Last dance at Oracle Arena
Enough of the ifs and maybes. This is it. Thursday’s Game 6 of the NBA Finals will be the last time the Golden State Warriors take the court at Oracle Arena.
So much has changed since the Warriors made the arena with the jewel-box exterior and spartan interior their exclusive home in 1971. That was back in the day before seas of yellow T-shirts blanketed the seats from floor to ceiling for each playoff game, when timeouts were quiet pauses for conversation instead of bursts of sensory overload, and when a fan could get a ticket and change with a $10 bill.
One thing has remained constant, even as the old Highway
17 became Interstate 880 and a total arena renovation in 1997 added luxury suites and 4,000 seats: the atmosphere.
It’s special. The roar that was there for sharpshooter Rick Barry and fiery coach Al Attles in the Warriors’ 1975 championship run — so improbable that the arena was booked during the NBA Finals, forcing the team’s home games to the Cow Palace — endured through many lean years.
The arena’s days as an NBA outpost were numbered from the moment venture capitalist Joe Lacob, entrepreneur Peter Guber and a group of investors bought the Warriors for $450 million in July 2010. They had big dreams. Their talk of creating a perennial contender caused more than a few eyes to roll. Their determination to overcome the forces of development resistance to build a state-of-the-art palace in San Francisco seemed every bit as daunting as putting together a roster that could outshine the stars that always seemed to gravitate to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Yet they did it. The new Chase Center is set to open for the 2019-20 season. That the ownership doesn’t quite care that it is well over its original $1 billion budget is a measure of how hot a brand the Warriors have become in winning the title three of the past four years. It remains to be seen whether the new arena, with its stratospheric prices and top-drawer creature comforts, can match the Oracle atmosphere.
The old reliable has one more night to evoke the standard. One more win will give the Warriors one monumental road game to make history, and one more time for fans to pour through the exits for the traditional post-playoff-win dance party, with fireworks illuminating the ebullient scene.