An NBA Battle Could Fuel SF-Miami Feud

It has been a rough week for national news, so please excuse us for a little diversionary counterprogramming on this Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend. Several of tech’s most important cities have a great showdown looming! On Thursday, San Francisco’s Golden State Warriors clinched their first NBA finals berth in three years after defeating the Dallas Mavericks to win the Western Conference. The Dubs will face whichever team emerges victorious from the Eastern Conference finals—the Boston Celtics or the Miami Heat—this weekend (Boston is up 3-2 in the series, with a chance to finish off Miami tonight). 

How fitting would it be to see teams from Miami and San Francisco, two cities that have developed a nasty tech rivalry, battle on the court? Over the past couple of years, a growing number of Bay Area venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs have taken their proverbial talents to South Beach (as LeBron James once famously did), many of them decrying the supposed decline of San Francisco and Silicon Valley from their new home. Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, has boasted of his desire to turn the city into a kind of crypto paradise that’s more friendly to startups than other tech hubs like the Bay Area. Game seven of the Celtics-Heat series, if one is necessary, will take place at FTX Arena in Miami, named after the cryptocurrency exchange.