Golden State Warriors

The Golden State Warriors are a professional basketball franchise based in San Francisco, California, competing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. Founded in 1946 as the Philadelphia Warriors, they were one of the league's original teams and won the BAA's first championship in 1947. Over the decades, the franchise has gone through several cities, names, and eras before returning to San Francisco — the city that gave it its first West Coast home — where it has since become one of the most decorated and recognizable clubs in professional basketball. The franchise has accumulated seven championships across more than 75 seasons of NBA play.

Early History and Arrival in San Francisco

The Warriors were founded in 1946 and were originally based in Philadelphia. As one of the original members of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), the team won the league's first championship behind the play of future Hall of Fame forward Joe Fulks, the BAA's inaugural scoring leader. The Warriors lost in the BAA Finals the following season, and in 1949 the team became part of the NBA when the BAA merged with the National Basketball League (NBL).

The team won a second championship in 1956, still based in Philadelphia, before a major turning point arrived at the close of the 1950s. In 1959, the franchise drafted Philadelphia native Wilt Chamberlain, a center who stood 7 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 275 pounds. Chamberlain's impact on the game was so profound that the NBA instituted several rule changes to limit his statistical dominance. In 1962, playing for the Warriors, he scored 100 points in a single game against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania — an NBA record that still stands.

A group of San Francisco Bay Area investors purchased the franchise after the 1961–62 season and relocated the team west, where it became known as the San Francisco Warriors. The franchise spent nearly two decades in its founding city of Philadelphia before making the move to California. Without a dedicated arena in place, the Warriors played most of their early home games at the Cow Palace in Daly City — just south of San Francisco — until 1964, when they moved to what is now known as the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco's Civic Center neighborhood.

The Warriors reached the NBA Finals in 1964 with a team built around Chamberlain, and again in 1967 with a substantially rebuilt squad that featured forward Rick Barry, center Nate Thurmond, and shooting guard Jeff Mullins, losing on both occasions. The 1967 Finals defeat carried particular sting because it came at the hands of the Philadelphia 76ers — the team to which the Warriors had traded Chamberlain two years earlier.

Becoming the Golden State Warriors

Former Warriors player Al Attles took over as the team's head coach during the 1969–70 season, beginning a long association with the franchise that would define much of its early Oakland identity. In 1971, the franchise — which had been experiencing years of disappointing financial returns in San Francisco — relocated across the Bay to Oakland and changed its name to the Golden State Warriors before the 1971–72 season. The name was chosen to suggest that the team represented the entire state of California rather than any single city. That season, almost all home games were played in Oakland, with six contests held in San Diego and none in San Francisco or Daly City. The move made the Warriors — as they remain today — the only NBA franchise whose name does not reference either their home city or their state, though "Golden State" is a widely recognized nickname for California.

Despite the geographic shift, the franchise quickly found its footing in Oakland. The Warriors made the playoffs from 1971 to 1977, with the exception of 1974, and won their first NBA championship on the West Coast in the 1974–75 season. Golden State defeated the heavily favored Washington Bullets in a four-game sweep, a result widely regarded as one of the most surprising outcomes in NBA Finals history. That team was coached by Attles and led on the court by Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes. Barry was named Finals MVP after averaging 30.6 points per game during the regular season, while also leading the league in both free throw percentage and steals per game and finishing among the league leaders in assists. Wilkes earned NBA Rookie of the Year honors for his contributions that season.

The level of play declined sharply after that championship era. The Warriors finished last in their division in five of the nine seasons between 1977–78 and 1985–86. In the late 1980s, the team generated renewed interest under head coach Don Nelson, whose up-tempo style relied on smaller, versatile players and an emphasis on scoring over traditional defensive principles. While Nelson's Warriors teams were entertaining and competitive, they did not advance past the second round of the playoffs during his tenure. The franchise spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s in a prolonged rebuilding phase, largely absent from postseason contention.

Return to San Francisco and Chase Center

After playing in Oakland for nearly 50 years — first at the Oakland Coliseum Arena and later at Oracle Arena — the Golden State Warriors announced plans to move back across the Bay to San Francisco, returning to the city where the franchise originally established its West Coast identity as the San Francisco Warriors.

The plan for building a new arena was announced on May 22, 2012, at a Warriors press conference at the proposed site, attended by then–San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, then–NBA Commissioner David Stern, then–California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, and Warriors staff and city officials. The initial proposal called for a waterfront arena at Piers 30–32, but that plan was later abandoned due to environmental and logistical concerns. On April 19, 2014, the Warriors purchased a 12-acre site owned by Salesforce.com in the Mission Bay neighborhood for an undisclosed sum.

