Basketball (And Other Things)

by Shea Serrano

  27. The 1997 Championship (Bulls beat Jazz, 4–2): Our first Jordan entry. It feels at least a little bit weird to put this one behind the 1996 championship (when the Bulls beat the Sonics). After all, this was the Finals that had The Flu Game, The Mailman Doesn’t Deliver on Sundays Game,21 and the lesser discussed GatorLode Game.22 And it was also the one that gave Jordan not only his fifth title, but also his fifth Finals MVP, which was a record until he broke it the following year. But the 1996 championship, while against a mostly less-interesting opponent and also while having no iconic Big Name games or moments, simply carried more historical impact. (I’ll go over it when we get there.)

  26. The 1985 Championship (Lakers beat Celtics, 4–2): Another example, like above, of a Finals that had a Big Name game in it; the Celtics drummed the Lakers by 34 in Game 1, which was played on Memorial Day, so it became known then as The Memorial Day Massacre.23 “The Memorial Day Massacre” is probably the best name of all the Big Name games. There’s maybe an argument to be made that “The Greatest Game Ever Played” is a better name (that was the name given to Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals, a triple overtime bonanza that the Celtics won by two points over the Suns), but I’d argue otherwise because I am, at least spiritually anyway, always more interested in names that are terrifying.

  At any rate, some other stuff that happened in this Finals: (1) It was a revenge championship; (2) it was the first time the Lakers had ever beaten the Celtics in a Finals;24 (3) it gave Magic a 3–2 lead in championships over Bird; and (4) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the oldest player ever to win a Finals MVP.25

  1. “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang.

  2. “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow.

  3. “Jazzy Sensation” by Afrika Bambaataa and the Jazzy Five.

  4. “Lifestyle” by Rich Gang, featuring Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan.

  5. I understand the thinking behind owner Abe Pollin changing the name of the Washington Bullets to the Washington Wizards in 1997, but I don’t agree with it. (I’m willing to admit that at least a portion of my ire toward the name change was that I really enjoyed drawing the Bullets’s logo when I was a kid. I always thought the way they used the two Ls in it to make arms shooting a basketball was dope.)

  6. He missed three full seasons because of injuries, and only one time during his 10-season career did he play in more than 67 games in a season (1986). My favorite Walton injury stat: He injured his foot in 1978, missed the final 22 games of the season, and somehow still managed to win the League MVP.

  7. The Trail Blazers won in 1977, the Bullets won in 1978, and the SuperSonics won in 1979.

  8. This sounds like it’s an insult but I mean it in the best way possible. This Pistons group was a great, fun team. And, on just a personal level, I will always be thankful to them for beating the Lakers in the Finals because that was the year Derek Fisher hit his 0.4 shot against the Spurs, and so of course I wanted to watch them wither away.

  9. The league offensive rating was the lowest it’d been since the 1978 season.

  10. They are still, as of this writing, the only eighth seed to do so.

  11. Robert Horry, then playing for the Spurs, had one of the greatest Finals performances of all that series. He scored 21 points over the final 18 minutes of Game 5, including the game-winning 3 in the final seconds. I’ve always referred to it as The Robert Horry Game, but I don’t think it’s actually an official thing like, say, The Flu Game. I don’t know. I just know that I owe Robert Horry so much for those 18 minutes. (I actually saw Horry at a club in Houston one night while I was covering some record label anniversary or something. I was so excited to see him in person that all I could think to do was shout, “Yooooo! Robert! Game 5! Game 5!” at him.)

  12. Also his first Finals MVP.

  13. LeBron finished with 48-9-7, including 25 straight points to finish the game. He was 22 years old.

  14. First time it’d happened that way since 1955.

  15. This one, like the 2012 title, also carries with it a great What If: What happens to Patrick Ewing’s legacy if the Knicks win the title that year?

  16. Magic was a better player, Bird was more magical, which is for sure some kind of ironic.

  17. His stat line for the series was a gross 32.8 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 5.5 assists.

  18. Step 1: Clobber everything. Step 2: Clobber everything again. Step 3: Clobber everything one last time.

  19. I think the most surprising thing about that mid-’90s Knicks team was that we somehow got through that era without Charles Oakley or Anthony Mason clanking someone over the head with a crowbar during a game.

