Longtime Warriors Fans Hoping NBA Finals Will Bring End to 40 Years of Misery
OAKLAND, Calif. — Where should we begin this tale of woe?
We could start with the blown draft picks. There have been scores of them over the years.
We could catalog all of the talented players who left or were foolishly traded away.
We could dwell on statistics—the sickly win totals, the consecutive years without a playoff appearance or an All-Star selection.
Or maybe we should dispense with the details and just address the championship drought.
It's been decades—a torturous span that has strained fans' faith and fealty. There's been talk of a curse.
"Some bad teams, bad draft choices," Gary Liss says ruefully.
Yes, it really has been a rough 40 years for devotees of the Golden State Warriors.
OK, so 40 years is not 50 years, and an NBA title drought isn't quite as impressive as a drought that's consumed an entire city. Oakland is not Cleveland. But let's take a moment in these NBA Finals to acknowledge the suffering of another fanbase.
Cleveland has earned most of the attention for having gone 51 years without a title in any major professional sport. That fair city has earned our sympathy. But Oakland would like a word, at least on the basketball front.
The Warriors last won the NBA championship in 1975, in the time of bell-bottoms, eight-track tapes and Gerald Ford. They clinched the title just weeks after the fall of Saigon. Gasoline cost about 44 cents a gallon.
And Gary Liss was a 32-year-old San Francisco native who had embraced the Warriors from the day they arrived from Philadelphia, in 1962.
Liss was there, in those forgettable early years at the Cow Palace, watching every game from a baseline seat near the Warriors bench.
Liss was there, on May 25, 1975, to watch Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes clinch the NBA title with a 96-95 victory over the Washington Bullets, completing a four-game sweep. He has been there for nearly every memorable moment—and many, many he'd like to forget—since then.
Liss, now 72, is not just any Warriors season ticket-holder. He is, according to team officials, the longest-standing season subscriber on the books. He still has his ticket stubs from the 1975 championship series.
"Section 1 Row A Seat 9," the stub reads along the top, the letters fading.
At the bottom, in red type: "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP."
The face value: $10.
No one has been waiting longer for this moment.
"I'm extremely excited—I mean, really excited," Liss said by phone last week, hours before the Warriors closed out a 108-100 overtime victory over the Cavaliers in Game 1 of the finals.
Cleveland has since lost star guard Kyrie Irving to a broken kneecap. Everything now points to a Warriors championship—and an end to a four-decade run of heartbreak and fecklessness.
Longtime fans like Liss know better than to assume too much. They have had their hopes betrayed too many times before.
The 1975-76 Warriors were actually better than the team that won the title—leaping from 48 wins to 59 in the regular season—but their repeat hopes ended in a Game 7 loss to Phoenix in the Western Conference Finals, with Paul Westphal and Gar Heard scoring 21 points each for the Suns.
And that was that.
No Warriors team even reached the conference finals again—until this year, with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson leading Golden State to a franchise-record 67-win campaign.
But the prior 39 years? Hopelessness. Devastation. False starts. Poor choices. Putrid results.
The Warriors went nine years without a playoff appearance, from 1977-78 through 1985-86.
They flirted with relevance in the late 1980s and early '90s, thanks to Sleepy Floyd, Purvis Short, Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond, Tim Hardaway, Chris Webber and Latrell Sprewell. But none of those teams ever got past the second round, and the franchise was undone by foolish trades and internal politics.
After a 50-win season in 1993-94, coach Don Nelson had Webber—his rising rookie star, with whom he'd been feuding—traded to Washington, for Tom Gugliotta. The Warriors won 26 games the next season, beginning a 12-year bender in which the team averaged 27.7 wins and did not make a playoff appearance.
Some in the Bay Area believe in a Chris Webber Curse. Others subscribe to a Latrell Sprewell Curse, stemming from the moment in 1997 when Sprewell choked head coach P.J. Carlesimo, leading to a then-record suspension and a subsequent trade to New York.
Liss has never forgiven Nelson for alienating Webber.
"That was a horrible thing," he said. "If the owner had any [spine], he would have gotten rid of the coach, not the player."
And draft mistakes? There have been a few.
