1974-75: A different Warriors’ team, a different NBA era

The 2014-15 Golden State team is a genuine NBA power, sporting the best regular season record in the league at 67-15. Combined with a post-season mark of 12-3, the Warriors have an overall 79-18 record.

Having roared past New Orleans, Memphis and Houston, they are favorites to capture the NBA crown, in spite of LeBron James’ greatness and a Cavaliers’ roster that also features Kyrie Irving, a gifted (but recently hobbled) point guard who has been one of the league’s best at that position.

Although there are some similarities with this team and the Warriors of 40 seasons ago, the differences are striking. For example:

• With 18 teams in four divisions, split between Eastern and Western conferences, the 1974-75 version of the NBA included playoffs that had one best-of-three preliminary round and three traditional best-of-seven rounds. So most playoff teams automatically played in conference semifinals. The Warriors, who did not make it into the playoffs the previous season with 44 wins, got past Seattle in the semis, 4-2, then dispatched Chicago in a memorable, hard-fought Western Conference title matchup, 4-3. The deciding Game 7, played in Oakland, was a dramatic, pulse-pounding come-from-behind 83-79 Warrior win that vaulted them into the meeting with Washington.

• The Warriors, who had traded away one of their standouts, center Nate Thurmond, to Chicago six weeks prior to the start of the season, achieved the best record in the West; but they had only the fourth-best regular-season NBA mark that year, 48-34. Boston and Washington both won 60 games in the Eastern Conference; Buffalo, also in the East, won 49. The general consensus was that the East was significantly stronger than the West. The experts gave the Warriors, who routinely played nine or 10 players per game, little chance against the Eastern winner. The Bullets had defeated the Warriors in three of four regular-season games.

• The Oakland Arena was not available for the first two Finals games due to a scheduling conflict with, of all things, the Ice Capades. So Golden State had to play at the aging, drafty Cow Palace in Daly City. In another oddity, although the Bullets had home-court advantage, the title series began with just a single game on the East Coast. Games 2 and 3 were at the Cow Palace. By the time the series headed back to Washington, D.C., the Bullets were already down 3-0. They could not recover. The June 4 game in Oakland will be the Warriors’ first Finals appearance on that floor — ever.

• The NBA’s popularity wasn’t close to what it is today and it wasn’t nearly the constant television presence it has become. There was no cableTV — and certainly no Internet. The average player’s salary was about $90,000. Today, fueled mainly by TV revenues, it’s close to $4 million.

• A number of professional basketball stars didn’t play in the NBA 40 years ago; they were part of the upstart, rival 10-team American Basketball Association (ABA). People like George Gervin, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, George McGinnis, Dan Issel and others labored in the younger and more obscure (and financially-challenged) ABA. Its eventual merger with the NBA (only four ABA teams joined the older league) was still two years away.

• The Warriors’ head coach, Al Attles, was not on the bench as Game 4 versus Washington unfolded. Early on, he was thrown out of the contest by the referees because he had come onto the court to challenge the Bullets’ Mike Riordan who had hammered high-scoring Warrior forward Rick Barry in an egregious act that appeared to be an attempt to force a fight and, perhaps, Barry’s ejection. For most of the game, Attles’ lone assistant, Joe Roberts, coached the team. The series also highlighted two African-American head coaches (K.C. Jones of the Bullets was the other) facing each other for the first time for a championship in a major U.S. professional sport.

• The Warriors, brought to San Francisco in 1962 by media businessman Franklin Mieuli and 31 other local investors for the princely sum of $850,000, drew an average of 8,800 customers per game in 1974-75. For most of the regular season, there were plenty of available seats.

• Sadly, four members of that storied Warriors’ title team — Steve Bracey, Derrek Dickey, Charles Johnson (from Sequoia High School) and Phil Smith — have passed away; all of them were in their 50’s when they died.

• The year after their unanticipated championship run, the Warriors produced what was, until now, their best regular-season record: 59-23. Their hopes of a title repeat were dashed in the Western Conference Finals, 4-3, by an underdog, 42-win Phoenix team.

• NBA 1974-75 Finals scores: Warriors 101, Bullets 95; Warriors 92, Bullets 91; Warriors 109, Bullets 101; Warriors 96, Bullets 95.

• Golden State’s 1974-75 Finals roster: Rick Barry, Keith Wilkes, Butch Beard, Charles Johnson, Clifford Ray, Jeff Mullins, Phil Smith, George Johnson, Derrek Dickey, Bill Bridges, Charles Dudley, Steve Bracey.

• For an online look at that historic series, you can visit YouTube and enter “Bullets vs. Warriors 1975;” a variety of old videos, several of them quite good, are available for viewing.

John Horgan covered the Warriors and the NBA during the 1974-75 season for the San Mateo Times.