  20. A smaller, more docile What If: In Game 2 of that series, Ray Allen hit eight three-pointers. That was an NBA Finals record then and is still an NBA Finals record now. (The best of the bunch was his sixth one, because rather than call for the ball when he was already open, he made gigantic eyes at Rajon Rondo before he made any kind of move to get open, letting Rondo know he’d be open in just a second, then sprinted out off a Paul Pierce screen. It was a beautiful basketball moment.) But so if the Celtics end up winning that series, does that game gain more prestige? As it stands now, nobody really talks about it. But if they’d won, it’d almost certainly be a bigger part of that conversation, right?

  21. An all-time great Finals moment. Karl Malone, the league MVP that year, was at the foul line with a chance to give the Jazz the lead in Game 1 of the Finals with 9.2 seconds left. Before Malone shot, Scottie Pippen walked over to him and told him, “The mailman doesn’t deliver on Sundays.” (They were playing on a Sunday.) Malone missed both free throws. On the next possession, Michael Jordan hit a game-winning jumper at the buzzer.

  22. This one happened in Game 4. A Chicago Bulls team assistant accidentally gave the team GatorLode, a high-carb drink, rather than Gatorade. My favorite line about this was from Roland Lazenby’s book Michael Jordan: The Life. He quotes then-Bulls-trainer Chip Schaefer: “It was like eating baked potatoes.”

  23. The original Memorial Day Massacre happened in 1937. Members of the Chicago Police shot and killed 10 protestors as they protested U.S. Steel signing a union contract. I’m willing to bet that when you picked up a book with a picture of cartoon squid watching a basketball game drawn on the front cover, you weren’t expecting to read a footnote like this in it.

  24. They were 0–8 up to that point.

  25. He was 38 years old, but he played like a spry, fresh 36-year-old.

  WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT NBA CHAMPIONSHIP?

  PART 2

  TIER III: HINTS OF HISTORY

  Championships that fall into this category are ones that carry with them at least a discernible amount of historical significance.

  25. The 2008 Championship (Celtics beat Lakers, 4–2): Two great moments from this series:

  First, in Game 1, after contesting a Kobe jumper, Paul Pierce crumpled to the floor in that way that players crumple when the insides of their knees turn to goop. He stayed on the floor for several moments, writhing in pain, crying. He was eventually picked up by his teammates and carried to a wheelchair, after which he was wheelchaired off the floor to the locker room. It very much looked terrible and felt terrible to watch. It felt a lot like his Finals, the first of his career, was over. Less than two game minutes later, though, he came hopping out of the tunnel, looking all the way like a superhero (the camera shot of him coming out was even shot upwards like the way they showed Superman in those old comics all the time). The arena erupted. He checked into the game, then just minutes later hit back-to-back monster threes. It was some real-life movie shit, and it was so exciting to watch. Paul Pierce deserved that moment, and those Finals. So did everyone watching who loved him, and loved basketball.

  Second, after the Celtics won in Game 6, Kevin Garnett, who’d just won his first championship after chasing one for 13 seasons, was interviewed, and he just as-loud-as-he-could screamed, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!” Kevin Garnett deserved that moment, and
those Finals. So did everyone watching who loved him, and loved basketball.

  For historical stuff for this championship, you’ve got: (1) It was the first Lakers-Celtics Finals since 1987; (2) it gave the Celtics a record 17th title; (3) Kobe was denied his first post-Shaq title; and maybe the most important, (4) the Big Three model, which the Celtics leaned into when they brought in Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to help Paul Pierce, became a road to a championship that several other teams tried to emulate, most successfully the Miami Heat, who had their Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Bosh triumvirate.1 Speaking of . . .

