson-Davis said before Monday night’s game with the Nets when asked if he believes in the correlation. “Let’s get back to that after the year and I’ll tell you my answer.”
Jackson-Davis considers himself a superstitious person. If he plays well, he’ll continue wearing the same pair of sneakers until their purported magic wears off.
Everyone in the Warriors’ locker room who spoke with Bay Area News Group on Monday night had heard of the Kendrick Lamar-Warriors phenomenon, mostly through social media. But Jackson-Davis’ teammates seem less open to believing in it.
“No,” Kyle Anderson said with a laugh. “I believe in coincidences.”
Anderson, like many Warriors, is a Lamar fan. His favorite song off “GNX,” he said, is probably “TV Off,” the track that has already gone viral for the way the artist yells, “Mustard,” in reference to his frequent collaborator. (The Warriors’ in-house DJ played the clip through the Chase Center speakers to start Monday night’s second quarter.)
A 17-time Grammy winner and recipient of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, Lamar is one of the defining artists of his generation, just as the Warriors have defined a generation of the NBA.
Lindy Waters III’s favorite Lamar album is “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” released in 2012. That’s the last studio album Lamar dropped before the streak of Warriors’ titles in his release years began.
Moses Moody hesitated when asked if he had faith in the connection before describing it as funny and ironic.
Perhaps most ironic is that Lamar, a Compton, California native, is a Lakers fan. Another twist is that Steph Curry has voiced support for Drake during the Canadian rapper’s long-running feud with Lamar: “I’m a big Drake guy. I’ve been for a long time,” he told GQ this summer. “… I still rock with Drake.”
The rappers’ feud hit an apex this summer with Lamar’s “Not Like Us” diss track, which became the longest-running chart-topper of his career. In “Meet the Grahams,” another anti-Drake track, Lamar rapped that Curry should “keep the family away” from the Canadian rapper.
Curry even got caught on a live mic during the Olympics saying he’s tired of hearing “Not Like Us” being overplayed.
So Lamar is a Lakers fan, and Curry is Team Drake. If there’s a magical connection between Lamar’s albums and the Warriors’ championships, it’s not because of a supernatural link between the two superstars.
Bay Area fans have a history of buying into mystical narratives that have nothing to do with the actual games. Just ask them about the Even Year Giants or Christian McCaffrey’s current Madden curse.
“Being optimistic, we want to win a championship,” Waters said. “I guess we’ll piggyback off it.”