Oakland’s Finest
The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.
Gertrude Stein
The biggest sporting event to hit the San Francisco Bay Area since, well, last year’s World Series will commence this Thursday at Oracle Arena in Oakland, CA. In a matchup no sane person would have predicted two years ago, the Golden State Warriors will host Game One of the NBA Finals against LeBron James and his band of Cleveland Cavaliers. Should the best-of-seven series go the distance, the 120-acre concrete wasteland known as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Complex will for two weeks stand guard as the focal point of the American sporting universe.
It’s been 40 years since the Warriors last played in the NBA Finals. Much has changed since 1975, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at this duel sports and entertainment complex located adjacent to the Interstate 880 freeway between Hardship Avenue and Felony Way. I thought about this last week while watching the Oakland A’s play host to the New York Yankees inside O.co Coliseum, a fifty year-old multi-use, donut-shaped athletic fortress which has all the charm of a sewage spill. It’s also the permanent home of the Oakland Raiders, a fact you can’t miss by virtue of the ominous presence of Mt. Davis, a five-story wall of usually empty luxury boxes and third deck seating constructed in 1995 to welcome the triumphant return of the Raiders that now blocks out what used to be a bucolic view of the Oakland hills. Actually, make that the “temporary” permanent home, since the Raiders are seeking an early parole from their lease so they can lose early and often in spiffier confines in Southern California.
I’m old enough to remember 1975, and to this fledgling high school jock from Carmel the vast, scruffy patch of Oakland WAS the Mecca of the sporting world. Not only were the Warriors on their way to becoming the king of the NBA mountain, but the Oakland A’s had just won the last three World Series, and John Madden’s rough and rowdy Oakland Raiders were boozin’ and croozin’ their way to four straight AFC Championship games. In addition to this championship bonanza, I lit a lighter to Elton John’s “Funeral For a Friend” at the Oakland Arena (naming rights hadn’t been invented yet), and I suffered third-degree sunburn one hot afternoon on a patch of outfield grass (the non-smokable kind) listening to the Outlaws, Santana, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Frampton bring down the Coliseum at a Bill Graham “Day on the Green” concert.
Meanwhile, here’s what was going on during the mid-1970’s with the vaunted San Francisco sports franchises of the Giants and the 49ers…
(Insert chirping crickets)
Trust me when I tell you this; there was a time when there was no cooler place on the planet than the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Complex. It will be once again beginning this Thursday night. Funny how life evolves.
P.S. For what it’s worth: Warriors in seven.