  24. The 2011 Championship (Mavericks beat Heat, 4–2): The iconic moment: Game 2. The Mavericks, down 1–0 in the series, were down 15 with 6:21 left to go and looked extra cooked, both for the game and for the series. Then they went on a 20–2 run to go up three with about half a minute left, only to leave Mario Chalmers about 100 yards wide open for a three of his own that tied it with 24 seconds left, only to have Dirk Nowitzki save them with what has to be the greatest Dribble in from the Three-Point Line, Spin Move, Layup that a 7-footer has ever done in the Finals. Being a San Antonio fan, I always disliked Dirk and the Mavs, and I was so super happy when they lost in the 2006 Finals, but it was impossible even for me to hate on what he did that game, and then what he did for the rest of that series.2

  Anyway, some big outside stuff that happened this Finals: (1) Dirk gets his ring, escaping the Great but Could Never Go All the Way tag that fell on guys like Barkley, Ewing, Malone, etc. (2) LeBron goes 0–2 in the Finals, sure, but what’s bigger is he loses a Finals series for the first time when his team was favored, and he did so in an especially bizarre way (his worst game: Game 4, where he scored just 8 points on 11 shots; he ended with half as many turnovers as points). That was his first year in Miami, and the general tone surrounding him and the Heat was that he was a bad guy for leaving Cleveland and the Heat were the bad team for Voltroning up with him and Bosh, and so of course him losing that year allowed for people who didn’t like LeBron to stare at his lackluster stat sheets and masturbate furiously.

  23. The 2013 Championship (Heat beat Spurs, 4–3): Gross. I’m going to close my eyes and just speed through this one: (1) This series featured four former Finals MVPs (LeBron, Wade, Duncan, Parker).3 (2) LeBron wins his second title, and Dwyane Wade wins his third. (3) LeBron becomes just the 10th player ever to win multiple Finals MVP awards. (4) Ray Allen hits a three or whatever. Done. Shut up.

  22. The 2000 Championship (Lakers beat Pacers, 4–2): The first appearance in our countdown from the Shaq and Kobe era of the Lakers. This was (1) the first title for Shaq;4 (2) the first title for Kobe; (3) the seventh coaching title for Phil Jackson, who proved he didn’t need the greatest basketball player of all time to win a championship so long as you gave him two of the other greatest players ever;5 (4) the only appearance in the Finals for Reggie Miller; (5) the Finals where we got Kobe’s Sprained Ankle Game, the second best Sprained Ankle Game in Finals history; and (6) the moment when it became clear that, at least for the next few years, you were going to have to have a dominant big man if you wanted to seriously contend for a title.6

  21. The 2006 Championship (Heat beat Mavericks, 4–2): There were a bunch of smaller things that happened in this Finals. Shaq temporarily moved ahead of his low-post rival Tim Duncan, four championships to three. Shaq temporarily moved ahead of his petty rival Kobe Bryant, four championships to three. Dwyane Wade became the first shooting guard since Jordan to win Finals MVP and also the youngest guard since Magic to do it. Pat Riley won his fifth title as a coach (this was the series where Shaq said Riley dunked his head in a bucket of water and held it there for three minutes to show how badly you had to want it to win a championship, which is a weird way to try to get your team to better defend the pick and roll but I guess that’s why Riley has five rings as a coach and I have zero).

  The main important thing, though, besides Pat Riley revealing that he was a fish who’d learned to talk, was that Dwyane Wade showed how utterly unstoppable an attacking guard could be in a league that no longer allowed hand-checking. In 2016, I wrote an article for The Ringer about Wade’s brilliance in that series. The part that’s most applicable here: “With his Heat down 2–0 to the Mavericks in the 2006 Finals, Wade put up 42 points and 13 rebounds in Game 3, including a stretch over the final six and a half minutes in which he fucking exploded the universe, single-handedly bringing the Heat back from down 13 to win it. In a Game 4 win, he put up 36 points, six rebounds, and three assists. In Game 5, he put up 43 points, four rebounds, four assists, and three steals, hitting two free throws with the Heat down one with 1.9 seconds left to win the game. In Game 6, he put up a super GTFOH stat line (36 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 steals, 3 blocks) to close the series out.” He was 24 years old when he did that.

