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No repeat no dynasty.
Better luck next generation, San Antonio.
Rare to Repeat
The most memorable NBA champions are more than just a one-hit wonder
By Arash Markazi
ESPNLosAngeles.com
LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs have combined to win eight of the past 11 NBA championships, but it would be understandable if you had a hard time believing the Spurs have won as many les as the Lakers over the past two decades.
Recent history will always remember the Lakers more fondly than the Spurs, hold Kobe Bryant in a higher regard than Tim Duncan and put Phil Jackson in a different class than Gregg Popovich.
It's not simply because the Lakers play near Hollywood and the Spurs play near the River Walk. It's because the Spurs were never able to repeat as champions. Since the late 1980s the true mark of a legendary team isn't just to win one le or a le every other year, it's to complete the back-to-back or the more elusive three-peat.
It's the challenge currently facing the Lakers, who are trying to avoid being the NBA's latest one-hit wonder.
When Derek Fisher looks up at the purple and gold championship banners staring down at him at Staples Center he sees more than the rewards of the ten les the team has won in Los Angeles, he sees the bookends of a different era in the NBA.
A time when winning consecutive championships seemed to be commonplace instead of the rarity it has become today.
When the 1987-88 Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons to win back-to-back championships, they became the first NBA team to win consecutive les in 18 years since the Boston Celtics won the championship 11 out of 13 years from 1957 to 1969.
After the Lakers broke through the back-to-back wall they ushered in a 15-year period where every NBA champion except for the 1999 Spurs (you know, the 50-game season team Phil Jackson always puts an asterisks next to) won consecutive les.
The Lakers won from 1987-1988, Detroit Pistons from 1989-1990, Chicago Bulls from 1991-1993, Houston Rockets from 1994-1995, Bulls from 1996-1998 and the Lakers from 2000-2002.
No NBA champion, however, has repeated since the Lakers completed their three-peat in 2002 and it has been five years since the champion has even returned to the NBA Finals the next season.
"It's harder; the game has changed a lot over the years," Fisher said. "Teams don't build over time any more. Our team that won three straight started to be built in '96 and '97 and it was a 3 to 4-year process of getting to get to where you become a champion. Now teams are making moves over one summer and saying they want to win a championship right now. So there are a lot more teams throwing themselves into the mix of making trades and signing free agents and moving guys around to get to the top of the mountain."
No coach knows more about winning championship than Jackson, who has ten rings as the coach of the Lakers and Bulls and two more as a player with the Knicks, and he realizes how hard it is to win consecutive les every time he looks across the court when playing the Spurs and sees Duncan and Popovich. While Jackson has never won just one stand alone le as a coach, completing three separate three-peats before winning last year's championship, Popovich and Duncan have never repeated despite winning four les.
"It's a tall task. People don't really understand how tall as task it is to win back-to-back," Jackson said. "It's very difficult. The challenge is the duration of the season and the pressure of playing every single night wears and fatigues the players physically, mentally and emotionally. It's a tough task. People think the Spurs were one of the best teams of the decade and they were never able to win a back-to-back championships and that does say something about the difficulty of it."
Popovich believes there were a variety of factors that conspired to keep the Spurs from going to consecutive NBA Finals despite winning four les in nine years.
"There are a lot of good teams and you have to be fortunate, you have to be healthy and you have to get some great calls along the way," he said. "You're competing against a lot of good teams. It's not easy."
Popvich, however, doesn't buy the notion it's any harder to win back-to-back les now as it was a decade ago.
"I always thought that was bull [expletive]," he said. "You do or you don't. There are always reasons why you do or why you don't but I've never taken the time to intellectually figure it out. I don't care."
Since Popvich is too busy trying to avoid the eighth seed in the playoffs and a first round date with the Lakers to worry about the difficulty of repeating as champions maybe we can help him out a bit. The easiest reason is the team is just plain different even if they look the same. For example, not only did Trevor Ariza trade places with Ron Artest but Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar think and act as if they should play more minutes while other players like Andrew Bynum and Luke Walton are constantly injured.
"We're a different team, that's the most obvious answer," Fisher said. "Every team is different. Each year you come back, even when you come back with the same personnel there's improvements in guys' games, guys are stronger, guys want to play different roles there are a lot of different things to manage year in and year out. We have relatively the same personnel but we're different than last year."
