- [Narrator] Shaun Livingston
is a Golden State Warrior for life,
a champion several times over forever.
Livingston became a Warrior in 2014
and quickly established himself
as a key cog in the Golden State dynasty.
A reliable bench presence on a team
that made five consecutive NBA finals,
winning three of them before Livingston retired in 2019.
Livingston's calm demeanor
and hyper-intelligent passing
kept flow alive in the second unit.
His proclivity for mid-range jumpers
presented a deadly change up from Golden State's
three-point barrage.
The dude had some big moments on some very big stages.
The Warriors wouldn't have been the Warriors
without Shaun Livingston.
That five-year stretch of glory makes the final chapter
of Livingston's playing career nearly unprecedented.
He's only added to that glory as a member
of the Warriors front office.
And if you know anything about Shaun Livingston,
you recognize the beauty in this outcome.
Livingston's legacy could have been pure tragedy.
As a young rising star with the Los Angeles Clippers,
he suffered one of the most devastating knee injuries
in sports history.
In 2007, Livingston wasn't sure
he'd be able to walk normally again,
let alone play winning basketball.
To really appreciate Livingston's story,
it helps to understand who he was before the injury
and who he had to become
before a rising dynasty would claim him.
Let's meet these versions of Shaun Livingston in the PRISM.
Start here.
Shaun Livingston entered the 2004 NBA draft
straight out of high school.
So did a lot of people,
but Livingston stood out.
Livingston's choice to bail on his commitment to Duke
and enter the draft presented some novelty.
With notable exceptions,
prep to pro prospects tended to be
dominant power forwards and centers.
You can't teach height, they say.
To the extent that non-enormous high schoolers
made the leap to the NBA, they tended to be pure scorers.
Livingston fit neither of those categories.
He was only a couple inches shorter than Dwight Howard,
but so much lankier and he played a vastly different game.
Definitely not a big man.
And Livingston could score,
but he definitely wasn't a pure shooting guard.
Like JR Smith.
When the Clippers picked him fourth in that 2004 draft,
many called the 6'7" Livingston,
the first ever point guard
to go straight from high school to the draft lottery.
First or not, Livingston had court vision.
This is Livingston as a seventh grader in Peoria, Illinois,
one of the biggest players on the floor,
but clearly the point guard.
You don't see a lot of tall 12 and 13-year-olds
making this no-look pocket pass to a cutter
or throwing this bullet of an entry pass for an assist.
Livingston won two Illinois State titles in junior high
and then kept filling the trophy case in high school.
Livingston grew to 6'7",
but kept running point.
He read the floor, managed the game,
and kept everyone involved.
That ability to create for others
is the other thing you supposedly can't teach.
Livingston possessed the kind of timing, dexterity
and spidey sense
they say you're either born with or without.
Upon drafting Livingston in '04,
Clippers GM and NBA great Elgin Baylor
made the obvious, but lofty comparison to
the greatest tall, pure point guard ever.
And if the opinion of an LA Lakers legend wasn't enough,
here was Clippers head coach Mike Dunleavy,
who once coached Magic Johnson, seconding the comparison.
Shaun Livingston was supposed to be
the LA Clippers' point guard of the future, their Magic.
Put aside being the next Magic,
just being the future of the LA Clippers
was a heavy label to wear in 2004.
Before Blake Griffin and Lob City
and the super team era,
the Clippers were longstanding losers,
the Lakers' stinky little sibling,
and the players they'd acquired over the years
in hopes of turning things around, kept falling apart.
Looking back, Livingston is one of many
who suggests the Clippers were cursed by franchise owner
Donald Sterling being such a piece of shit.
No argument here.
And Livingston is obviously referring in his own case
to the horrible injury
that ended his Clippers tenure three years after
they drafted him.
But here's the thing.
Before the big one,
Livingston overcame prior smaller flareups
of the supposed Clipper curse.
11 games into his Clipper career,
the rookie Livingston had already registered
some exciting performances off the bench.
Then he dislocated his right kneecap in practice.
After sitting three months to heal his knee,
Livingston finally returned in February '05
and tore cartilage in his shoulder.
It was enough for media observers
to at least wonder if the Clippers regretted
another cursed draft choice.
Shaun missed another month of his rookie year.
Only after all that rehab
did Livingston string some games together.
He got to start at point guard
and posted some tantalizing masterpieces in April, 2005.
Here he was approaching quadruple double territory
against the Bobcats
and hitting the buzzer-beating shot to win the game.
So Livingston entered his sophomore year with some momentum
only to suffer another injury.
This time his back
cost him the first 21 games of that season.
By this point, LA had seen enough to enlist insurance,
veteran point guard Sam Cassell.
Cassell helped his new team get off to
an unusually hot start in Livingston's absence.
The Clippers looked different, hopeful.
The only sign of what J.A. Adande called
the Clippers' customary black cloud was ... oh man.
By the time Livingston finally debuted that season,
he had no prayer
of reclaiming the starting point guard spot
on a team leading the Pacific division.
Livingston became Cassell's apprentice.
He watched firsthand how a 36-year-old
whose body wasn't what it used to be
could still control the game.
On the floor, Livingston played some minutes
as Cassell's backup at point
and some as Cassell's running mate off the ball,
a secondary creator, a finisher, a versatile defender.
That marked a meaningful shift for a kid
who had been billed as the next Magic.
