Al Attles, a high school star in Newark, has been with the Warriors for a remarkable 56 years.
Al Attles had a much different plan for his life when he finished his college career at North Carolina A&T in 1960. He would return to the city where he was born, grab a whistle and clipboard, and become a middle-school basketball coach.
He would make Newark his home again, and who knows, maybe he would stay forever. But an NBA team called the Philadelphia Warriors drafted him in the fifth round and, after a successful tryout, offered him a $5,500 contract -- that was for the entire season -- to play for a team with a pretty good center named Wilt Chamberlain on its roster.
He took the offer. Fifty-six years and one cross-country move later, Attles is still working for that team. He doesn't just know the history of the now Golden State Warriors. He is the history, cashing checks from the team for longer than 22 other current NBA franchise have even existed. Put it this way: Dwight D. Eisenhower was finishing out his second term when Attles donned the Warriors uniform for the first time.
He was there for the good times, coaching the team to its first NBA title when his underdog Warriors stunned the Washington Bullets in 1975. He was there for the bad times, too, and there were plenty of years along the way when Golden State was the epicenter of NBA irrelevance.
Now, he is there for this current Golden State run, and this is something else entirely. Attles can only watch now at what the Warriors accomplishing with the same awe of everyone else who follows professional basketball.
"Oh, I've been very, very happy," he said over the phone in a voice that makes James Earl Jones sound like a soprano. "When you've been with a team as long as I've been with them, you've seen the ups and downs. It's great to see the Warriors where they are now."
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Attles -- once a coach, always a coach -- wasn't quite ready to talk about history just yet. He was willing to concede this: Steph Curry and Co. are in a good position as the NBA Finals moves to Cleveland tonight, and we will allow that understatement.
He wouldn't say it, but I can: This is thing is over. The Warriors are 87-14 this season. The Cavaliers need to win four out of the next five games now. Impossible? No, but unless LeBron James does something extraordinary in the coming days, certainly not very likely.
Already, people around the NBA are debating where these Warriors belong in pantheon of great teams. Magic Johnson weighed in, insisting that his "Showtime" Lakers would have beaten them. Scottie Pippen did as well, predicting that his great 1996 Bulls team would have swept the Warriors in a playoff series.
To both, and everyone else, I would respond like this: Can't we just sit back and enjoy what we're witnessing here?
Attles certainly is. He had an inkling that the Warriors would be very good again this season after winning it all last spring. Who didn't? But a record 73 victories in the regular season? Erasing a 3-1 deficit in the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma Thunder?
"You know they were coming off a very nice year last year and most of the players were still here," Attles said. "I knew they had a chance to be pretty good, but you never want to get too far ahead of yourself."
Attles never did as a player, or for that matter, in life. The Weequahic High star was never the best player on the NBA court -- he had the distinction of being the team's second-leading scorer (with 17) the night Wilt scored 100 -- but he was always among the toughest. He became known as the "Destroyer" after accidentally breaking the jaw of an opponent.
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Now 79, he has been a player, a player-coach, a full-time head coach, a general manager, a vice president, a consultant, and at one point even a part-owner with the franchise. He is now an ambassador, a fixture at home games and an active part of the team's community relations department.
"I joke with my wife, 'They haven't caught up with me yet!'" he said. "They've been very, very good to me and I feel like I owe them something. Anything I can do, I want to help because I appreciate the relationship here."
He knows that, for many of the team's new fans, the team's history began when Curry started draining 3 pointers. But the older generation can still point to the 1975 championship banner in the rafters, not too far from Attles' retired No. 16, or just to the smiling Attles himself.
He has seen it all with the Warriors franchise, 56 years (and counting) worth of memories. Soon, as this team makes a special kind of history, he'll have a pretty good view from a parade float.
Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.