SECURING a ticket to the NBA Finals for two consecutive years is just as hard as winning the Larry O’Brien championship trophy two years in a row. Since the NBA opened shop in 1946-47 (the first three years under the Basketball Association of America banner), there have been only 22 instances where the losing finalist from one season qualified for the league’s championship series the following year.
San Antonio is bidding to become the 23rd team to turn in the trick in the ongoing playoffs. A year ago, the Spurs grabbed a 3-2 lead over the defending champion Miami Heat and were just a breath away from securing another NBA title when they owned a three-point lead in the dying seconds of regulation time in Game Six.
San Antonio needed only to grab the defensive rebound following a James miss and it would have gotten the job done. Instead, before an overjoyed home crowd, Miami desperately went hard for the offensive board, sent the game into overtime on a monumental Ray Allen triple and eventually won Game Six in an improbable comeback.
The Heat completed the Spurs’ ignominious downfall by also securing the decisive seventh game at home under the old 2-3-2 Finals format and successfully defending their crown – their third overall since making their NBA debut in 1988-89.
Starting this year, the NBA has reverted to the 2-2-1-1-1 format for the best-of-seven Finals. From 1985 till last year, the league had employed a 2-3-2 system to cut down on travel time and cost.
With advanced technology now available, the league saw it fit to go back to the old Finals format where the finalist with a better record will play host to the first two games, and the fifth and seventh games, if necessary.
With the Spurs enjoying homecourt advantage in every series that they are eligible to play, a second straight Finals stint for the Alamo City unit looms on the horizon.
A series victory over Portland will send San Antonio to a West finals date against the winner of the Thunder-Clippers series with an NBA Finals ticket at stake.
Of the first 22 teams that were beaten during the NBA Finals in one season then made it to the championship round again the following campaign, only 11 went on to snare the league crown in their return trip to the Finals.
The last team to accomplish the feat were LeBron James’ Miami Heat, who surrendered a 4-2 decision to the Dallas Mavericks during the 2011 Finals but came roaring back the next year to snare the NBA diadem in a 4-1 success against the Oklahoma City Thunder for their first title finish since 2006.
The other clubs that lost in the NBA Finals from one season but emerged victorious in the next campaign are the 1955 Syracuse Nationals (4-3 over the Fort Wayne Pistons; the Nats are the predecessors of the Philadelphia 76ers), 1958 St. Louis Hawks (4-2 over the Boston Celtics; the Hawks have since relocated to Atlanta), 1959 Boston Celtics (4-0 over the Minneapolis Lakers), 1973 New York Knicks (4-1 over the Los Angeles Lakers), 1979 Seattle SuperSonics (4-1 over the Washington Bullets; Washington later became the Wizards in an effort to disassociate itself from the old monicker’s violent connotation), 1983 Philadelphia 76ers (4-0 over the LA Lakers), 1985 Los Angeles Lakers (4-2 over the Boston Celtics), 1986 Boston Celtics (4-2 over the Houston Rockets), 1989 Detroit Pistons (4-0 over the LA Lakers), 2009 Los Angeles Lakers (4-1 over the Orlando Magic).
Tough luck goes to the other 11 teams that were defeated in consecutive NBA Finals appearances. This infamous group of back-to-back Finals losers includes Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz, who settled for runner-up honors in 1997 and 1998 after being ambushed by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls both times via identical 4-2 scores, and the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets, who fell to the LA Lakers (0-4) and San Antonio Spurs (2-4) during the 2002 and 2003 Finals, respectively, despite the heroics of Jason Kidd, who’s now the Nets’ rookie bench boss.
Other back-to-back losing NBA finalists are the 1952 New York Knicks, 1953 New York Knicks, 1956 Fort Wayne (now Detroit) Pistons, 1961 St. Louis Hawks, 1963 LA Lakers, 1966 LA Lakers, 1969 LA Lakers, 1970 LA Lakers and 1984 LA Lakers.
Note that the Lakers were beaten on consecutive Finals trips on five different occasions. Additionally, the Lakers (1968-69-70) and the Knicks (1951-52-53) are the only franchises in NBA history to drop an NBA Finals assignment in three straight years. ST. ISIDORE FIESTA CUP
Saint Bernard, Southern Leyte will play host to the St. Isidore Fiesta to be held from May 25-28 in cooperation with the Local Government Unit (LGU) officials led by Honorable Mayor Napoleon I. Cuaton and Reverend Father Joselito Catubig.
Dubbed as “the place where champions meet,” the St. Isidore Fiesta Cup is the biggest basketball event to be held in Leyte and is being organized by Valen Halen “Puray” Parmis, the multi-titled Panalay bench strategist who currently also serves as an assistant coach with the University of the Visayas.
Among the teams seeing action in the four-day tournament are reigning Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (CESAFI) champion UV Green Lancers, the University of San Carlos Warriors, reigning NCAA titlist San Beda Red Lions, and back-to-back UAAP runner-up University of Santo Tomas Growling Tigers.