NBA return reminds of other ‘disputed’ titles

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  • Tim Duncan’s Spurs squads have won “disputed” titles in 1999 and 2005, but who joins those ranks? Let’s take a ride in the NBA wayback machine.
    Tim Duncan’s Spurs squads have won “disputed” titles in 1999 and 2005, but who joins those ranks? Let’s take a ride in the NBA wayback machine.
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I feel like a piece of myself is missing right now.

Sure, I can still smell the late spring air, and I can feel the heat making it uncomfortable to put a seatbelt on again. It “feels” like things should be normal.

Unfortunately, viruses don’t care about our feelings, and are an equal opportunity offender at throwing lives asunder. There isn’t a “normal” to speak of, outside of the weather changes. Graduations have the words “social distancing” wrapped around them for the first time, while events like Senior Proms and County Fairs have been cancelled.

This applies to sports as well, obviously, which is the big piece missing from me. I can take my personal life changing, it always has. I can take personal challenges dealing with a crisis, it’s happened before. But, a big part of my victories in life has been the comfort of sports.

I’ve spoken before about the schedule of the sports year, and how it equates to having a “body clock” as a sports fan. If I’m starting to feel summer creeping in, I should be talking about the Lakers and Clippers fighting in the Western Finals (sorry, Nuggets and Rockets fans) and my Philadelphia Flyers making a run towards the Stanley Cup (don’t laugh, it might still happen).

There is hope on the horizon, though. The NBA has officially agree to a revival idea, coming back July 31 in an Orlando “bubble” league. This would include rampant testing and isolation for players and staff members.

The obvious questions aside (What happens if a player tests positive? Does the whole team get eliminated from the playoffs? Do they postpone the playoffs for a two-week quarantine?), it’s nice to feel some semblance of excitement.

One of the other obvious questions surrounding the NBA bubble playoffs is “Does this taint the legacy of the 2019-20 title?” To that I say, no. Just like all teams playing an 82-game schedule before the playoffs in a regular season, all teams involved have had the same amount of downtime to prepare. The “bubble” arenas with little or no fans in the building takes away homecourt advantage for the teams that were striving for it early on (specifically the Lakers and Bucks), but also doesn’t give “home-court” to any one team. It’s as level of a playing field as possible.

Plus, even if you can consider the title “tainted,” it wouldn’t even be the most disputed title in league history.

For argument’s sake, let’s say there’s enough argument for the title being a sham. Where would it rank up against other disputed titles?

1976:

NBA Finals: Boston Celtics (54-28) def. Phoenix Suns (42-40) in six games

Reason for dispute: League dilution, Rick Barry’s antics

The final season before the NBA’s merger with the ABA, the 1975-76 season had exactly five teams you could classify as “good”: Boston, Golden State, Cleveland, Washington and Philadelphia.

With the ABA sapping the league of potential breakout stars with an athletic flair for the game, you had the following random acts of the Basketball Gods:

-A Cavaliers team led by Jim Chones and Campy Russell almost made the 1976 Finals.

-The second seed in the West, Milwaukee, finished with a record of 38-44.

-A 36-46 Detroit Pistons team took the defending champion Golden State Warriors to six games in the Western Semis.

-And yes, Milwaukee and Detroit were both in the West.

-The entire Western Conference had three teams .500 or better.

Coming out of the West was a 42-40 Phoenix Suns team, facing an aging Celtics squad in a Finals that included the famous Triple-Overtime affair in Game 5. Of course, the Suns shouldn’t have been there, as Rick Barry’s Warriors were poised to win the Western Finals.

However, Barry wasn’t helped up by teammates after a Game 7 fight against Phoenix, and refused to shoot for the remainder of the game. Internal strife cost the Warriors a series they would have at least made competitive, if not won outright.

Rightful champions: Still the Celtics. Can’t say Golden State, as the team may have been predisposed to self-combustion. Plus, the C’s pulled off Game Five, one of the best wins in NBA history.

