NBA Finals 2017: Warriors poised to change Bay Area championship history

Sean Deveney

NBA Finals 2017: Warriors poised to change Bay Area championship history image

OAKLAND, Calif. — It has been 43 years since fans here in the Bay Area have been able to hoot and holler on their own grounds following a championship by any of the region’s sporting bunches. There have been titles for the Warriors, for the A’s and Giants, for the Raiders and 49ers. But none of them have come on the home fields/courts of local teams.

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The Warriors are hoping to change that.

“For sure, that’s the opportunity in front of us,” star guard Stephen Curry said. “We haven’t had that experience before, so it would be a great night to get it done, to take advantage of the home crowd, the energy, how poorly we played in Game 4, to try to make the necessary adjustments energy-wise and focus-wise to get it done. And we’re in really good shape right now to have this opportunity (Monday), and looking forward to it.”

On Tuesday, the Warriors and their 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals are poised to alter history. And if they can, rest assured it will be a much greater lovefest than what happened with the last team that accomplished the feat, the 1974 Oakland A’s, a team defined not just by talent, but by dissension, strife and varying levels of embarrassment from top to bottom.

Suffice it to say, no matter the level of antipathy toward this year’s Golden State team, fueled mostly by the addition of superstar Kevin Durant to an already loaded roster, these Warriors can’t possibly match those roughhousing Athletics when it comes to antipathy. Heck, those A's could not even stand themselves at times.

As The Sporting News’ Lowell Reidenbaugh commented after the A’s wrapped up Game 5 vs. the Dodgers and their third straight World Series championship: “Peace Corps candidates they are not.” 

Indeed, on the day before that series began, two of the A’s biggest stars — Rollie Fingers, who would go on to be series MVP that year, and starting pitcher Blue Moon Odom — got into a scuffle over a comment Odom made about Fingers’ wife. Fingers came away with stitches in his head, and Odom sprained his ankle.

After the series, Fingers compared his relationship to teammates to that of a marriage battle. “If you don’t yell at your wife,” he said, “you must be a hell of a guy.”

Also just ahead of that series, a story had leaked that controversial A’s owner Charles Finley had not been making payments to the insurance fund of pitcher Catfish Hunter, as Hunter’s contract had required. Hunter, who had previously vowed never to talk directly to Finley, had hoped to defer the issue until after the World Series, but it became a cloud over the Oaklanders.

Here’s how another A’s star pitcher, Ken Holtzman, sized up Finley: “I disagree with just about everything the man does, but at least he knows you and he's on a first‐name basis with the players. Hell, I spent seven years in Chicago (with the Cubs) without even meeting the owner. But Finley thinks he knows baseball, and I don't think he knows that much about the game.”

And there was poor Alvin Dark, a devout Christian who had taken over as the manager of the A’s that year and got a quick lesson in just how meddlesome Finley could be. As A’s outfielder Reggie Jackson put it, “Al needs religion to manage the A’s. Even Henry Kissinger couldn't keep peace with this club.”

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This version of the Warrior is much different, of course. They talk about the sacrifice required to accommodate so much talent on one team, and their coaching situation — which saw Mike Brown go 11-0 while filling in for the ailing Steve Kerr — is the envy of the league.

“We're right where we want to be,” Kerr said. “Disappointed that we didn’t play better the other night, but aware that we are playing a great team. And they were desperate, and they outplayed us. So we're where we need to be. We would love to take care of business. We're planning on playing a lot better (Monday), and we'll see what happens.”

There are, too, the fans. The faithful in Oakland have a bad rap around the league, and part of that goes back to that 1974 World Series. Fans in the stands bombarded Dodgers left fielder Bill Buckner with shrapnel, beginning innocently enough with streamers but graduating to an apple that hit Buckner in the back of the head and a whiskey bottle that landed near his feet.

Said Buckner: “Terrible people. Most of them weren't here all year — and now, all of a sudden, they are big A’s fans.”

Such an accusation cannot be leveled against this year’s Warriors and their backers. They’ve been there all year — and beyond. “Give me our fans any day,” Warriors forward Draymond Green said. “Love those people. It would be amazing to win it at home for them.”

It’s only been 43 years.

Sean Deveney

Sean Deveney is the national NBA writer for Sporting News and author of four books, including Facing Michael Jordan. He has been with Sporting News since his internship in 1997.