Imagine a world where the Golden State Warriors really DID ruin basketball

Starring:Stephen Curry
Kevin Durant
Steve Kerr
Draymond Green
Klay Thompson
Andre Iguodala

Writer:Bill Hanstock

Story Editor: Jenn Holmes

Art Director: Tyson Whiting

Now in its 10th season, “The Warriors” returns in 2018 with showrunners scrambling to make an inevitable story still interesting to fans. Here, we give you a behind-the-scenes look into the writers’ room as they prepped for the upcoming season, as well as a treatment and script for their eventual, earth-shattering idea.

Rick heaves a sigh. “It’s no use,” he groans, sitting farther back in his chair and kicking his feet up on the large coffee table in the center of the writers’ room.

Joe, pacing the floor incessantly, clenches his jaw. If this were 20 — or hell, 10 years ago — he’d be stubbing a cigarette out in anger. Instead, he dips into a nearby tub of Starburst and tears one open, popping it in his mouth. Junk food. Nothing in here but junk food. He checks his watch: almost 3:00 in the morning.

Jennifer, sprawled out across one of the sofas, takes her arm away from her weary eyes for a moment. “What if,” she begins, and then stops talking immediately after those two words. Still, the promise of an idea is enough to get Joe to stop pacing for a moment. Gail and Lisa turn away from their blank Final Draft documents and pivot their office chairs toward her. Rick leans forward. Bob raises his eyebrows in anticipation.

Jennifer, suddenly aware all eyes are on her, squints up at the overhead fluorescents. She starts to speak again, the arm that had been covering her eyes now straight up in the air, her tired brain churning. “What. If.” The team’s on pins and needles now, starving for someone to break the story. “What if the team goes to space?”

The tension hangs there for another few beats, then the room deflates. Gail speaks gently: “Jen, hon … we did that two seasons ago. Remember? ‘The Splash Brothers Shoot the Moon’?”

“Ugh. Right, right. Sorry guys. All-nighter brain.” Jennifer closes her eyes and shakes her head, letting her arm flop across her face once again. Rick leans back once again, fingers laced behind his head. Joe resumes his pacing. Lisa turns back to her MacBook and refreshes the “Jobs” page on LinkedIn.

“Keep hammering away, guys,” Bob grunts as he stands and stretches. His back pops in a manner that’s both good and bad, causing him to wince slightly. “We’ll break this sucker yet.” This will be Bob’s seventh season as head writer for “The Warriors,” but things have never been this bleak before. They’re pretty much tapped out.

Just as Bob thinks it, Joe pipes up. “But what if we don’t break the story, Bob?” Like all showrunners, Joe was nervous as a rule, always ready for the sky to come crashing down. His tenure even predated Bob’s, but over the past handful of years they’d come to enjoy a marvelous symbiosis. With that partnership had come success they’d never dreamed of individually, but after all the awards, the fans, and the ratings bonanza, they were running short of inspiration. They’d gotten too much, too fast, and as the riches kept pouring in, the story options kept dwindling.

“We’ll break it, Joe,” Bob assures him. “We always have before.”

“Yeah, but it’s always been easy before,” Rick offers. “We had a hell of a villain for the last few seasons, but then somebody decided it would be a great story to turn him into a good guy.”

Lisa spins her chair back around. “Hey, it was a great idea. You know how many LeBron T-shirts we’ve sold since we turned him into Season 6 Spike?”

Rick grins. “Yeah, yeah. I know you’re right. But I still think we could have squeezed at least one more year out of making him our Big Bad.”

Jennifer’s hand shoots up into the air again, eyes wide. “What if — oh my god, you guys.” She sits up on the couch, looking around at the room. “What if LeBron is actually a mole in the Western Conference? And then we can spend the entire season with him trying to bring the place down from the inside, only to get exposed near the finale?”

The others look at Bob, grimacing. Crestfallen, he nods and takes this one himself. “Jennifer,” he starts. She turns to look at him, eyebrows raised expectantly. “We’ve done the ‘inside man’ angle with both Durant AND Kawhi.”

“And Kyrie,” adds Gail.

Bob nods. “And Kyrie.”

Jennifer’s shoulders slump. She pushes her face into the sofa cushions. “Just fire me,” she moans, muffled by the fabric. “Fire me and put me out of my misery.”

Gail pats her on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll get through this.”

“And don’t put your face in those cushions,” Lisa advises. “There’s like a decade of writer sweat in there. You’ll have to chew a Tide pod for real if any gets in your mouth.”

“Bob,” Joe says, softly. Bob turns to face his jittery showrunner. “I’m serious. If you think ‘Simpsons did it’ is a well-worn cliché, that’s nothing compared to what we’ve already burned through over the past few years. Even Kurt Sutter would think some of our recent storylines are a stretch.”

