Golden State took strange road to 1975 NBA championship
The Golden State Warriors clinched their first trip to the NBA Finals since 1975 on Wednesday night, but unlike the '75 Finals, which saw the NBA restructure the entire series format due to scheduling conflicts at two potential sites for Warriors home games, this year's Finals have been on the Bay Area's collective mind for months and will be the hottest ticket in town.
At the start of the 1974-75 season, the Warriors weren't thought to be a threat in the league's Western Conference. Though they'd had moderate success under coach Al Attles, reaching the conference finals in 1973, the team had missed the playoffs the previous season. The Warriors also had run into trouble attracting talent in recent years, as the team saw its top pick in every draft from 1970-73 -- Kevin Joyce, Bill Chamberlain, Darnell Hillman and Earle Higgins -- spurn it for the ABA.
Golden State did have Rick Barry, a former Rookie of the Year and perennial All-NBA and All-ABA selection who previously left the Warriors for the ABA himself, only to return in 1972. But the team had also just traded All-Star center and future Hall of Famer Nate Thurmond to Cleveland and saw another star, Cazzie Russell, sign with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Barry's immense talents alone weren't thought to be nearly enough for the Warriors to contend for a championship, and the rest of the roster was seen as something of a question mark, so prognosticators responded predictably, figuring Golden State to be a fringe playoff team, at best -- this at a time when five of the nine teams in each conference made the postseason field.
However, the Warrior saw things differently.
"When we first went to training camp, I knew that we had something special going," Barry said in a phone interview with FOX Sports on Thursday. "Clifford Ray (acquired in the Thurmond trade) was a cog for us. He was the one that kind of pulled guys together and was an important addition to the team with what he brought, not just on the court but off.
"So at training camp I think we all felt that, 'Man, these experts don't know what they're talking about, we're going to be in the playoffs.' Little did we know that we'd wind up being a team that could win a championship. I certainly didn't know that (going in), but as the season progressed, I think we all felt that, 'Hey, guys, we've got a chance to win this thing.' "
The Warriors went on to lead the league in scoring and rattled off 48 regular-season wins, boosted by a 17-7 start to the season. They secured the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, holding off the Midwest Division champion Chicago Bulls thanks in part to a 7-2 mark over the team's final nine games, then beat Seattle and Chicago in the Western Conference semifinals and finals, respectively, to advance to the NBA Finals against the Washington Bullets.
Barry played a significant role in the team's success, averaging 30.6 points per game on the season as he finished fourth in MVP voting, but reaching the Finals was truly a top-to-bottom effort, as 10 Golden State players averaged at least 11 minutes per game that season. Behind Barry, Jamaal Wilkes, then known as Keith Wilkes, won the Rookie of the Year award with 14.2 and 8.4 rebounds per game, and six other players averaged at least 7.5 points, with five Warriors averaging 5.5 rebounds or more.
"I knew we weren't expected to do much, which was a different situation for me, coming from UCLA," Wilkes told FOX Sports on Thursday. "We always had great leadership and great players and were expected to win, but at Golden State, we were expected to be mediocre at best. I was hoping for the best, but was I thinking we would win a championship or that I'd be rookie of the year? No, I was just trying to find a place for myself in the NBA."
For the players, that dependence on one another led to an especially close locker room -- something many have pointed to over the years when discussing the team's unlikely 1975 run.
"When we won that game against Chicago in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, Clifford Ray was on the bench," Barry said. "It was George Johnson who played instead and did well, and probably his biggest fan cheering on the sideline was Clifford.
"And when I sucked in that Game 7, my teammates played such great defense, they held Chicago scoreless for seven minutes when I was 2-for-14 or something ridiculous. If it weren't for my teammates playing at that level, I would have never had a chance to come back in and play reasonably well the last five minutes of the game for us to be able to win that conference title.
"That's the kind of stuff that has to happen. That's what it takes to be a championship team."
Still, few expected Golden State's luck to carry over into The Finals against a Washington Bullets powerhouse that had won 60 games in the much tougher Eastern Conference and dispatched a good Boston Celtics team led by Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Don Nelson in six games in the Eastern Conference finals.
"People weren't giving us a chance," Wilkes said. "But after that Chicago series, I knew we could beat the Bullets because that was a great Chicago team we beat, and they really took us to the limit. I think it may have helped us going into (The Finals) because the Bullets had the best record in the league and may have been a little complacent about playing us."
Making matters more complicated was the fact that Golden State had nowhere to play a Game 4 that it was supposed to be hosting.
Rookie of the Year Jamaal Wilkes and the Warriors were too much for Elvin Hayes' Bullets in The Finals.
The Warriors' Finals run came as a surprise to virtually everyone, including those at Oakland Coliseum, where Golden State played its games. The building had already been booked for an Ice Follies performance that arena executives were unwilling to move for the Warriors and Bullets. The backup venue, the Cow Palace in Daly City, on the south side of San Francisco, was also already booked for a karate tournament during Game 4, putting the NBA and the teams in something of a pickle.
