It's all different now with these champion Warriors

If you were around then, waiting for the disappointment, just knowing that no matter how well the Warriors had stayed in the game, how many times the crowd had chanted “Beat L.A.,” you remember Kareem or Magic or Kobe making those shots down the stretch. Unstoppable, and for Golden State fans, unbearable.

But as we — and the Lakers, and indeed all of pro basketball — know, it’s all different now. The power, the once-haunting sense of inevitability, has shifted. It’s the Warriors who somehow will get the win. It’s the Lakers who are trying to come to grips with their inadequacies.

The NBA season opener on Tuesday night at Chase Center was where we were supposed to find out if the Warriors’ Draymond Green and Jordan Poole could play together, two weeks after Green punched Poole in practice. They could and did, and the Dubs, to no one’s surprise after receiving their championship rings, defeated the Lakers, 123-109.

Yes, the Draymond-Poole — dare we call it an incident — was mentioned during postgame comments, but almost parenthetically. The big issue seemed to be whether this Warriors team was as deep as the team of  2014-15 that overwhelmed the Cavaliers in the finals.

That season, LeBron James played for the Cavs. Now, of course, he’s with the Lakers and echoing words of Warriors fans, when in the 1990s the Dubs were the patsies.

“The Warriors are who they are, it goes without saying,” was the observation of LeBron, who didn’t go without saying. “I don’t need to harp on the the greatness they possess every night.”

Hard to imagine anyone from the Lakers franchise, which used to own the Warriors, ever saying that, much less LeBron, the acknowledged best all-around player in the game. When the greats from other teams hold that opinion, well, you may be better than you hope you are.

“They’re the best third-quarter,” James conceded about the way the Warriors gain control after halftime.

This was only one game out of the 82 on the schedule. Perhaps the Draymond-Poole truce comes apart, although winning teams manage to survive internal troubles, which is why they are winning teams. When you’re based in New York or L.A., the nation’s two largest metropolitan areas as well as its two major media centers, you get attention that’s not always deserved. Skepticism is legitimate product.

But those Lakers teams of the 1980s and 90s, labeled by a copyrighted nickname, “Showtime,” earned all the headlines and TV promos they were allotted. Warriors fans may have despised those Lakers as much they respected them. Now the view has been altered.

“The postgame chatter,” wrote Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times about the opener, “came after the Lakers didn’t look in the same class as the defending (NBA) champs.” If there’s one thing you never would expect to read, it’s that the Lakers, who have the second most championships, are not in the same league as the Warriors.

That’s not about to happen to the Warriors, where the front office is preparing for the future with players such as Poole and James Wiseman as it carefully enjoys the present with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevon Looney and, yes, Draymond Green.

“I’m thrilled with the win,” said Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ coach. “Ring night is never an easy game, and the first game of the season is usually filled with some nerves early on.”

But later on, this one was also filled with a win.