5 Best Playoff Moments in Golden State Warriors History
As a franchise, the Golden State Warriors have made 10 appearances in the NBA Finals and have collected seven NBA titles. Their legacy is long and storied, as the team has featured some of the greatest talents to ever play the game.
Their first championship win came in 1947, when they were still known as the Philadelphia Warriors. They defeated the Chicago Stags in the championship series when the league was once known as the BAA (Basketball Association of America). Since then, they’ve also been led to titles by Paul Airizin in 1956, Rick Barry in 1975, and four championships courtesy of Stephen Curry between 2015 and 2022.Sure, the Warriors have gone all the way to the final series of the NBA’s postseason plenty of times in their history, but the series leading up to their appearances on the game’s biggest stage also provide some of the most iconic plays and memorable moments that they’ve offered to the league. Encompassing the Warriors’ entire postseason history, here are the Golden State Warriors’ 5 best moments in the playoffs.
After a 1966-67 season where Rick Barry led the NBA in scoring, the offense-reliant Barry would lead his team through the 1967 NBA Playoffs with some incredible scoring performances.
In just his second NBA season, and his first playoff run at only 23-years-old, Barry was unstoppable, averaging 30.6 points through the first two rounds of the playoffs, leading up to his first NBA Finals series. Somehow, this number was below his regular season scoring average, as he took home the league’s scoring title with 35.6 points while shooting 45.1 percent from the field.
The series started out rough for Barry and the Warriors, losing the first two games of the series and finding themselves in a 2-0 hole heading into Game 3. Since the Warriors had their first chance to play at home in that game, Barry wasted no time, taking advantage of suiting up in San Francisco.
Barry would assume a mentality of, ‘get me the ball and get out of the way,’ in Game 3, taking 48 shot attempts and sinking 22 of those to score an unbelievable 55 points. To this day, it stands as the second-most points ever scored in a Finals contest, tied with Michael Jordan and only trailing Elgin Baylor’s 61-point performance in the 1961 Finals.
Even more improbable, the Warriors were able to pull out a win over the dominant 76ers, who were the winners of 68 games in the regular season. Chamberlain scored 26 points and brought down 26 rebounds, but it wasn’t enough, as Barry’s incredible scoring performance kept San Francisco in the series. However, the 76ers would win the series after a hard-fought six games.
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