1978:

NBA Finals: Washington Bullets (44-38) def. Seattle SuperSonics (47-35) in seven games

Reason for dispute: Bill Walton’s injuries

It’s fishy enough when neither team in the NBA Finals reached the 50-win mark. This is a tragic one, as Bill Walton’s Portland Trail Blazers were absolutely rolling, winning 58 games while Walton walked away Most Valuable Player. The defending champions, nobody was stopping them that spring. The Blazers’ biggest competitors, the Sixers and Nuggets, were squads Portland already took care of the previous year.

Unfortunately, Walton broke his foot. Then, in the playoffs, he went down with an ankle injury. There goes the title, and there goes Walton’s Blazers tenure. Nobody was stopping them, it seemed, except themselves.

So Portland dropped a second-round series to an inferior Seattle team, which is where one piece of that Finals puzzle comes in. Still, this isn’t egregious because of the effort shown by the Bullets, who beat George Gervin and Julius Erving in their primes to take the East.

Rightful champions: Still the Bullets.

1999:

NBA Finals: San Antonio Spurs (37-13) def. New York Knicks (27-23) in five games

Reason for dispute: Lockout year

The abbreviated 1999 season was an absolute mad dash, cramming 50 games into just 90 days. This threw many teams for a loop, especially the ones with “old legs” that couldn’t keep up. Karl Malone won Most Valuable Player, but his older Jazz unit flamed out in the West Semis.

The Alonzo Mourning/Tim Hardaway Heat unit and Reggie Miller’s Pacers suffered similar fates, although the Heat’s issue was just having a bad matchup. For them, and for us. Seriously, those Knicks-Heat clashes are brutal to look back on.

So, young legs carried the day, with the Spurs’ Tim Duncan rolling through Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O’Neal, Rasheed Wallace and Larry Johnson to win his first ring.

A little tainted factor here, as a spread-out schedule would mean teams like Utah and Indiana wouldn’t run out of gas so early. But, the Spurs were the West’s top seed and handled their business in May and June.

Rightful champions: Still the Spurs.

2005:

NBA Finals: San Antonio Spurs (59-23) def. Detroit Pistons (54-28) in seven games

Reason for dispute: Malice at the Palace, Dwayne Wade’s injury

Much like 1976 and 1978, this Finals matchup is certainly an odd one.

While it does make more sense than those years, with the 2003 and 2004 champs meeting in a seven-game slugfest, there is a feeling that the Spurs and Pistons weren’t necessarily the best teams.

To me, the Spurs case is unassailable, as they laid the smackdown all playoffs long, including wiping Steve Nash’s Suns in a five-game Western Finals.

The Pistons case is a bit different, as the team was inferior to the 2004 title unit. Their main competitors, the Pacers, were quickly becoming the NBA’s best team in the fall of ’04, a balanced squad that could play any style. Then, the infamous “Malice at the Palace” quickly took down Ron Artest and the Pacers’ chances at the title.

In the playoffs, Detroit was in the middle of a war with the Heat when Dwayne Wade went down with a bruised rib injury. So, not only had Detroit gotten lucky in the regular season, they lucked out in the playoffs as well.

Rightful champions: Still the Spurs.

Much like Golden State in 1976, the Pacers may have been prone to self-combustion. Could they have bested San Antonio in a seven-game series? Perhaps. They had the firepower and defensive knowhow to hang with anyone. But, they never got the chance, and maybe it was destined to be that way.

So what have we learned from these four examples? That even the most disputed seasons have, in my estimation, undisputed champions. While they had some luck getting in a position to hold the Larry O’Brien trophy, they also had to hold up their end of the bargain by playing at a championship level.

The ‘76 Celtics, ‘78 Bullets, ‘99 Spurs and ‘05 Spurs will share a commonality with the 2020 champion. The right champion in a highly disputed season.