With Warriors in finals, why won’t the media just say...

Even as the Golden State Warriors were thumping the Houston Rockets in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals, the city of Oakland was suffering a humiliating defeat. In fact, it was nearly shut out.

There was barely a mention of the word “Oakland” on the national telecast of the Warriors clinching their first spot in the NBA Finals in 40 years. It was “Bay Area” this and “Oracle” that, as if the game was being played in some mythical land called “Golden State.”

Nearly all the gauzy cutaway shots before the commercial breaks showed all the usual Oakland icons: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Transamerica Pyramid, cable cars and Alamo Square. All that was missing was a clip of Ed Lee and Madison Bumgarner sharing a loaf of sourdough.

As a longtime Golden State Warriors fan and an Oakland resident, I want to hear the national media say one thing after they stream into town to cover the NBA Finals: “Oakland.”

I want to hear Oakland, I want to see Oakland, and I want the national media to let the rest of the world know they came to Oakland ... after leaving their five-star accommodations in San Francisco.

‘What’s my name?’

It’s time for Oakland to metaphorically summon its inner Muhammad Ali. During a 1967 bout, when confronted by an opponent who refused to call him by his Muslim name, Ali pummeled the fighter while asking, “What’s my name?”

It’s “Oakland.”

Oakland is sick of being largely invisible to the national TV audience, its only representation an occasional nighttime shot of Jack London Square that looks like, well, a dock at night. Oakland is tired of being dismissed as the foster parent of a franchise that never took our name.

Visit Oakland, the city’s tourism arm, felt the same fatigue at seeing Fisherman’s Wharf shots during Warriors games. So Kim Bardakian, its director of public relations, approached ESPN/ABC producers with suggested locations to shoot in Oakland. On Wednesday, she said the sister networks “committed to using Oakland imagery 75 percent of the time during the Finals.”

It’s better than nothing — but doesn’t this split deal send the message that 25 percent of Oakland’s appeal is its proximity to San Francisco?

One would think broadcasters would be hungry to show Oakland, thanks to the national media’s recent infatuation with the city’s more twee quarters. As one of the New York Times’ top “45 Places to Go in 2012” (along with Havana and Chattanooga, Tenn.), hardly a New York minute goes by without some publication or another lauding Oakland as the new Brooklyn.

But that hasn’t stopped national broadcasters from invariably saying they’re “heading back to the San Francisco Bay Area.” No, they’re heading back to Oakland, where the Warriors have played since 1971 and have been ravenously supported — even during the decades when they reeked. Those dark days are known as the Todd Fuller Era for those of us who still flinch at the deepest pain.

Sharing the blame

Some of us Oaklanders — even transplants like me — share responsibility for erasing Oakland from the national consciousness. When traveling to other parts of the country, how many of you have said you’re from “the Bay Area,” or worse, “San Francisco”?

From now on, don’t. Just say “Oakland.”

That also goes for the Warriors themselves. The team, which has never adopted its host city’s name, plans to depart Oakland for the purportedly lucrative San Francisco market starting with the 2018-19 season.

Remember, the Warriors chose Oakland after a nine-year, poorly supported pit stop in San Francisco. These days, the team plays up the San Francisco era with its “The City” iconography, a throwback logo featuring the Golden Gate Bridge. Back in those days, though, fans from “The City” largely ignored the team, which drew a paltry average of 4,533 customers a night.

Support swelled when the Warriors moved east across a different bridge. That’s why this long-awaited return to the NBA Finals should be about retroactively rewarding Oakland for its loyalty. The team has always been a good draw, even attracting the league’s ninth-highest attendance in the 2008-09 season with an abysmal 29-53 record and Ronny Turiaf — bless his leap-too-early, shot-blocking heart — seeing way too much floor time.

Until that next Warriors diaspora begins, national media types seem more comfortable with an O-word Oaklanders don’t need to hear: “Oracle.” An arena is not a city, and a few aerial shots of a concrete doughnut don’t offer an honest portrayal of a real-life Oakland neighborhood.

You know, like Alamo Square.

Golden State? Please

And please, enough with the “Golden State.” The only place Californians see that term is on refrigerator magnets.

We’ve been choking on that appellation since 1971, when the team was heading out of San Francisco. Word leaked that then-owner Franklin Mieuli was pursuing a deal to play half the Warriors’ games in Oakland, and the other half in San Diego, which had just lost its NBA team to Houston.

Thankfully, the plan fell apart. Regrettably, the name stuck.

Let’s see if Golden State sticks when the team returns to an apparently more palatable San Francisco address.

Coincidentally, the current Warriors ownership tries to put a happy regional face on the whole “Golden State” charade. “The team became the San Francisco Warriors after they relocated to the West Coast in 1962, and changed its name to the Golden State Warriors — symbolizing a team belonging to all of California, the Golden State — upon settling into a new home in Oakland in 1971,” its website reads.

A basketball team belonging to all of California? There are four NBA franchises in California. That’s enough for everybody who wants one. More than enough if you live in Sacramento. And you can be sure that nobody in Los Angeles believes the Warriors belong to them.

For now, they belong in Oakland. So let’s just say it.

Joe Garofoli is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

NBA Finals, Game 1

Thursday at 6 p.m. at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

Television: Channel: 7 Channel: 10