SEEING IS BELIEVING

Those of you who aren't big basketball fans may find this posting a bit evangelical, but tough luck, I'm preaching to the converted here. So if You Love This Game, read on, but a warning; this entry is rated PG-13, so get the kids off the damn computer!

The biggest story of the NBA playoffs has been the amazing resurgence of the Golden State Warriors, a franchise formerly known as the Black Hole of the Post-Season Universe. But just as big a story as the Warriors' upset victory over the Dallas Mavericks, the team with the best record in the league this season, has been the inspired performance of Warriors' fans, who over three games in less than seven days, established a reputation as the best home crowd in the NBA. That’s what we call instant street cred.

I had the pleasure of attending Game's 3 and 6, and can give this first-hand report. First, a small caveat. Over the past 25 years, I've attended approximately 200 NBA playoff contests in 20 different cities (part of my job at one time). This includes legendary hoop madhouses like Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden and Chicago Stadium, buildings that would shake when the fans went absolutely berserk, their incessant cheering and rabid energy lifting their teams to ever-higher levels. So I’m not that easily impressed by noisy or enthusiastic fans, even though I’ve been known to resemble one myself on occasion. Hey, I was raised a Knicks’ fan in NY during their championship years. We defined the concept of home court advantage, especially during the playoffs.

Living in the Bay Area put my post-seasons in semi-retirement, as the only race in April was usually to determine lottery position. With that said, Game 3, the Warriors first home playoff game since 1994, was perhaps the most electrifying spectator experience I've ever had. I've been trying to explain the phenomena to people who didn't attend or watch the game. Try this on. Imagine being released from prison after 13 years and being reunited with your one true love, who’d waited faithfully for you all that time. You end up having totally mind-blowing, wall-socket sex for 3 hours, featuring multiple you-know-what’s and a prolonged standing ovation. We're talking Tantric basketball.

I was too physically and emotionally exhausted to attend Game 4 two nights later (insert Viagra joke here), gambling that Dallas would win at home and send it to a Game 6. While the Mavs almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Game 5, they did manage to hang on and send the series back to Oakland. This portended to be such a momentous event, that I decided to leave my kids at home and invite a few older fans, who understood the futility and frustration associated with this franchise and thus, appreciated the significance of the game. How often do you get to witness history in the making?

So after all the build-up, how was it? For anyone who didn't watch (such as East coasters for whom a 10:45 PM tip-off is really pushing it), let's just say it was a religious experience and maybe the most fun I've had with my clothes on in quite a while. I know, that's three sexual references in the same posting, but when pro sports is good, it reaches the same pleasure centers in the brain. Well, maybe not the exact same ones, but close enough for this conversation.

So the underdog Warriors, who somehow had become the alpha dog in this match-up, sent the #1 team in the league home with their tails between their legs. It was the same kind of ongoing highlight reel that sent the crowd into continuous delirium in Game 3, except this time, there was much more at stake and an intriguing subplot that made the outcome appear very much in doubt for the first 24 minutes.

Baron Davis, the heart and soul of the team, strained his hamstring in the first quarter, and the crowd noise, which had been approaching seismic, begin to gradually fade like a tire with a slow leak. Suddenly, everyone was fearing the worst, thinking we can't lose our best player at a time like this, it's not supposed to happen that way in the script. Quick, call the team doctor, call Kate Hudson, call Snoop Dog (they were all at the game, the Snoopster wearing a chain that a bike thief would gag at).

Fortunately, thanks to some treatment (nice of Barry Bonds to stop by with the Clear or was it the Cream?) and a lot of heart, Davis shook off his injury and helped lead the Warriors to the Promised Land, as they just destroyed the Mavs in the second half, with the fans urging them on like kids in a schoolyard gathering around to watch some poor sucker get his butt kicked in a fight. But in this case, the little guy was beating the snot out of the class bully.

Rocky Balboa would have loved it, as soon-to-be league MVP, Dirk Nowitzki, did his best imitation of Ivan Drago. The only person more pathetic in this series than Nowitzki was TNT's Charles Barkely, who insisted on badmouthing the Bay Area at every opportunity. To quote Mr. T, who played the role of Clubber Lang in Rocky 3, "I pity the fool."

Anyway, it's Warriors' fans I want to talk about. As I said before, I've been to playoff games where the crowds were absolutely insane. But these Warriors' crowds were beyond intense and in the second half, during which they stood the entire time, the atmosphere in the arena was so frenzied, it was intoxicating. It took me hours to come down afterwards and way too amped up to sleep, I watched the replay on TNT, savoring Marv Albert’s trademark call of the final dagger, “Richardson with the 3…YES!!!”

Of course, fair weather fans from all over the Bay Area are now jumping on the bandwagon and the national media has taken notice, too. Scalpers are already selling seats for 3-5 times face value and one of the We Believe t-shirts they were giving away at Game 6 sold on ebay the next day for $330. Forget having stock in Apple or Google, I should have shorted some Warriors’ season tickets back in March.

Who would have ever thought this possible? But seeing is believing, and with the first home game against Utah on Friday night, the honeymoon continues. And pushing the playoffs-are-like-sex metaphor to the brink, the Warriors' faithful will need to get it up and urge their team to get it on.

To paraphrase an old line, “NBA action is fan-bleepin'-tastic!”