Throughout most of the 2015-16 regular season, the Golden State Warriors carried with them an air of invincibility. A sense that they could do no wrong and that it was a foregone conclusion that their historic 73-9 regular season would culminate in a second NBA championship and that they would take their place as the next great basketball dynasty.

Obviously though, things got a little murky for the Dubs in the postseason. The team lost as many games over the four rounds of the playoffs as they did over the course of the entire regular season. The season ended with a whimper rather than a bang, as the team quietly sulked off the court after losing game seven, at home nonetheless, to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

There was little fanfare as the Warriors exited the court, with all eyes instead focused on the raw, visceral emotion displayed by LeBron James and his Cavalier compatriots after coming back from being down 3-1 and delivering the city of Cleveland its first major sports title in 52 years. For a team that often played larger than life and had the personalities to match, it was a rather somber end to what was an otherwise spectacular season.

LeBron James is without question the most polarizing player in the league. He had just as many people wanting nothing more than for him to come up short once again, as he did fans who were ecstatic that he had finally delivered on his promise to bring glory back to a city that had so long yearned for it. The Warriors however, did not have this same problem. For most of the season, the Warriors were media darlings and attempting to rebuff this point would be an exercise in futility and nothing more.

The league was awestruck by Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, who would often put up threes from anywhere on the court with reckless abandon. More often than not, these shots that would get regular players benched, would go in, sending even the most staunch of Warriors haters into a frenzy. If for no other reason than pure appreciation for a style of basketball that a mere five years ago would be discounted as an absurd fad.

The fast paced, ball movement heavy style of play that was implemented by Steve Kerr and Luke Walton was often spoke of in reverential terms. It was as if the two men had cracked some age old code that allowed them to effectively break the game of basketball and play in a manner that mere mortals could not comprehend. Of course, having two generational shooting talents such as Curry and Thompson in the backcourt made this style of play possible.

So for the first six months of the season, it was the Warriors league through and through. LeBron James had lost his title of “Undisputed Best Player on the Planet,” Kobe Bryant’s farewell tour drug on and everyone was infatuated with the Warriors. That was, at least, until March 30th, when The New York Times did a profile piece on Warriors owner Joe Lacob. It was after this article came out that attitudes towards the Warriors starting shifting dramatically.

The cause for this paradigm shift was a particular quote from Joe Lacob when asked about the state of his franchise. He offered up the following assessment of his team,

“We’ve crushed them on the basketball court, and we’re going to for years because of the way we’ve built this team,” he said. But what really set the franchise apart, he said, was the way it operated as a business. “We’re light-years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we’re going to go about things,” he said. “We’re going to be a handful for the rest of the N.B.A. to deal with for a long time.”

While Lacob’s comments in a vacuum make sense, and are actually rather fair, to show such bravado in the midst of a historic season like the one the Warriors were having, was tempting fate. He knew his team was immensely talented, and he had no reservations about the rest of the league knowing it as well. Frankly, the Warriors were and are an immensely talented team, and there were stretches in the regular season where it seemed unfathomable that anyone could beat them four out of seven games when the playoffs rolled around.

To some around the league though, the Warriors could be described as too cocky for their own good, or overflowing with hubris. The team itself would probably prefer terms such as having an abundance of confidence or swagger. In all honesty, it was a combination of all those things, and when you play basketball like the Warriors did this season, its understandable that they cultivated this very specific personality to match their style of play.

But, when you start doings things like this:

and this:

Its not exactly difficult to see why this would rub some in the league the wrong way.

Of course, this disdain from around the league was ratcheted up even more in the playoffs when Draymond Green had his fair share of incidents involving other players groins. So, in the span of three or four months, the Warriors went from league darlings, to…no one is really sure yet. Only time will tell how this group of players will react to the devastating loss in the Finals and the roster turnover that is sure to happen. Not to mention the departure of head assistant, and brief interim head coach Luke Walton to the Los Angeles Lakers.

If the Warriors had won the championship this year, and put a cap on what would have been the greatest NBA season ever, bar none, the narrative would be exponentially different. Instead, they head into an offseason where the only certain thing for them appears to be that things will be different. To what extent, the team is obviously unsure, but things aren’t going to be the same for the Dubs.

No one can blame Joe Lacob for the comments he made about his team. An owner being proud of his players and confident in their ability to succeed in the future is nothing new. However, the timing never seemed right and it never sat well with anyone outside of the organization. So while the league can’t blame Lacob for making such comments, in return, he can’t blame the league for reacting in the manner that it did.

What he said was never meant to effect the on-court play or public perception of his team, but it very much did. Only time will tell if this postseason was merely a small road bump on the ultimate path, or if his comments may have permanent repercussions. Either way, this season explicitly showed that the Warriors were indeed light years ahead of the competition. But, it was their general awareness of this manufactured superiority that ultimately did them in.