Warriors help celebrate as Alysa Liu proves Oakland doesn't stop producing champions
The 20-year old Olympic gold medalist chose a block party over a parade. That choice said everything about what this city is all bout.
In this latest episode of DNHQ After Dark, I’m very proud to show some love to Alysa Liu and the Town.
The city of Oakland, the city I was born and raised in, has a long storied history of celebrating winners, like the Raiders and the A’s back. The Warriors had their last championship parade here in 2018, right down Broadway, before they crossed the bridge and never looked back.
Eight years later, Oakland threw another celebration.
Alysa Liu didn’t want a motorcade. She wanted a block party.
Seven thousand people packed Frank Ogawa Plaza on Thursday afternoon, the same sun-drenched stretch of downtown Oakland that has hosted so much civic joy and civic grief over the decades. Local legends Kehlani and G-Eazy performed while Mayor Barbara Lee handed Liu the key to the city.
Our very own Sway Calloway, formerly of KMEL and now a nationally syndicated radio icon, rocking Warriors gear, hosted the proceedings. Liu dropped an f-bomb, received a Warriors “The Town” jersey, and then stepped aside so Kehlani could perform her set while the new Olympic gold medalist stood in the crowd like just another kid from The Town who couldn’t believe she got to be here.
That last part matters more than the medal ceremony.
Here’s what the narrative gets wrong about Oakland as a sports city: people keep framing it as a story of loss. The city got stripped. And yes, all of that is true and it all hurt in real ways that Steph Curry acknowledged in 2024 when he said what everyone already knew but needed to hear out loud: it sucks, and he has to admit how bad it is.
But Oakland’s relationship with champions has never just been about the teams that played here. It’s been about what the city produces and sends out into the world.
Liu learned to skate at the Oakland Ice Center. She attended the Oakland School for the Arts, the same institution that produced Kehlani, who performed at her celebration. The ecosystem that made Liu possible is the same ecosystem that makes Oakland, well, Oakland. Community organizations, public arts education, shared spaces that allow kids to develop world-class talent. That’s the thing no franchise relocation can take with it when it packs up the equipment trucks.
When the Warriors brought the Larry O’Brien Trophy back to the streets one final time before the move to San Francisco was fully realized, the crowd was enormous. Retroactively, it felt like a farewell dressed up as a party. Two years later the Warriors were gone, unveiling an Oakland Forever court at Chase Center, a beautiful acknowledgment that you can take the team out of Oakland but you cannot take Oakland out of the team’s DNA.
Liu’s celebration on Thursday wasn’t bittersweet. It was just sweet. There was no ambivalence, no undertone of loss, no asterisk. A 20-year-old from this city became the first American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in figure skating in 24 years, and she came home and asked the city to party with her instead of at her.
That’s Oakland working exactly the way Oakland works.
The 1972-76 stretch when the A’s three-peated, the Warriors won in 1975, and the Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1976 represents the most dominant four-year run any American city has ever had in professional team sports. Oakland is one of only five cities in history to produce multiple championships across baseball, football, and basketball simultaneously. Boston. New York. Los Angeles. Miami. Oakland. The company the city keeps is rarefied.
And yet when people talk about Oakland’s sports identity they still default to the language of absence. What’s gone. What left. What got taken.
Alysa Liu is the counter-argument to all of that. She came from here. She trained here. She won on the biggest stage in the world and then flew home and said turn the music up. The NBA honored Oracle Arena at All-Star Weekend 2025 because they understood that a building doesn’t need to be operational to be sacred. Oracle was where a franchise and a city forged something real through decades of struggle before the dynasty came. That bond doesn’t evaporate when the last team moves out. It lives in what the place produces next.
Oakland just produced another world champion.
The key to the city is always going to belong to whoever claims it. Right now, Alysa Liu has it.
Thank you for this tribute to Oakland. I loved my time there, and miss the vibe.
The East Bay always finds ways to draw me back. Thank you.