Warriors wow, 49ers bow

Don’t wake me from this seemingly endless dream – about a Bay Area pro basketball team, my lifetime favorite team, that keeps on winning game after game, in all sorts of ways, despite key injuries, while not yet playing at full strength, which supposedly will lead to mismatches and breakdowns in its offense – until after the season.

My reasoning is I’ve had a dream like this before, 40 years ago to be exact, when the Bay Area, or as they’ve way too long been called Golden State, Warriors won their one and only NBA title for the 1974-75 season.

Of course, they’re not dreams, either that year, or so far this year – they’re realities – and sans the four decades in between these magical rides, there’s some strong familiarities in the compositions of the two Warrior squads, mostly in the talented depth and total-team desire departments.

Each team had a superstar – phenomenal Rick Barry in 1974-75, and sensational Stephen Curry in the present – who led with pure confidence in their off-the-chart skills, and had the respect and confidence of their teammates, who consisted of past and future all-stars, and unselfish role players.

Of course Barry and Curry had their superstar-like sidekicks in Keith-later-Jamal Wilkes and Klay Thompson, respectively, along with enforcing post players and a host of teammates who would take turns being game-changers.

I’ve been a Bay Area pro hoops fan since 1960-61 when my father took me to a few non-NBA San Francisco Saints games at the old Civic Center before the Wilt Chamberlain Warriors arrived from Philadelphia to the “City by the Bay” for their inaugural 1962 season.

In his second season after leading the NBA in scoring on his way to being rookie of the year, Barry and the Nate “the Great” Thurmond led the Warriors into the 1965 championship final, where they fell to Chamberlain-fueled powerhouse Philadelphia 76ers,

Then Barry left the Warriors for the new ABA, before later returning to spark the incredible 1975 NBA title run, which culminated with a shocking four-game finals sweep of highly favored Washington, which was supposed to do the sweeping. Now, near 40 years later, the Warriors have finally made it back to the elite team level.

Today we are a week removed from my last column on the so far wondrous 2014-15 NBA season for the Golden State Warriors and their loyal and loud-supporting Bay Area fan base, and in that week it’s only gotten better for the W’s.

The Warriors have posted four more wins for a continuous franchise record-breaking 16-game winning streak and 10 straight road wins, and a league-best 21-2 overall record, which makes them only the eighth NBA team to ever start the season 21-2.

Like I said before, this is the NBA, with the greatest cagers in the world hooping it up, so even lousy teams have excellent players, and can slap a loss on power squad any time during the long season, which weakens the “who did they play” statement.

Now it’s time for me to get back to my wonderful Warriors reality dream.

•••

It’s official – for the first time in four years, no playoffs for the San Francisco 49ers thanks to out-of-touch ownership, and conservative head coaching and offensive coordinating.

While the 49ers defense gave them numerous chances to make the playoffs, their offense continually wasted the opportunities by scoring only five second-half touchdowns in 14 games – I think I got this number right, though it’s hard to conceive it’s right for a San Francisco offense.

This is the same coaching staff that guided the 49ers to three NFC championship games and one Super Bowl, but their conservative ways have caught up with them and now, with the quick tumble from the elite NFL teams, there will be big changes to come in the off season.

Ciao!