Do You Remember Where You Were When Baron Davis Pulled Off One Of The Most Lethal Dunks In NBA Playoff History?
The date was May 11, 2007. If you can believe it, this was a time in which the Warriors were not some superteam that everyone hated, but instead were a fun underdog story of a team that had just pulled off a MASSIVE upset to get past the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks in the first round. That gave them a date with a Jazz team that had gone 51-31 during the year and also had a first round upset of the #3 seed Houston Rockets the round before as well. It was clear that UTA was the better team, winning the series in 5 games, but that in no way takes away from what was by far the best play of the series, and really one of the best playoff dunks I can remember.
You see these Warriors were awesome to root for. With Baron Davis playing out of his mind, it was hard to find a hatable guy on the roster. Between Davis, a young Al Harrington, Captain Jack, a young Monta Ellis, Jason Richardson, Ike Diogu, all being led by the hilarious Don Nelson, during this playoff run they were America’s team. This Warriors team was honestly ahead of it’s time. They were a high scoring, three point shooting, fast paced team that played absolutely zero defense. I would love to see this collection of talent play in today’s NBA. During their improbable run back in 2007, it was impossible to not root for them.
I’ll never forget, back then I was just a young Greenie out in Tempe, a sophomore at Arizona State. A lot of my close friends were from Oakland, so we all got together at our buddy’s house for every Warriors game during this playoff run (sadly this was the brutal 24 Celts win season for me). What you may not understand is back then, dudes from Oakland loooooved to talk about how “this was the year” no matter who the team was combined with the fact that it was in fact, never their year. The Raiders had just drafted JaMarcus Russell (who I personally witnessed throw a 50 yard bomb to beat ASU as the clock struck zero at home), the A’s were coming off a 93 win season (even though they would end up stinking and win just 76 games), so when it was time to watch the Warriors first pull off the upset of DAL, you can imagine how cocky these assholes were. Back then it wasn’t that big a deal to let them have their moment, because they weren’t the annoying insufferable Warriors fans we all know and hate today. They had actually followed their team their whole life and were finally getting a taste of success. I was happy for them.
But back to the dunk. If you remember this was Deron Williams’ second year in the league, and while he was never know as a true lockdown defender, you have to admit he put up absolutely no resistance on this play. That then gave Davis a few seconds to size up AK47, who if you played fantasy basketball back in 2007, everyone wanted. The guy was a box score monster, and one of the best defenders in the league at the time. To say he got put in a grave would be a gigantic understatement. Anyone who had watched Baron Davis play knew he could dunk, but I don’t think anyone saw something like this coming. Davis would go on to play 13 years in the NBA, but in my opinion this dunk became his defining NBA moment. When you combine the moment, the teams involved, the situation of being down in an 0-2 hole and coming back to the Bay and winning a game with that sort of exclamation point, and the fact that it happened on Andre Kirilenko it becomes the perfect storm of awesome NBA playoff moments.
Sadly, despite winning 48 games the next year the Warriors would miss the playoffs, and wouldn’t make it back for another 5 years. Don’t feel sorry for them though, because those years of futility where they had multiple seasons under 30 wins ultimately netted them Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, so I don’t think any Warriors fan is complaining.
What a dunk though, sheesh.