Nevius: Warriors may be golden, but let's not forget the bad old days

For a while back in the ’80s I was the beat writer for the Golden State Warriors. At the time a lot of people complained that the team was dreadful.

Ridiculous.

They would have had to improve dramatically to rise to the level of dreadful.

They were horrible. In a 10-season stretch from 1978-88 they were above .500 just twice. The face of the franchise was Joe Barry Carroll. Or as he came to be known, Joe Barely Cares.

Things didn’t get much better after that.

There were the Run TMC years, but even though they made the playoffs they seemed more like a lovable, quirky bunch of underdogs.

Head coach Don Nelson wore hand-painted (and, for the record, surprisingly lifelike) fish neckties. He not only played the painfully thin 7-foot 7-inch Manute Bol, he let him shoot threes from the top of the key. They were fun, but no juggernaut.

The point is there was a lot of time spent wandering in the basketball wilderness. The Warriors were out here somewhere on the West Coast, but they couldn’t see the Kobe Bryant Lakers with a telescope.

And the organization, under owner Chris Cohan, put the funk in dysfunctional. I was talking to a friend at a Warriors’ practice this week, a longtime Golden State employee who remembered the bad old days.

“There were times when I didn’t even want to come into the office,” he said. “The culture was just toxic.”

Now the ownership is a model for the league. And it doesn’t take much Googling to find predictions from the deep thinkers that the Dubs are basically already in the Finals.

Former Knicks coach and TV analyst Jeff Van Gundy ups the ante.

“It would be a great time-saver if we just gave (the Warriors) the trophy now,” Van Gundy told ESPN. “The playoffs are over - we just don’t know it yet. ... If they avoid an incident this year and they are healthy, the playoffs are over. I don’t think the Warriors will be challenged. … They are that much better than everybody else. I’d be surprised if any series went to a seventh game.”

Really?

Frankly, it’s been a little disorienting for the uber-loyal Warrior Nation. They used to light a candle and pray for a moment in the postseason.

Now, after a championship and back-to-back appearances in the NBA Finals, anything but a ring seems like a step back. Even the paying customers are feeling the pressure. They’re getting dissed for not being as deliriously excited as they used to be.

Well, as coach Steve Kerr said this week at practice, what do you expect? In the 2006-07 season they made a miracle run to the playoffs with Baron Davis and electrified the Bay Area. That seems eons ago.

“Everybody wants that ‘We Believe’ season,” Kerr said. “But that’s what happens when you haven’t made the playoffs for (12 straight) years.”

If you would like to see the passion return to the fan base, just lose in one of the early rounds. You’d hear the howls in Stockton.

And it can happen, you know. It wasn’t so long ago that the upstart Warriors had dreams of knocking off the favorite. Now they are the bull’s-eye and every other team is an arrow. You can tell a lot about an organization by who goes out of their way to criticize it.

In the aftermath of last year’s finals, LeBron James has relentlessly trolled the Warriors. It reached the point where you expect someone to say: Dude, maybe you need to talk to somebody. Like professional help. You’re starting to look a little obsessive.

When the team flew back to Cleveland with the championship trophy he was wearing an “Ultimate Warrior” T-shirt, which was so on the nose that even he backed off. Just “a coincidence” he said.

Then there was the LeBron Halloween party with cookies in the shape of tombstones with the names of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on them. Thompson, ever the philosopher, was bemused.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Cuz I’m not dead.”

James may have redefined the term “sore winner,” but that’s not the takeaway. A wild guess from here says James’ Cavaliers don’t even make the finals. Their roster is thin, their chemistry is iffy and surely James can’t keep playing every minute of every game without wearing down.

But the point is there aren’t any tombstone cookies for Kawhi Leonard of the Spurs. Or Houston’s James Harden. It may seem odd to longtime fans, but the Warriors are THE big thing in professional basketball - the clear favorites for the title.

And rather than decry the long, miserable history before this happened, we should embrace, remember and celebrate the bad old days. It only makes the good times better.

But no need to bring back the fish ties.

You can reach C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter?@cwnevius.