  20. The 1982 Championship (Lakers beat Sixers, 4–2): Magic won his second title here,7 temporarily putting him ahead of Larry Bird in titles 2–1 (and also up 2–0 in Finals MVPs), and also this was the first title for Pat Riley’s hair, but probably the biggest impact here was that it was the third time the Sixers lost in the Finals since signing Dr. J (1977, 1980, 1982). (I also like that it set up a super revenge championship in 1983, what with the Lakers and Sixers meeting again after the Sixers had lost twice in the Finals to the Lakers in three years.)

  TIER II: BIG SOUNDS

  Championships that fall into this category are ones that can stretch their legs out and admire their long-lasting importance to either the history of the NBA or the future of it.

  19. The 1996 Championship (Bulls beat Sonics, 4–2): Lots and lots happening here. The Bulls are able to close out what currently stands as the single greatest season by a team in NBA history, finishing the regular season with a record of 72–10, one less win than the 2016 Warriors, sure, but the Bulls leapfrog over them in history because they ended their season with a championship and the Warriors ended their season in heartbreak. Jordan gets his fourth ring and also sets a record with his fourth Finals MVP. The fourth ring officially puts Jordan ahead of Larry Bird in the championship tally. And maybe most substantially: It’s the first post-first-retirement title for Jordan, which killed off any of the He’ll Never Be Able to Do What He Did Before His Retirement talk that started up after he’d returned at the end of the 1995 season and couldn’t summon the full force of his strength in the playoffs when Shaq and Penny and the Magic came rumbling through.

  18. The 2002 Championship (Lakers beat Nets, 4–0): The four main things that happened here: (1) A friend I grew up with began calling Nets center Todd Mac-Culloch “The White Shaq,” which was funny to me then and is still funny when I think about it today.8 (2) This championship is the one that gives the Lakers their three-peat, which makes it harder to argue they’re not a dynasty no matter how much you dislike them.9 (3) Shaq joins Michael Jordan as the only players to win three straight NBA Finals MVPs, a stat that still stands today and, were I to guess, will stand for a great deal longer. (4) Phil Jackson gets a third three-peat, which ties him with Red Auerbach for Most Championships Won by a Coach, and puts him into a category all by himself for Most Championships Won by a Coach Whose Shoulders Sit Up Higher Than His Ears.

  17. The 1991 Championship (Bulls beat Lakers, 4–1): I love all the parts of this series. There’s a great storyline in it. (The Jordan vs. Magic angle.) There’s the creation of a demigod. (It was the first of Jordan’s six titles.) There’s the ending of an ugly narrative. (The whole Jordan Can’t Win Titles storyline that had followed him into the off-season during each of his previous playoff series losses.) There’s a nice little barb cooked into it. (Jordan averaged 11.4 assists per game for the series. It was the first time he’d ever averaged double-digit assists, making it a not-so-subtle Fuck You to those who’d labeled him a selfish, bucket-hungry player.) There’s an iconic move in it. (This was the series where Jordan switched hands during a layup midair, prompting Marv Albert’s “Oh! A spec . . . tacular move by Michael Jordan
!” call.) There’s a sad ending in it. (It was the last time Magic would play in the Finals, his career cut short by his HIV diagnosis, which he announced in a press conference five months later.) And there’s a very strong What If in it. (If the Lakers had won that series, could a case have been made that Magic, who’d have then had six rings to Jordan’s eventual five, was better than Jordan?)10

  16. The 2009 Championship (Lakers beat Magic, 4–1): You get Kobe, after failing to win his first post-Shaq championship in 2008, finally getting there this year, and so of course that’s important. The title also helps him tie Shaq in the championship count, which is big because Kobe knew that if he was going to pass Shaq in the All-Time Best Players ranking he was going to have to have more rings than him since Shaq had racked up the Finals MVP trophies during their three-peat together. The title here also gives the Lakers a total of 15 championships, good for second best behind the Celtics, and it also gives Phil Jackson 10 rings as a coach, one more than Red Auerbach for the most ever. Probably what’s most important, though, is that Dwight Howard, centerpiece for the Magic team here, does not win a championship.