Jeff Kent's Hall of Fame honor brought back an old Bay Area fear

A trip down memory lane about the turn-of-the-millennium SF Giants turned into a reminder of how quickly championship windows disappear...and why every Warriors season still matters.

Can I keep it real for a second, sports fans? If you want me to keep it real for a sec, blink your eyes three times like you’re 2015 LeBron watching in horror as Steph, Klay, and Draymond fly down the lane in a three-on-one fastbreak.

Realness activated. I saw San Francisco Giant legend Jeff Kent’s Hall of Fame news and it sent me down a rabbit hole I hadn’t been in for a long time. I’m not a big Giants fan by any means, being reared in Athletics fandom from my youth. I grew up in East Oakland and although I liked both Bay Area teams as a kid, I absolutely picked the green-and-gold side when the two of them actually played each other. Then I was rooting hard for Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez to handle town business.

So when I saw Kent’s name attached to Cooperstown, my first reaction wasn’t nostalgia. It was more like, wow, I forgot that dude won an MVP. Then it hit me that the Giants had him and Barry Bonds in the same lineup at the same time. I don’t think I ever appreciated as a kid just how ridiculous that was: Barry Bonds and arguably the greatest offensive second baseman the game’s ever seen were in the same lineup, and I was too busy wanting my guys across the bay to beat them to appreciate it.

That’s the part of Bay Area sports history that gets me. So many great players have come through here, piled up awards, put up absurd numbers, and still watched the championship slip away. Kent never won one as a Giant. Not with Bonds. Not with that whole era of teams built around them, Rich Aurilia, Jason Schmidt, Robb Nen, Dusty Baker running the show.

I’d honestly love to hear from Giants fans who were of age back then. What was it actually like having that kind of star power in the building and never getting to the finish line?

Because I remember how close they got. It was 2002 and I was at Six Flags for Fright Fest when word started going around that the Giants were up late in Game 6 and the championship was basically locked up. I remember the mood. Everybody assumed it was over. And then maybe an hour later people were going wait, the Angels just won. The Giants blew it, lost Game 6, then lost Game 7 too.

So I think about that, and then I think about Steph Curry. Here’s a Bay Area legend who’s already accomplished the part so many never get to. Not just the MVPs but the championships too, four of them and counting. The NBA Hall of Fame just opened a whole exhibit around him while he’s still out here playing, the first time they’ve ever done that for an active player.

But I look at where Steph is in his career and I get that feeling at Fright Fest when I heard the Giants had blew the lead. You never want the good times to end, but we’re closer to the end of this than we are to the beginning. Some kid who’s ten years old right now is going to grow up and look back and say, the Warriors had Steph Curry, the greatest shooter to ever play the game, and they only won four championships.

“Only”.

As if four championships isn’t an absurd thing to ask from one player. That’s the angst that surrounds Warriors fans, I think. It’s not that Steph hasn’t given us enough. It’s that winning a championship is brutally hard, even in years when the Warriors have made it look easy, and you want every possible piece around him while there’s still time left on the clock.

That’s why every summer feels so urgent. Generational talent creates pressure because you never know how many chances you'll get to make good on the promise of potential.

Bay Area fans know exactly what it looks like to watch that much individual talent run out of runway. We watched it happen to Bonds and Kent. And nobody tells you when the window’s about to shut. You just find out after it already has.