Frank's Place: Warriors' departure from Philly still hurts

I didn't leave my heart in San Francisco. The Philadelphia Warriors, without my consent, took it there.

For me, the Warriors' sudden and unexpected departure for California in 1962 was a sting as sharp as death's. And while healing came with time, wisdom did not. I didn't understand the move then, and, 53 years later, I still don't.

This week, seeing and hearing the Warriors' name so often during these 2015 NBA Finals, I had to wonder again why my beloved basketball franchise abandoned me.

If, as we like to believe, Philadelphia is a basketball town, then the Warriors should have been a bedrock civic institution, like TastyKake or the Museum of Art.

Instead, despite an unusually successful history, a hometown superstar who happened to be the world's greatest player, a supporting cast teeming with Philadelphia talent, and attendance that was average at worst, they left.

Why?

It wasn't because they were perennial losers seeking a fresh start elsewhere.

In 16 Philadelphia seasons, the Warriors reached the playoffs 12 times, made it to six Eastern Conference finals and three NBA Finals, and won two league championships, the latter just six years before their relocation.

It wasn't because they were short on talent.

Warriors players made 27 All-Star Game appearances, won nine scoring and four rebounding titles, two rookie of the year trophies, and an MVP award.

They weren't lacking local appeal.

Seven players on the 1955-56 championship team had Philadelphia ties. And during their last several seasons here, they started four Philadelphians - all future Hall of Famers.

They weren't coming off a horrible season.

The 1961-62 Warriors went 49-31, second to Boston in the East. They weren't eliminated until the last two seconds of Game 7 of the conference finals, when Sam Jones sank one of those dagger shots the Celtics always managed.

They certainly didn't lack a star attraction.

In 1961-62, their superstar, Wilt Chamberlain, had the greatest single season by an individual in the history of professional sports.

He averaged 50 points and 25 rebounds a game. He was on the floor for all but eight of the 3,290 minutes the Warriors played. He scored 100 points in one historic performance. In another, he lit up Bill Russell, arguably the greatest defender of all time, for 62.

And while this city gave the team more talent than affection, attendance at Convention Hall and the Arena wasn't the problem.

The average crowd that final season was 5,579, disappointing given all the Warriors' assets, but not extraordinarily so. That figure actually was fifth best in an NBA where no team drew more than 8,396 a game. In comparison, the champion Celtics' average attendance was 6,852.

So, what happened?

If there was any logic behind the move, it died with owner Eddie Gottlieb, in 1979.

Maybe Gottlieb, 64 and as weary as the bags under his eyes implied, was ready to retire. Maybe he was promised an expansion franchise to replace the Warriors here. Maybe he instinctively knew that one day soon he would no longer be able to afford Chamberlain. Or perhaps the offer was just too rich to resist.

We'll never know the real story, but contemporary and subsequent accounts reveal a likely scenario:

Four years earlier, the Lakers had moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. With St. Louis the closest NBA city to L.A., owners were eager to offset the expense of West Coast trips by adding a second California franchise.

In 1962, several San Francisco businessmen, backed by the credit-card pioneer Diners Club, entered the picture. But there was a catch to their interest: They didn't want just any team. They wanted one that could be successful immediately.

Given Chamberlain's historic season, and Philadelphia's seemingly ho-hum reaction to him and the Warriors, they focused on Gottlieb, who purchased the team for $25,000 in 1952.

When the San Franciscans offered $850,000, an astounding $600,000 more than the previous NBA-best sales price, Gottlieb bit.

"He was getting older and tired after so many years in sports," said Rich Westcott, who authored Gottlieb's biography, The Mogul, "and retirement seemed to be increasingly appealing.

"Gotty wasn't rich and had to run the team with money out of his own [and the minority owners'] pockets. Expenses, especially increasing players salaries, were rising, and it was becoming harder financially."

And so, in a story sadly reminiscent of that of Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's, the pieces of silver were exchanged, the treachery was consummated, and the Warriors went west.

"Thus the city with 'the richest pro basketball tradition of all,' in the words of [sportswriter] Leonard Koppett, had no team," Robert Cherry wrote in his Chamberlain biography, Wilt.

There's no universal response to a franchise loss. Baltimore and Brooklyn continue to grieve. But cities such as Boston and L.A. barely appear to have noticed.

Some older Philadelphians try to keep alive the memory of baseball's A's, but the Warriors are neither lamented nor regularly recalled.

Even at the time, their departure provoked surprisingly little public outcry or newspaper interest. The nine-team NBA of 1962 wasn't the behemoth NBA of 2015. Survival was fragile, franchise moves commonplace.

That was little comfort for a 12-year-old boy who listened to their games on radio, who imagined the players as gods and the team as eternal, who until the day they left had never really experienced cruelty.

The 76ers arrived from Syracuse in 1963. But it wasn't until Chamberlain returned and they won a title in 1967 that they felt like mine.

A child's loss can be acute, lasting. So, every time I see "Warriors" on Steph Curry's uniform, I still feel a twinge of recognition.

Because, after all the sports loves of my life, to paraphrase a song set in California, "MacArthur Park," I'll be looking at them.

And wondering: Why.

@philafitz