In 1980, the Warriors drafted Joe Barry Carroll—known in these parts as Joe Barely Cares—with the No. 1 pick, passing on Kevin McHale, among others.
In 1995, the Warriors used the No. 1 pick on Joe Smith, ahead of Kevin Garnett, Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse and Antonio McDyess.
In 1996, the Warriors took Todd Fuller with the 11th pick—with Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash (a local star at Santa Clara) still on the board.
In 1997, they drafted Adonal Foyle at No. 8, allowing Toronto to take Tracy McGrady at No. 9.
In 1998, the Warriors actually drafted Vince Carter with the fifth pick but immediately dealt him to the Raptors for Antawn Jamison.
You could go on like this for days. And Warriors fans sometimes do.
This is the franchise that drafted Robert Parish in 1976 but traded him after two seasons. This is the franchise that made Chris Washburn the third pick in 1986 after he had a troubled NCAA career, then lost him to drug addiction.
Even Barry, one of the franchise's greatest stars and a Hall of Famer, abandoned the Warriors early in his career, leaving in 1967 to join the ABA. He returned to the team in 1972.
Yet Liss has stayed loyal throughout. He bought his first season-ticket package in 1962, through a buddy who happened to be friends with Warriors star Nate Thurmond. The seats were on the baseline closest to the Warriors bench, and that's where Liss witnessed nearly every home game for the next half-century.
He chatted up Barry and Clifford Ray, became friends with Lester Conner, and watched Baron Davis stretch out his sore back near his feet. He offered encouragement to Jamal Crawford, after Nelson publicly declared that he wanted Crawford gone.
"I said, 'What are they doing to you?'" Liss recalled. "He was pissed, and I don't blame him."
Liss held on to his two baseline seats until two years ago, when price increases forced him to relocate. He now sits five rows behind the home bench (at $240 per game), about five heads behind coach Steve Kerr.
It all feels worth it today. But there were years, many of them, when friends questioned his judgment. Why stay?
"I had a great seat," Liss said cheerfully, "and I didn't want to give it up. I just went and enjoyed each game for what it was. And I was very happy when they finally would win a game."
Liss took the optimistic view: "All games start 0-0, so you don't know what's going to happen," he said.
Besides, that seat afforded Liss an incredible view of all of the game's greats, from Bill Russell to Elgin Baylor to Dr. J, from Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant.
And then there was Bill Walton, one of Liss' favorites until injuries derailed him.
"That guy was an incredible player," Liss said. "He would go up for a rebound and before he hit the floor, the pass would be at half court and they'd get an easy layup…he was fantastic."
Yet nothing in the last half-century has equaled the feeling of that 1975 title. It was wholly unexpected, coming on the heels of a 48-win season. On the night the Warriors clinched the Western Conference title, with a Game 7 win over the Chicago Bulls, Liss and a friend sneaked into the home locker room and celebrated with their heroes.
"I don't remember how I got in," Liss said. "I was young, obviously. It was 40 years ago. I think I may have had a few too many drinks…we just kind of kept going and nobody stopped us."
"It was crazy," Liss said of the celebration. "They were going crazy. Because they were the big underdog."
Among the longtime fans waiting for another celebration: Joe Lacob, who moved to the Bay Area in 1981, watched for decades in anguish and then purchased the team in 2010—with a vow to compete for a title within five years.
"Like a lot of fans, I thought I could do better," Lacob told Bleacher Report. "And here we are. So I feel fantastic for all of them."
The Bay Area has, of course, enjoyed its share of championships in the last half-century, by the 49ers (five titles), the Raiders (two titles), the A's (four) and the Giants (three). But football and baseball titles do nothing to salve the wounds of a suffering Warriors fan.
And yes, Cleveland's drought is both longer and more spectacular, because it encompasses all sports. But Cavs fans will find no sympathy here.
"I feel nothing for them!" Lacob said with a hearty laugh. "I don't live in Cleveland! I don't care! I want the title here! For us!"
From one tortured fanbase to another, Liss said he appreciated the plight of Cleveland fans, saying, "I hope they can win it some time—they deserve one."
"But not this year, please."
Howard Beck covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @HowardBeck.
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