Warriors-Mavericks playoff matchup brings back “We Believe” memories
NBA playoffs: 2007 Warriors were just the third No. 8 seed to beat
top-seeded team, Dirk Nowitzki's Mavericks
>The Golden State Warriors Jason Richardson encourages the crowd to
make noise against the Dallas Mavericks at the Oracle Arena in Oakland,
Calif. on Sunday, April 29, 2007. The Warriors beat the Mavs 102-99 to
take a 3-1 lead in the best of 7 playoff series. (Dan Honda/Bay Area
News Group)
>The Golden State Warriors Jason Richardson encourages the crowd to
make noise against the Dallas Mavericks at the Oracle Arena in Oakland,
Calif. on Sunday, April 29, 2007. The Warriors beat the Mavs 102-99 to
take a 3-1 lead in the best of 7 playoff series. (Dan Honda/Bay Area
News Group)
By SHAYNA RUBIN | srubin@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: May 17, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: May 17, 2022 at 7:49 a.m.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/05/17/warriors-mavericks-playoff-matchup-brings-back-we-believe-memories/

SAN FRANCISCO — Steph Curry remembers when the “We Believe” era was all
the Warriors had. That whirlwind 2007 playoff run was still the pride
and joy of a Warriors fanbase desperate for something to cheer for.

On video segments played over Oracle Arena’s big board during games
early in Curry’s Warriors’ career, season ticket holders asked for their
favorite memories would reminisce about the eight-seed Warriors
upsetting the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks headed by MVP Dirk Nowitzki in
the first round.

“That was always the one,” Curry said. “That, or Baron Davis dunking on
Andrei Kirilenko the same year. That was it.”

It took just a couple years for Curry to not only give Warriors fans
something new to cheer about, but loft Golden State into the NBA history
books as the team of the 2010s: Three championships and five Finals
appearances, a 73-9 season, two MVP awards. A dynasty.

Now the Mavericks and Warriors are meeting in the playoffs for just the
second time, 15 years after the “We Believe” Warriors stamped out the
title favorites in six games. And roles are flipped, if not perfectly.

Led by 23-year-old Luka Doncic, the Mavericks leapt to the Western
Conference finals as the No. 4 seed having won their first playoff
series since 2011 against the Utah Jazz and upsetting the No. 1 seed
Phoenix Suns in seven games in the semifinals. The Mavericks aren’t a
fringe playoff team by any means, but they’re tasked with challenging
the team of this generation.

Led by a championship core, the Warriors are the old guard hoping to
hold off Doncic and the next generation for as long as possible. They
are a team of destiny aged into a historic team looking to make their
sixth Finals appearance in eight years. A series win would add a jewel
to the legacies of Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Steve Kerr.

[video: Best of We Believe Warriors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVQUel1Ssq8]

For the Warriors franchise, this Western Conference finals matchup
should serve as a moment to reflect. But it’s also a good time to
remember that series in ’07.

The Warriors used a 16-5 end-of-season run to capture the eighth seed as
a fringe playoff team. Dallas was coming off a 67-win season, one of the
best in league history, with the league MVP and a fully healthy roster.
The Mavs were in their seventh consecutive playoff run, two years
removed from an NBA Finals appearance. Golden State hadn’t won a series
in 16 years.

Coach Don Nelson used his “Nellie ball” scheme — a fast-paced offense
that teams including the Warriors use today, but was not widely accepted
then — with Golden State’s breakout stars in Baron Davis, Jason
Richardson and Stephen Jackson to out-run a more traditional Dallas team.

The Warriors became the third eighth-seed team in NBA history to
eliminate the first-seed team. The only other two before them were the
New York Knicks in 1999 and Denver Nuggets in 1994. Despite the Utah
Jazz eliminating them in five games the next series, that first-round
series is still celebrated as an all-time Warriors moment.

Kerr was in the TNT broadcasting chair for Game 6, the Warriors’
clincher at Oracle Arena. He remembers feeling the old arena shake.

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“I probably said on the air it was the loudest arena I had ever heard in
my life,” Kerr said. “Oracle was just going crazy. Such a great moment
in Warriors history and a devastating one in Mavs history since they won
67 games.”

The Warriors have since added plenty of memories for Warriors fans to
brag about, Kerr said, “We’re not the Celtics or the Lakers where it’s
40 years of hanging banners.”

But the “We Believe” playoff run set the foundation for success to come.

“There’s a real vibe with this organization that’s resonated with the
Bay Area,” Kerr said. “There’s a love affair that’s here and you could
feel it that night when the Warriors knocked off Dallas in ’07 and in
the last 15 years since then, a lot of great things happened since then.”

--
Shayna Rubin | Oakland Athletics reporter