After suffering for so long, the Warriors have finally earned a spot in the postseason. This current team worked hard and fought their way to the last spot on the bracket despite outside forces trying to stop them. The players are coming together at the right time, and the fans have a dozen reasons to celebrate.

I, on the other hand, am a bit reserved.

It's great to see my favorite team in all of sports finally achieve a winning record and a playoff spot after so long. But that's the thing: it has taken so long--too long, actually--for this to happen. I've been following the team since the days of Hardaway and Mullin, and while the various squads and lineups over the years have been far from perfect, there's just no way, even in retrospect, I could believe that the team's year-to-year records properly reflected where the team should be.

We should've been playoff-bound in '96: Sprewell was still on the rise, Adelman was the coach, and we were recovered from the injury-plagued '95 season. Perhaps drafting Joe Smith and replacing Tim Hardaway with Bimbo Coles did us in, but those 36 wins could've easily been 40 or 41.

We should've made the postseason in '99: the hectic nature of the lockout-shortened season meant anything could happen, and we did come close. Unfortunately Jamison wasn't given enough chances to develop, and I knew from the start that Carlesimo was not a good choice for a coach, not to mention we got screwed in the Spree situation (especially since he went on to lead his new team to the Finals).

We should've been in the playoffs in '03: Gilbert Arenas was making enough noise to put us back on the NBA relevance map, and Jamison was having an all-star year despite being unfairly snubbed. Musselman said the team just ran out of fuel being so young, but I still expected better out of such a squad.

We should've been in '04: two of our top rising stars were gone, but in their place were some capable veterans that, on paper, seemingly improved the team. Of course, on paper means nothing when your starting point guard spends most of the year injured.

And finally, '06 should've been our year: you remember how we started that season on top of the world after finishing the previous season in similar fashion. Yes, the coach sucked, and yes, Baron got hurt again, but the drop-off that resulted from those factors were more than expected considering who was left and how things started off.

Obviously there are big reasons why we couldn't succeed in the past decade (bad drafts and signings, etc.), but it only explains part of the story. Looking back, I can only picture bad management impacting half of those non-playoff years. The rest I can only attribute to bad luck.

So as we see our beloved team finally make it into the postseason, my heart is filled not with celebration but with a sense of belated justice and redemption. The fact that we're getting excited over the lowest possible spot in the playoff bracket says a lot about where this team really is. I'm happy to see the Warriors succeed on this level, but at the same time, it was long overdue.

All I can ask for now is that they leave the orange unis and throwback fits permanently locked in storage where they belong. :P Hey, while we're closing ugly chapters of the past, you know...