And yes, this is all foreshadowing,
but first let's bask in the spring of 2006, wonderful times.
After missing those first 21 games,
Livingston played the final 61 without interruption.
Shaun was a great understudy,
and when Cassell sat out,
he hopped right into the driver's seat.
Livingston outplayed Steve Nash
to beat the excellent Phoenix Suns on the road in April.
The '06 Clippers won 47 games and a playoff series.
The franchise hadn't done those things
since the mid-seventies when they were the Buffalo Braves.
Livingston factored heavily into the playoff success.
His minutes increased steadily through the first three games
of LA's first round series against Carmelo Anthony
and the Denver Nuggets.
In a pivotal game four victory,
Livingston played so splendidly off the bench
that Cassell declined to return to the game,
preferring to just let Shaun keep cooking.
16, six and six is a well-cooked line indeed,
enough to draw a comment from Clippers star Elton Brand.
In game five, Cassell again watched his understudy
use the lion's share of minutes.
Livingston set a new Clippers playoff assist record
with 14 dimes,
piloting LA's first closeout victory since 1976.
They fell in the next round,
but things were looking up for the franchise and for Shaun.
After previously appearing doomed by the Clippers curse
Livingston was back on the path to stardom.
We know how that turned out.
In '06-'07, Livingston played 54 more games.
He set a new career high for assists on February 24th, 2007.
On February 26th, Livingston planted his foot wrong
and tore just about everything in his left knee.
I recommend never watching video of that injury.
Adande called it the most heartbreaking scene
since Bambi's mother got shot.
The Clippers curse, it seemed, finally got Shaun.
His description of the injury, the trip to the hospital
and the months upon months of rehab is harrowing, genuinely.
Livingston missed the rest of the '07 season
and all of the '08 season healing and rehabbing.
LA let Shaun's rookie contract expire
and didn't give him a new one.
So Livingston's Clipper stint will always be remembered
for its horrible conclusion.
But don't forget this moment. Shaun overcame obstacles,
adjusted his game and made history.
He was just starting to validate
some of that "next Magic" stuff before the bottom fell out.
So that's the part before.
What about after?
How do you get from relearning how to walk
to winning a fistful of championship rings?
Again, it's not a straight upward line
from LA to Golden State.
In between, Livingston played for seven teams in six years.
Miami gave Livingston his first chance to re-find his legs.
The opportunity ended quickly.
Livingston did a stint in the development league,
then joined the OKC Thunder for the rest of the '09 season.
If anything can make you realize
you need to adjust your game,
it's running with those youngsters,
Russell Westbrook calling you old school when you're 24.
The OKC gig ended pretty quickly too.
For a period of months well into the 2010 season,
Shaun had to consider that his career might be over.
Then a couple of Washington Wizards
decided to bring guns into the locker room.
That bizarre scandal meant Washington
suddenly needed mid-season back court help.
A Wizards assistant by the name of, hey, Sam Cassell
suggested they give Shaun a call.
10-day deals turned into a rest of the season contract.
Coach Flip Saunders made Livingston his point guard
and Shaun used those final few weeks
of an otherwise dreadful Wizards season
to hone a new version of his heady pass first game,
Livingston still gives the late Saunders
a ton of credit for helping him
and the rest of the league
realize the potential he still had.
In 2010 free agency Livingston got a guaranteed contract
from the Charlotte Bobcats. That marked a real comeback,
but a bit of financial security didn't mean a steady role.
Livingston found himself passed
from one bad team to another.
Traded, waived, signed, traded again for years.
Observers seemed to accept that transience
as Shaun's NBA fate, although not with derision.
Hey, the fact that he's had a career at all is remarkable.
Maybe he just wasn't good enough post-injury
to stick somewhere,
or maybe he needed a good stable team
to give him a real chance.
In the meantime, Livingston remained a journeyman
without a real home.
We know he would find home in the Golden State dynasty,
but the Warriors might not have envisioned
this Shaun Livingston without watching this one.
Brooklyn came first.
In the summer of 2013,
the Brooklyn Nets made a push: brand-name stars,
brand-name coach.
It was ill-fated,
but for Shaun's purposes, it was perfect.
To fill out that stuffed roster,
coach Jason Kidd wanted a big heady, second point guard,
someone to fill the role Kidd himself
played in his twilight, aka three months prior.
Shaun played a career high 76 games for the Nets in '13-'14,
rising from bench to the starting unit,
not as the point guard,
but in that familiar utility role beside Deron Williams.
Livingston finally enjoyed some consistency,
the best to-date, and he made it count.
In February, Livingston busted out 24 points
against the Pacers,
the second highest scoring performance of his career
and this quadruple double adjacent line a couple days later
is even closer to vintage Shaun.
Livingston played playoff ball
for the first time in eight years,
starting five of seven games in Brooklyn's upset
of the Toronto Raptors.
He hit the clutch free throws
that sealed the series victory.
He guarded multiple positions
in the next round against the Heat.
That was enough for Golden State
to swoop in, trump all other offers
and make Livingston one of the final pieces
in what would become a multi-championship puzzle.
It was a long time coming.
Shaun Livingston's injury stopped him short
of becoming the next Magic Johnson.
Livingston's contributions to a dynasty
ensured that injury wouldn't define him.
That comeback makes Livingston's legacy a triumph.
These parts in between
only enrich his one-of-a-kind NBA story.
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