The Golden State Warriors and GSW Arena LLC officially broke ground on January 17, 2017, for Chase Center, a sports and entertainment complex in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood. After two years of public planning and environmental review, construction proceeded and the arena was scheduled to open for the start of the 2019–20 NBA season. The $1.4 billion mixed-use development includes an 18,064-seat arena, two office buildings, 100,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, and 3.2 acres of public plazas and open space collectively known as Thrive City. The project was privately financed by the Warriors' ownership group and is, according to the team, the only privately financed arena or stadium project built on private land in the modern era of professional sports.

The arena had its grand opening on September 6, 2019, with a concert by Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. Named for its naming rights sponsor JPMorgan Chase under a deal announced in January 2016, Chase Center replaced Oracle Arena as the Warriors' home and the team returned to San Francisco after 48 years in Oakland ahead of the 2019–20 season. The arena is widely regarded as the capstone in the transformation of San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood, completing what had been a long-term effort to convert a deteriorating industrial zone into a mixed-use urban district with entertainment, office, and public open space components.

The Modern Dynasty

The Warriors' resurgence began in earnest during the 2012–13 season, after a prolonged period of struggle that had kept the franchise largely out of playoff contention for much of the preceding two decades. The team's turnaround accelerated rapidly under the influence of point guard Stephen Curry, who had been drafted seventh overall in 2009 and developed into one of the most influential offensive players in league history.

After a first-round playoff exit in 2014, the Warriors hired head coach Steve Kerr, who had won five NBA titles as a player with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs. The move proved transformative. Golden State posted a league-high 67 wins in 2014–15 and won the NBA title for the first time in forty years, defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in six games. That same spring, Curry was named the 2014–15 NBA Most Valuable Player — the first Warrior to receive that award since Wilt Chamberlain in 1960.

The following season, Golden State set the NBA regular season record with 73 wins, surpassing the mark previously held by the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls. Curry was named the league's MVP for a second consecutive year, becoming the first unanimous MVP in NBA history. However, the Warriors lost the 2016 NBA Finals 4–3 to the Cleveland Cavaliers after holding a 3–1 series lead, one of the most discussed collapses in recent sports history. Golden State responded by signing All-Star forward Kevin Durant that summer, and the franchise proceeded to win back-to-back NBA championships in 2017 and 2018, both times defeating the Cavaliers in the Finals.

Durant departed the franchise after the 2018–19 season following a torn Achilles injury suffered during the Finals, and the Warriors — also without an injured Curry and Klay Thompson for extended stretches — missed the playoffs in both 2019–20 and 2020–21. The franchise rebuilt around its core of Curry, Thompson, and Draymond Green, and in 2021–22, Curry delivered a fourth championship, leading Golden State past the Boston Celtics in six games and earning his first NBA Finals MVP award in the process. That same season, Curry surpassed Ray Allen to become the NBA's all-time leader in three-pointers made. On June 16, 2022, the Warriors won their seventh NBA title, with Curry, Thompson, Green, and Andre Iguodala each claiming their fourth championship ring as Warriors. The franchise held its first-ever championship parade in San Francisco in June 2022, having staged its previous three celebrations in Oakland.

The Warriors' emphasis on three-point shooting, pace-and-space offense, and team-oriented play influenced how the game is approached at all levels, and the franchise is widely credited with accelerating the broader NBA shift toward perimeter-oriented basketball.

2024–25 Season

The 2024–25 season presented significant challenges for the Warriors. Stephen Curry sustained a hamstring injury that sidelined him for an extended stretch of the season, and the team acquired veteran forward Jimmy Butler via trade midseason in an effort to bolster their roster depth. Head coach Steve Kerr publicly acknowledged the difficulty of maintaining competitiveness without Curry in the lineup, as the team worked to stay within playoff contention during his absence. Curry resumed on-court workouts during his recovery but was held out of additional games as the franchise managed his return carefully.

Notable Players and Retired Numbers

Across their long history in the Bay Area and beyond, the Warriors have featured some of basketball's most celebrated players. The franchise has retired the following numbers in recognition of players and figures central to its history: #13 (Wilt Chamberlain), #14 (Tom Meschery), #16 (Al Attles), #17 (Chris Mullin), #24 (Rick Barry), and #42 (Nate Thurmond). Each honoree contributed meaningfully to a different chapter of the franchise's development, from the BAA championship years through the 1975 title run and into the modern era.

In the modern era, Stephen Curry stands as the franchise's defining player. He won back-to-back NBA MVPs in 2015 and 2016 — the second award making him the first unanimous MVP in league history — and has four championship rings, a Finals MVP, and the NBA's all-time three-point record to his name. Head coach Steve Kerr, who won five titles as a player, has added four more as Golden State's bench leader since 2014, cementing his standing as