Five decades later, the 1975 championship Warriors are a team still worth remembering
OAKLAND Charles Dudley lives in Seattle but his mind often wanders It travels miles south and years in the past To the Bay Area To When the Warriors led by a trail-blazing coach and team-first tactics that could have been ripped straight out of Steve Kerr s playbook in stunned the NBA world by capturing the NBA title The Warriors swept heavily-favored Washington - Led by Hall of Famer Rick Barry it was the kind of improbable run that should have left the imaginations of the larger hoops society spellbound I say it s the greatest upset in the history of major sports in the United States of America Barry narrated the Bay Area News Group We weren t even going to be a playoff crew or get to the Finals and then supposedly it s going to be a sweep Then we sweep the band that was supposed to sweep us You can t find anything more dramatic than that Instead it was a championship that has been largely forgotten within the larger NBA narrative While other title-winning teams have been immortalized by books and film Golden State s accomplishment exists only in newspaper archives and the memories of the dwindling scarce who watched and the even fewer who played No cover of Sports Illustrated no invitation to the White House Barry disclosed Nothing for years while there s been all kinds of documentaries done about all kinds of other teams Now absolutely thanks to Charles Dudley we re in the end going to have a documentary to talk about this amazing accomplishment Dudley was a key reserve on that overlooked group and has made it his mission to remedy that wrong He has spent the past scarce years making frequent trips to San Francisco poring over frail archives of the old San Francisco Examiner and other newspapers and conducting interviews with nearly subjects for an upcoming documentary on the Warriors The documentary called Cardiac Kids is nearing completion It is central to me to for the guys who have passed away and are no longer with us that they are not forgotten Dudley stated this news organization The seven living members from that association Barry Dudley Butch Beard George Johnson Jeff Mullins Clifford Ray and Jamaal Wilkes will gather at Chase Center on Friday night to be honored during the Warriors match against the Blazers Who wouldn t want to learn more about an eclectic cast of personalities from a bygone era Such as the late Al Attles who ran the club from the sidelines at a time when Black coaches were a rarity and in the minds of his players should have been awarded a Coach of the Year honor Attles who died in bucked traditional NBA thinking and modern thought that persists five decades later by playing a -man rotation even into the Finals We set the tone for how the NBA looks at present Dudley declared We had Black guys and two Black coaches on the gang from that point on there were more opportunity for African American players and then gradually African American coaches photo Ron Riesterer Oakland Tribune Warrior coach Al Attles Among the stars of that title-winning side was Wilkes the hotshot rookie who drew the ridicule of his peers during a summer league camp at San Jose City College in The former UCLA star had graced the silver screen in a movie set to release later that season Cornbread Earl and Me and came into camp with a pretty-boy reputation The -year-old did not do himself any favors early on I was feeling pretty good about myself and then I dehydrated on the second or third day of rookie camp and they had to carry me off the court Wilkes now remembered in an interview with this organization I was the biggest joke of rookie camp Wilkes better known as Magic Johnson s running mate for the Showtime Lakers a half-decade later he rebounded from his preseason embarrassment to become Rookie of the Year in the Bay Area During an era in which throwing the ball down to the post ad nauseam was the norm the mid- s Warriors bucked that trend by running a perimeter-oriented pass-and-cut-and-screen attack that bore uncanny resemblance to the sets flooding the modern NBA Big men Ray and George Johnson would set screens and play-make from the high-post while the perimeter scorers such as Barry Wilkes and the Filmore s own Phil Smith buzzed around the wide-open court We were not going to overpower teams Wilkes noted We were going to outsmart outquick and hopefully outhustle them That s what I remember about that club And that s what the Warriors did in the postseason taking out Seattle in six games before outlasting Chicago then in the West in seven The scoring patterns were not the only part of the Warriors story that was ahead of its time in With Jim Crow laws still a current blight on American society the integrated NBA still saw the greater part teams social circles divided along racial lines Not the Warriors who played in an East Bay that was at the epicenter of the Black Panthers movement and aspirant activism and took a progressive approach to all aspects of their gang I never heard about the Black and white players on the Celtics or Lakers hanging out together Dudley explained We all spent time and hung out together We would do projects together in the Oakland society Oakland was very central to us because they supported us the whole way when everybody else stopped Their social attitudes and offense sans a -point line that would not be introduced to the NBA until may have been cutting edge but precious little else was The Warriors flew commercial out of Oakland and were forced out of their normal arena making them play in Daly City s Cow Palace instead for the Finals a series that was shown on tape delay It could have been even worse Dudley remembered If the Cow Palace was booked the next biggest building would have been the Civic Center Dudley disclosed incredulously Five thousand people threshold for a championship series like that More than fans were on hand to greet the Golden State Warriors as they returned to San Francisco May after handing the Washington Bullets a - loss to take four straight games and the NBA championship title The Warriors landed in Oakland and engine problems forced them to take cabs to San Francisco where the waiting crowds mobbed the procession AP Photo RB AP Photo The Warriors appeared primed to make a run at back-to-back Finals the next season winning a league-high games as the majority of its company returned The Suns put an end to that dream taking out Golden State in seven in an epic Western Conference Finals The squad took almost years to regain its form after that I thought we were positioned to possibly win another championship or two Wilkes commented But it s pretty challenging We re talking about it like it s easy but its not A lot of things have to go right While the dynastic Reggie Jackson Oakland A s and John Madden s Raiders have become mythologized in Bay Area lore their Warriors have slipped through the cracks But thanks to the efforts of Dudley and his constant trips from his birthplace of Seattle to his adopted home in the Bay Area it is a story that will be talked about for years to come This story demands to be kept alive Dudley mentioned It is all self-funded I made a commitment to the guys that I would get this done and it s very very close to being done Rick Barry and the Golden State Warriors stunned the Washington Bullets with a four-game sweep in which marks the first NBA title for the Warriors since moving to the Bay Area Mercury News file
