NBA's Warriors Add Golden State; Drop San Francisco

On July 16, 1971, the National Basketball Association San Francisco Warriors, add Golden State, and take away San Francisco from their name.

The San Diego Evening Tribune reports that the San Francisco Warriors will play half of their home games on the 1972 schedule in Oakland, with the other half to be played in San Diego. With the team moving out of San Francisco, it was also reported that the team would be changing its name to the "Golden State Warriors," so as to identify with both the cities of Oakland and San Diego.

As it turned out, the Warriors only played six games in San Diego that year, and then switched to playing in Oakland full-time. But they kept the "Golden State" name anyway, making them the only team in the NBA to not include their city or state in their name (although California's state motto was "the Golden State.")

The team would also change their logo, which was supposed to compensate for the confusion some fans had when they asked, "Where do the Golden State Warriors play?" The Warriors' new logo featured the outline of California, and had a blue star positioned on the edge of the state where the Bay Area was located.

As unique as it was, the Warriors weren't the only Oakland sports team to go this route.

One year earlier, the Oakland Seals of the NHL changed their name to the "California Golden Seals." Besides dropping the "Oakland" from their title, the Seals had also moved out of San Francisco.

In 1976, the Seals moved east and became the Cleveland Barons, where they lasted for two seasons before folding.

However, the Golden State might drop from the teams name as the team has proposed to build a 17,000-to-19,000-seat waterfront arena on Piers 30 and 32 in San Francisco on a 13-acre site near the Bay Bridge they hope to finish in time for the 2017-18 NBA season, when the team's lease at the Oracle Arena in Oakland expires

Since being named the Golden State Warriors, the Bay Area’s sole basketball franchise has won one NBA Championship coming in the 1974-1975 season, where the team beat the Washington Bullets in a four-game sweep, with home games being played in Oakland and San Francisco.

Since that 1974-1975 season the Warriors have struggled to get back to the NBA Finals obtaining only one Division Title coming in 1976.

Last years playoff appearance for the Warriors was only their third in the last 20 years, and second in the last two years. However, this year they were unable to reach the second round again falling to the higher seeded Los Angeles Clippers

This off-season the Golden State Warriors have made and have tried to make several more moves to bolster their lineup for the upcoming season including trying to trade for Kevin Love who the Warriors General Manager Bob Myers said is the right piece to put the Warriors over the hump and playing for the Western Conference Championship, similar to what he said last year when the club signed Andre Iguodala.

Wilt Chamberlain Scores 100

On March 2, 1962, that Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain scored an incredible 100 points in a single NBA game.  Chamberlain accomplished the feat while playing for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169-147 win over the New York Knicks.

Wilt broke five records in that game: points in a quarter with 31, points in a half with 59, field goals made with 36, field goals attempted with 63 and free throws made with 28.  Only one of the these records has since been broken, as George Gervin and Carmelo Anthony have each scored 33 points in a single quarter.

A few years ago Kobe Bryant came relatively close to the record by dropping 81 points against the Toronto Raptors.

Chamberlain would go on to finish his career with 31,419 points, as he led the NBA in scoring seven times, field goal percentage nine times, minutes played eight times, rebounding eleven times, and assists once.

Despite being such a great scorer, Chamberlain's main weakness was his notoriously poor free throw shooting, where he has the third lowest career free throw percentage in NBA history with 51.1% (based on a minimum of 1,200 attempts). Chamberlain claimed that he intentionally missed free throws so a teammate could get the rebound and score two points instead of one, but later acknowledged that he was a "psycho case" in this matter.

He committed surprisingly few fouls during his NBA career, despite the rugged play in the post. Chamberlain never fouled out of a regular season or playoff game in his 14-year NBA career. His career average was only 2 fouls per game, despite having averaged 45.8 minutes per game over his career. He had 5 seasons where he committed less than 2 fouls per game, with a career low of 1.5 fouls during the 1962 season, in which he also averaged 50.4 points per game. His fouls per 36 minutes (a stat used to compare players that average vastly different minutes) was a remarkable 1.6 per game.

Chamberlain was also responsible for several rule changes, including widening the lane from 12 to 16 feet, as well as changes to rules regarding inbounding the ball and shooting free throws.

Chamberlain is most remembered however for his 100-point game, which is widely considered the greatest basketball record of all-time. He is also only one of two basketball players, the other being Michael Jordan to have averaged at least 30 points per game over their entire career, but Chamberlain is the only player to average over 50 points a game for an entire season.

For his feats, Chamberlain was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, ranked no. 2 in SLAM Magazine's Top 50 NBA Players of All-Time and no. 13 in the ESPN list "Top North American athletes of the century" and voted the second best center of All-Time by ESPN behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on March 6, 2007.

Chamberlain’s record would hold up for over 15 years until another former Los Angeles Laker, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, would break his record. After Abdul-Jabar broke Chamberlain’s record, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant have also surpassed his numbers, out ranking Chamberlain to fifth as they are second, third and fourth respectively behind Abdul-Jabar who is still the NBA’s All-Time leading scorer with 38,387 points.

Chamberlain Scores 72

On Nov. 3 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 72 points for the San Francisco Warriors against the Los Angeles Lakers. This was one of four games in 1962 in which Chamberlain scored at least 72 points. The highlight was the 100 points he scored in March of 1962.

Chamberlain holds numerous NBA all-time records in scoring, rebounding and durability categories. He is the only player to score 100 points in a single NBA game or average more than 40 and 50 points in a season. He also won seven scoring, nine field goal percentage, and eleven rebounding titles, and once even led the league in assists.

Although he suffered a long string of professional losses, Chamberlain had a successful career, winning two NBA championships, earning four regular-season Most Valuable Player awards, the Rookie of the Year award, one NBA Finals MVP award, and being selected to 13 All-Star Games and ten All-NBA First and Second teams.

Chamberlain was subsequently enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, elected into the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team of 1980, and chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History of 1996^.

After his basketball career ended, Chamberlain played volleyball in the short-lived International Volleyball Association, was president of the organization, and is enshrined in the IVA Hall of Fame for his contributions.