Golden State Warriors’ Mt. Rushmore delivered through 61 years of experience

Mount Rushmore National Memorial depicts four previous United States Presidents, with its presence leading to continually ongoing debates about similar structures in sporting aspects. In a recent interview with SeeHendo, four-time NBA champion Draymond Green proclaimed who he’d have chiseled in granite on his Golden State Warriors’ Mt. Rushmore.

Green went with current teammates Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala, along with ‘Run TMC’ star Chris Mullin. While these are respectable selections, my vision of a parody of the Rushmore monument glistens in the rising morning sun, illuminating the facial silhouettes of the players representing the four eras of memories of the Golden State Warriors, which my 61 years of experiences of the team from The Bay have spanned.

Wilt Chamberlain, Rick Barry, Chris Mullin, and the Splash Brothers, represent the richest moments of Golden State Warriors’ history.

Wilt Chamberlain’s stature in the league is well-renowned, holding countless NBA records many believe will never be broken. He was a mountain of a man and I was fortunate to witness a classic matchup when Chamberlain went head-to-head with Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell.

The San Francisco Warriors took on the Celtics in the 1964 NBA Finals. I was there for game four, and though my seats were as far away from the court as one could be to sit down, I was there to see Chamberlain pull in 38 rebounds in a game the Warriors unfortunately lost 98-95.

Warrior legend Rick Barry played the crucial role in bringing the Warriors their first ever NBA championship in 1975. I was a season ticket holder that season and sat seven rows behind the Warriors bench at Oracle. The Finals games actually took place at Cow Palace, and although the seats for games two and three were extremely disappointing, I was still in the building. The Warriors swept the heavy favored Bullets in four games, with Barry winning Finals MVP.

The ‘Run TMC trio’ made Warriors’ basketball so entertaining to watch. It’s regrettable that Don Nelson traded Mitch Richmond to Sacramento for the rights to Billy Owens, effectively ending the era. The DNA of Run-TMC pulsates through the veins of Warriors’ culture and will be apart of Warriors’ history for generations. Mullin represents that era as a Golden State legend, with his number 17 jersey retired by the franchise.

Finally, the backcourt duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, dubbed ‘The Splash Brothers’, are, in my humble opinion, the best combo to ever play the game. I just have two unfulfilled items remaining on my Warriors bucket list — to see Curry and Thompson win their fifth and sixth Larry O’Brien Trophies, and the impending day their jerseys are hoisted to the rafters of Chase Center.

The final curtain call is coming soon, and the opportunity to witness the end of this era, along with those of Chamberlain, Barry and Mullin, makes me one of the most fortunate fans ever in Warriors history.