Still putting on a brave face, Bob tries to steer the conversation back to the positives of the upcoming season. “Hey, we’ve got Boogie now. Imagine the hijinks we can get up to with him.”

This time, Rick interjects: “Boogie’s going to be a non-factor. He only signed on for a recurring role at midseason. He’s not a member of the main cast. Jason Mantzoukas was great on ‘Nine-Nine,’ but no one thought he was going to stick around and factor into long-term storylines.”

Lisa nods. “Boogie’s for B-stories only, Bob. You know that. He’s our Worf.”

Bob tries to protest, meekly. “Hey, Worf was great in the late seasons. And then he went on to ‘Deep Space Nine’!”

Lisa crosses her arms. “Yeah, and he was still Worf over there, too.”

Bob opens his mouth to respond, but Joe cuts him off. “Look,” he says, “we all love Worf. Worf’s great. But he’s not Picard.” He raises a hand to thwart another interjection from Bob. “And yeah, we’ve got a Picard. The problem is we’ve got five goddamn Picards. And nobody wants five Picards. Nobody wants three Picards. We’ve just …” He trails off and looks through the blinds at the dark parking lot outside. “We’ve just got way too much of a good thing. It’s not compelling. There aren’t any stories to tell. Who wants to watch a show where there’s no tension, where there’s no drama?”

Bob doesn’t have an answer for that. Rick, head still back and eyes closed, pipes up. “Face it, boss,” he says. “We’re cooked. No more stories to tell.”

Jennifer squirms on the couch. Closing her eyes, only half-aware of what she’s saying, she sighs, “Why don’t we just burn it all down?” Everyone turns back to her, as she continues on, oblivious to the attention. “Yeah. Just go full scorched-earth, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Send them to a time where stories don’t matter, because they’ve already lived through them all. Just like us, now.”

Gail speaks now, slowly. “A time jump. Oh my god.”

Jennifer opens her eyes and looks around. Rick is leaning forward, turning possibilities over in his mind. Bob has his head cocked, nodding almost imperceptibly, as he always did when they were close to breaking a story. Joe resumes pacing, now bouncing on the balls of his feet, a big grin slowly spreading over his face.

“Are you guys … wait, really?” Jennifer sits up. In response, Lisa stands up and walks to the whiteboard. She uncaps a dry-erase marker and scrawls one huge word in black at the top of the board: WASTELAND.

Bob plops back down in his seat, beaming at Jennifer. “You did it. You broke the sucker. I’ll be damned.”

Jennifer sucks in a big, ragged breath, and exhales the weight of the past few weeks’ fruitless, 14-hour days in that lived-in writers’ room.

And together, they get to work.

The Warriors: The Last Team on Earth

Logline:

A superteam of basketball stars created a chain reaction that ignited the entire Earth … and caused its destruction. Scattered survivors attempt to recreate basketball magic in the hellscape created by their own sheer abilities.

Characters:

Durant — The antihero of the story. Grizzled, battered, but blessed with immense gifts, he searches the apocalyptic landscape, desperate to come to terms with the nonstop restlessness that drives him.

Curry — Expert marksman and tinkerer. There isn’t much technology left in this wasteland, but when they come across some, there’s nothing Curry can’t fix. He serves as some light comic relief and has an easygoing nature, but if you push his buttons, he becomes an unhinged maniac.

Dray — The muscle. Missing an eye and an ear, Dray is always ready to get in a scrap or talk some trash. He’s ready to throw punches first and ask questions later, and his companions often have to make sure he doesn’t make a bad situation worse.

Andre — A man of few words, he may have more mysteries he’s hiding than anyone else.

Klay — The face man. When they need diplomacy, the group sends in Klay to sweet talk the locals. If Dray hasn’t already gotten them into a fight, that is.

Boogie — The wild card. No one knows what Boogie is going to do. Ever. Think Charlie from ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,’ but seven feet tall and 270 pounds.

Kerr — The wise man in the desert. He tends to roam, but the crew often relies on Kerr in its times of need. It may be advice, knowledge, or just a big old grenade that he provides, but Kerr has a deep bag of tricks.

Synopsis:

DURANT wanders alone through the world that has moved on, hoarding resources and trying to find his way back to the Mecca of his home court, attempting to play one last game that will bring him the peace that has long eluded him. Only one problem: he doesn’t know where that home court is. He’s going off of prophecy, magic, and his own shattered memories.

Along the way, Durant runs into the rest of his former teammates — and adversaries — who have all been scattered by the fallout caused by the Golden State Warriors’ megatons of talent colliding with the rest of the NBA.

FADE IN:

EXT. HIGHWAY - DUSK

A scorched, cracked DESERT stretches out in all directions. The horizon is obscured by SWIRLING DUST CLOUDS.