The other reason is the production of the team drops because of a variety of factors, including players leaving, new players needing to be incorporated, injuries depleting the depth and a natural apathy that goes along with having already won a le the year before.
Nearly every NBA champion since 2002 has seen a drop in their overall point production and the production of their bench the following season.
"It's definitely a process and it's not easy to do what we're trying to do," Fisher said. "It's the reason why as dominant San Antonio has been the past 10 or 11 years, they didn't ever win back-to-back. What we did earlier in the decade in 2000, 2001, 2002 was special because there weren't any more repeat champions. This is not something where you just wake up and decide you want to win another championship and it's just supposed to happen."
The Lakers for much of this season have played like a team that thinks they will be able to wake up one day and flip a switch and play like champions with the intention of repeating. After taking one step forward and snapping a two-game losing streak by beating the Utah Jazz, 106-92, on Friday, the Lakers took two steps back by getting blown out by the Spurs, 100-81, on Sunday.
Jackson, however, doesn't seem too concerned about his team despite their recent performances, recalling a similarly apathetic team which ended up winning a championship.
"There's been a lot of different championship runs and I've seen them all and I've seen a lot of different types," Jackson said. "This reminds me of the 2001 vintage we had here where we came out of the year at 56-26 and struggled and then got some momentum. That's to be expected. Every team has their own personality."
The problem with Jackson's comparison is the 2001 Lakers won their last eight games of the season before going 15-1 in the playoffs. This Lakers team has lost four of their last six games with only five games left in the season and won't likely be sweeping past anyone in these playoffs. Fisher, however, still thinks the Lakers have the players and coaches to right the ship and do something that hasn't been done since they completed the three-peat in 2002.
"We have a coaching staff that's the best in the business at doing it and we have players who have been in this situation before," Fisher said. "Regardless of what's going on today we feel like we're going to figure it out."
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CHAMPIONSHIP HANGOVER
A look at each NBA champion since 2002 and how they fared the following year.
Team W-L PPG Opp PPG Bench PPG
2002 Lakers 58-24 101.3 94.1 28.7
2003 Lakers 50-32 100.4 98.0 28.7
2003 Spurs 60-22 95.8 90.4 29.6
2004 Spurs 57-25 91.5 84.3 21.0
2004 Pistons 54-28 90.1 84.3 26.8
2005 Pistons 54-28 93.3 89.5 29.0
2005 Spurs 59-23 96.2 88.4 31.1
2006 Spurs 63-19 95.6 88.8 20.0
2006 Heat 52-30 99.9 96.0 26.5
2007 Heat 44-38 94.6 95.5 28.2
2007 Spurs 58-24 98.5 90.1 36.9
2008 Spurs 56-26 95.4 90.6 34.4
2008 Celtics 66-16 100.5 90.3 29.7
2009 Celtics 62-20 100.9 93.4 27.6
2009 Lakers 65-17 106.9 99.3 29.5
2010 Lakers 55-21 102.4 96.9 26.6
No repeat no dynasty.
Better luck next generation, San Antonio.
so if a team wins 10 les in 20 years and makes the playoffs all 20 years but they never repeated you would not consider that a dynasty?
Dude they are just saying that to make them feel better about themselves and their team. They cannot stand having another team be #1 even for an instant. So no matter what happens there is going to be something wrong with another team who has achieved alot over the years every single time they feel threatened.
Spurs were unlucky to never repeat IMO. They were the best team every year from 2003-2007 IMO.
Mavs were a little lucky against the Spurs but got ed by the refs in the Finals.
I think the Pistons were just as good as the Spurs from 2004 - 2006.Spurs were unlucky to never repeat IMO. They were the best team every year from 2003-2007 IMO.
Mavs were a little lucky against the Spurs but got ed by the refs in the Finals.
Did i pull your string?
My question was geared towards the other jerk-off laker fan.
injuries are always the demise of teams trying to repeat. so far that has been the lakers only compe ion this season
Kobe is still second banana to Shaq, and even if he repeats he did it needing gasol..
I Understand you debating/trolling ...but let's not be foolish. Also Spurs are a "quasi" dynasty no asterisk ...but no repeat is the one knock ....
But to be honest the sustained excellence of the Spurs ... almost evens out our 3 year dominance ...
But placing Shaq over Kobe or Duncan is idiotic
don't ask them that cause if they answered truthfully you would have a fine argument ....and well they wouldn't like that.
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