In the end, the league ended up giving Washington two options: Play Game 1 on the road, then play Games 2-4 at home, or play Game 1 at home, then play two games in Oakland, then return home for Game 4. The Bullets chose the latter -- coach K.C. Jones told Sports Illustrated later that, "Three straight at home sounded good, but I didn't want them to win that first game" -- and the schedule was set, with the Warriors hosting Games 2 and 3 at the Cow Palace.
"Calling it disrespect may be a little strong, but we all noticed it, that our own organization didn't expect us to go that far," Wilkes said. "But it was what it was and it was part of our motivation. We played with a chip on our shoulder the whole year, and that just further added fuel to the fire, so to speak."
"It just shows you how nobody ever thought we were going to be there, but I was happy because I loved the baskets at the Cow Palace," Barry added. "The place was horrible and the locker room was horrible, but you don't play in the locker room, and those baskets were very forgiving. We didn't have the collapsable rims back in those days, and those baskets, I referred to them as sewer pipes because they sucked everything in. They were very shooter-friendly."
Jones' gamble ultimately failed as the Bullets, led by Elvin Hayes, Phil Chenier and Wes Unseld, among others, lost Game 1 at home, 101-95. In Game 2, Barry worked the Cow Palace rims for 36 points as Golden State climbed back from a 13-point deficit to win 92-91. Then Game 3 saw Barry torch Washington again, this time for 38 points, in a 109-101 win, and when the Bullets returned home, they were in a 3-0 hole -- a deficit that no team, to this day, has overcome to win a series.
By the time Game 4 rolled around, frustration had taken over for Washington and Golden State simply let the Bullets unravel. At one point in the first quarter, Bullets small forward Mike Riordan committed a hard foul on Barry with the apparent intention of starting a fight. Instead, Golden State's head coach, Attles, intervened, and was ejected from the game (along with Riordan) while Barry remained in the game. Later, the Warriors would rally once more, this time from 14 down, to win 96-95 and sweep the series.
"We always knew that Al would have your back with regard to situations like that, but I knew from the opening tip that their strategy was to try to get me into a fight," Barry said. "Mike Riordan hit me with an elbow as soon as it started, at the opening tip, so I knew what they were trying to do, and I wasn't stupid enough to fall into that trap.
"So when he came over my back, if you watch the film, you can see that I just backed off. I didn't want anything to do with it. It was a ploy and it just shows you how desperate they were, so I figured, 'If they're that desperate that they're trying to get me thrown out of the game, they can't be all that confident.'"
And while it would have been nice for the Warriors to be able to celebrate the championship victory on their home floor -- as they would have had the series not been restructured -- it was in some ways better to be able to win it all on the road.
"It was a very special thing because we had a chance to experience it as a team," said Barry, who was named Finals MVP after averaging 29.5 points, four rebounds and five assists in the series. "We were such a close-knit group, such a family, and it was just us. We didn't have family members back there, so we were able to have that whole trip back home and afterward together to experience that as a team, as opposed to after it's over (when you win at home) and you have family around and everyone is off going here, going there. So it was really kind of special to have the opportunity to share that before we came back.
"Not much was expected as far as the experts were concerned," Barry added. "It was supposed to be one of the biggest mismatches ever and a sweep by the Bullets. So that's why I still believe, to this day, it's the greatest upset in NBA Finals history, and it just shows you why you have to play the games."
Now 40 years later, Golden State is after its first championship since. And while a Warriors win over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers wouldn't exactly elicit memories of the 1975 upset -- Golden State won 67 games this season and is considered by many to be the series favorite -- another championship, four decades after the fact, would be just as special.
"I mentioned it to the players, that the difference (between 1975 and now) is that you guys are not going to be able to sneak up on anybody during the playoffs," Barry said of a meeting he had with the team during the Warriors' 40th anniversary celebration in March. "Everybody is going to be gunning for you, and so you have to be ready to play, and in a way, that's a good thing to know. ... It makes it a lot easier to be ready because you know that if you're not, then you're liable to get embarrassed."
However, Barry says he doesn't see the same complacency in this year's Warriors that he saw in the '75 Bullets.
"I told the players when I met with them, 'It's a nice thing that we all believe that if you play your best basketball, in a seven-game series, against any team in this league, that you'll win,' " Barry said. "Now that's easy to say, but they have to be the ones to go out there and do that.
"I still don't think that they've actually played their best basketball in any game in the playoffs," Barry added. "They came close when they beat the Rockets badly in Game 3, but I still don't think that they have. And I always have said that I feel sorry for the team they're playing when that happens because they can humiliate somebody. They're that good and that explosive, and I'm hoping they can find a way to do that against Cleveland."
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
