There are times watching sports when you can’t help but think you’re witnessing a once in a lifetime occurrence. The moments you know you’ll remember 10 years from now, or quite possibly for the rest of your life. Sometimes those moments are a buzzer-beating shot or a last-second touchdown. Other times it’s an entire game where the underdog somehow beats the heavy favorite, or even a season when a team does more than you could have ever expected.

The funny thing is that how often these moments occur apparently has very little to do with how good a team actually is. For evidence there, look no further than our recent Bay Area sports history, where we’ve seen the collapse in recent years of local teams in just about every sport imaginable. The 49ers, Raiders, Giants, Athletics, Cardinal football team, and Golden State Warriors are all either emerging from, entering or in the midst of truly trying times for their respective fan bases.

And yet, there has been a multitude of moments, games and late season-surges here in recent years that we’ve all been privileged enough to witness. Who will ever forget Stanford’s win over USC this fall? How many members of the Class of 2008 will forget the one year that they got to see a Big Game win?

And yet, perhaps the most memorable local upset in recent years has come on the hardwood off-campus, as the Golden State Warriors were the first eighth-seeded team to defeat a No. 1 seed in a seven-game playoff series last year when they downed Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks in six.

It was a classic match-up between the brash owner and his jilted coach, a monster scorer in Dirk and the Dr. Frankenstein who cobbled his game together in Don Nelson. And when the Warriors’ fearless, nothing-to-lose attitude won out convincingly over the all-hat, no-cattle Mavs, we all knew we’d witnessed something special. It was the ultimate story of chemistry over talent, scheme over size, the hope of a formerly moribund organization against the expectations of one of the flagship franchises of the NBA.

But what made the Warriors upset so memorable wasn’t just what it signaled for that moment — the downfall of the top seed in the West and Golden State’s hard-fought opportunity to lose in the next round to Utah — but rather what it signaled for the long term future of the Association, the Western Conference and the Warriors.

Because unlike so many Cinderella stories, the Warriors followed through and kept winning. They took one magical postseason series, and transformed it into a new brand of basketball. If anything, the Warriors are better now then they were last year, given the continued development of guard Monta Ellis and the addition of Brandan Wright via the draft. They’re currently on pace to make their second playoff appearance in as many years after more than a decade of losing.

Golden State’s ascent, though, meant more than just the rise of a single NBA franchise. No, it was the biggest sign to date that the West is where the league will be won for the foreseeable future. If the eighth seed in the West is capable of knocking out its first seeded counterpart, a great deal can be said about the depth and talent of the conference. And those circumstances have only grown more pronounced since last year.

Indeed, if we were truly taking the best 16 teams from the whole of the NBA, how many Eastern Conference teams would make the postseason? Probably no more than three, almost certainly no more than four.

When’s the last time a Cinde-rally story has carried that much weight going forward? Did Boise State’s victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl signal the end of the BCS? Will the Giants win over the Patriots in the Super Bowl mean an end to the AFC dominance of the past decade? Did the Red Sox’s triumph in 2004 mean the death of all talk of curses in sports? Heck no, probably not, and ask a Cubs fan.

But the Warriors? Their victory put an exclamation point on the most important trend in the NBA, and they followed through next season by picking up exactly where they left off. They’re 36-22 and on track to be some highly seeded team’s worst nightmare in the playoffs.

As grim as things have been for Bay Area sports, fans can at least still take comfort in that. They’ve got at least one team that is setting trends and making the rest of the nation take notice.