Warriors Finally Have Look of a Winner

When Mickael Pietrus joined the Golden State Warriors two years ago, he heard the same lament almost every time he went to the grocery store or the post office in his Oakland hills neighborhood.

“People, they come up to you and say, ‘We love the Warriors, but you [must] stop losing now,”’ the swingman recalled with a smile. “The fans here, they are very frustrated with the Warriors. It’s been forever that they’ve been losing, a very long time.”

Eleven years, to be exact -- 11 years of roster overhauls, coaching changes and dramatic about-faces in franchise strategy, with no winning records or playoff berths to show for it. The Warriors have been out of the playoffs for longer than any NBA franchise, beating down their loyal fans with monotonous mediocrity.

But there’s a new feeling in the neighborhoods and parks of Oakland, a passionate basketball town that sent Bill Russell, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd and several others to the NBA. The Warriors logo is on billboards in the fashionable Montclair district, and on banner-draped fences in gritty East Oakland. It’s in sidewalk graffiti and on the T-shirts of kids in pickup games.

The Warriors have been winning consistently since last February, when they finished last season with 18 wins in 28 games. If they keep up the strong play behind their 12-6 start to this season, Baron Davis and his new teammates just might give hoops-crazy Oakland something to cheer in April.

“We’re showing flashes of brilliance,” said Davis, who arrived in a deadline-day trade with New Orleans last season. “The key now is to sustain it. People are excited about us in town. I hear about it all the time when I’m out there in the community. But it won’t mean a thing if we can’t keep it going.”

Even after dropping three of their last four games, the Warriors began a five-game road trip this weekend with their best 22-game start since 1991. They briefly reached first place in the Pacific Division for the first time since 1992.

This run began when Davis arrived back home in California, frustrated after three injury-plagued seasons with the Hornets. He was itching for a new sense of purpose, and the two-time All-Star immediately took to his underachieving new team.

Though he was once the epitome of the shoot-first point guard, Davis has transformed himself into a remarkable team player. He is second in the NBA this season with nearly 10 assists per game, easily the highest average of his career -- and though his scoring is down, he’s never afraid to take big shots such as the overtime 3-pointer that beat Seattle on Tuesday night.

The Warriors love everything about Davis, from his reckless drives and daredevil passes to the swagger he brings to a franchise beaten down by 11 years of losing. The Warriors have much the same roster that started last season 16-38 before Davis’ arrival, but they’ve won 31 of their 50 games since.

Center Adonal Foyle, the franchise’s career leader in blocked shots, believes Golden State was a team of supporting players in search of a captain until Davis arrived.

“We have a tremendous amount of talent, but that talent never could get together under the same banner,” Foyle said. “With Baron running the show and taking charge, we’re a different team. We’ve all become better players by that addition.”

Fifth-year shooting guard Jason Richardson has undergone the most significant transformation with Davis by his side. Building on his impressive progress last season, Richardson has emerged as a dependable, aggressive scorer and a capable defender, while his teammates and opposing coaches tout him for his first All-Star selection.

What’s more, Golden State hasn’t been this much fun to watch in years. Coach Mike Montgomery’s up-tempo approach has turned the moribund Warriors into a show: Davis has produced a handful of eye-popping moments in every game with no-look passes and impossibly tough layups, while two-time dunk contest champion Richardson is polishing his skills.

It’s all nearly surreal to Bay Area fans, who have stayed remarkably loyal to the NBA’s most consistently dismal franchise of the last decade. Even when they were among the league’s worst teams, the Arena was consistently full -- and now the Warriors have set single-season attendance records in each of the past three seasons, with another expected this year.

“Anybody who’s lived here knows how much basketball and the Warriors mean to people,” said Montgomery, the Stanford coach for 18 years before taking his NBA shot. “They’ll be here for us forever, but we’d like to send them home happy a little more often than we did last year.”

But don’t think the Warriors are a finished product yet.

They lead the league in 3-point attempts, taking an astonishing 496 in their first 20 games, yet they shoot one of the NBA’s lowest percentages. Golden State frequently abandons any pretense of inside play when facing an opponent with strong interior defenders, with Davis, Richardson, Mike Dunleavy and even power forward Troy Murphy content to stand on the perimeter firing jumpers.

Sometimes it doesn’t work: Though the Warriors set season highs with 15 3-pointers on 37 attempts in Wednesday’s game against Houston, they lost in overtime when they couldn’t protect an 11-point lead in the final 4 minutes of regulation.

Clearly, this transformation won’t happen overnight -- but in Oakland, patience is part of the game.

“We’re learning how to play when the other team knows you’re good,” Richardson said. “You have to find ways to win games. It’s all part of the process, but we have to find ways. That’s part of the adjustment when you become a good team.”