SUPER: “ONE YEAR AFTER THE EVENT”

The sun hangs low in a far-too-hazy sky, and in the foreground there is a slight SHIMMER from heat, radiation … or both.

The wind GUSTS low and steady, its swirling the only sound. Burnt-out husks of CARS dot the landscape here and there, and only the faintest outline of an eight-lane interstate suggests this wasn’t always a desert.

In the distance, a crumbled storefront juts out of the ground. A faded drawing of a hot dog and the word “CASPERS” are just barely legible on the facade.

From behind the remains of the building, walking through the shimmery haze, steps a TALL FIGURE. The Figure pauses, looks around, looks down at an object in its hand, and continues on.

EXT. HIGHWAY - LATER

The Figure lopes down the faded track of the highway with a determined gait. Not running, but moving with purpose. And ever forward.

With a closer look, the Figure is wearing a MASK that obscures its face. The hooded, dusky cloak over its head and around its shoulders might have once been a sweatshirt, but is now a tattered cape and cowl.

The Figure reaches into its satchel and pulls out a COMPASS. It looks at it, then looks at its left hand. There are SYMBOLS tattooed on the hand. The Figure looks back at the compass, then returns the device to its satchel.

And the Figure presses on.

EXT. RUINS - LATER

Tumbled brick, stone, and concrete stretch out for miles. This was once a town — maybe even a city. Now it’s just a collection of ramshackle huts and endless ruins.

The FIGURE comes to the outskirts of the town and stops. Head turning in all directions to scan for danger, at last, warily, it raises a hand to push back the hood, and then, finally, to pull the mask away from its face.

The scarred visage underneath the mask belongs to DURANT, who appears to have lived a lifetime in the past year … since the Event.

Durant’s right hand goes to his back. Slowly, he withdraws the long, gnarled CLUB that was slung there. His cold eyes scan the horizon, and finally, he gives a sharp WHISTLE. Four lilting, sing-song notes ring out clearly, ear-splitting in the desolate silence.

The whistle dies away to nothing. Durant waits. He takes a deep breath, then lets it out in an agonized sigh. He moves to put his hood back up, and then a VOICE cuts through the silence.

VOICE (O.S.) I had the drop on you the whole way.

Durant stops, then the slightest of smiles curls one corner of his mouth. But there’s no happiness in that smile, just weariness.

DURANT You always think that.

He turns and sees CURRY, nearly a foot shorter than him. Curry’s face and hair are streaked with dirt. He has tattered desert garb slung around his body, and he clutches a long-range RIFLE in his hands.

CURRY It’s because I’m always right. You’re lucky I recognized your bad posture. Could have picked you off from miles away.

DURANT (to himself) From way downtown.

Curry’s smile falters and he becomes uneasy.

CURRY How’d you find me, Durant?

Durant glances down at his tattooed hand.

DURANT I’ve got ways. You’re always underestimating me, Curry. Just like everyone else.

CURRY Me, underestimate you? Nah, never.

Curry pops the rifle up on his shoulder. He looks at Durant for further explanation, but none seems to be forthcoming.

CURRY (CONT’D) Come on. We better get inside before nightfall.

Curry begins to weave his way through the ruins. After a beat, Durant follows.

INT. HOVEL - NIGHT

A crackling fire sits in the middle of a dirt floor. A small room is enclosed by cracked concrete walls.

Curry and Durant sit on the floor near the fire, eating out of hubcaps that have been repurposed into plates.

CURRY So. You gonna tell me why you’re here? Why you came to find me?

Durant turns this over, chewing. Considering his answer.

DURANT You’re not going to like it.

CURRY No, probably not.

DURANT We need to play again.

Curry pauses, searching Durant’s face.

CURRY You serious?

DURANT As a heart attack.

CURRY But we swore we’d never play again. After …

He shoots a look outside, into the darkened wasteland.

CURRY (CONT’D) … after what happened. After what we did to this world.

DURANT I know what we did, and I know what we swore.

Curry shudders, frowning. His voice grows small, hushed.

CURRY We burned it all down, KD.

DURANT Yeah. We burned it all the way down. Everything bad in the world, and everything good, too.

CURRY Because we were greedy.

Durant shakes his head.

DURANT Naw. Because we didn’t know any other way. All that talent. All that ability. All that … power. And we’re not supposed to use it? Hell no.

Curry shifts, uneasy.

CURRY That’s how you started talking, before …

DURANT Never mind that. What’s done is done.

They look at the fire for a moment. Then Durant fixes Curry with a look.

DURANT (CONT’D) What if I told you I found a way to fix it? A way to fix everything.

Curry looks at him, unsure what to believe.

DURANT (CONT’D) But you gotta trust me. And we gotta play. One more time.

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