My interest in the NBA began as an 11-year-old watching Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan duke it out in the 1991 NBA Finals. I vividly remember the Lakers' Western Conference finals Game 6 against the Portland Trail Blazers when Magic tossed the ball out from the Lakers' end to the Blazers basket to run out the clock and Portland’s hopes for a shift back home to try and clinch the series.
I stuck with my Lakers through the thin years when Sedale Threatt and Nick Van Exel were the best players on the team. And I was there for the resurgence with the arrival of Shaq and Kobe.
The return to glory for the Lakers, however, wasn’t without opposition and in the last decade they have been primarily thwarted by the San Antonio Spurs. Since the 1999 season, NBA fans have been witnesses to the birth and growth of an epic rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs.
The teams met five times in the playoffs in a six-year span, and this year will be the sixth in 10. The winner of this series went on to win the crown in four of those five years, and there are a lot of reasons to believe that this season will bear similar results.
In the strike-shortened 1999 season, the San Antonio Spurs began their championship run dismantling a young Lakers team as they swept them in the Western Conference Finals, and then easily handled the New York Knicks to finally help get David Robinson his first championship trophy. From that point, the Lakers matured into the team that would win the next three championships.
In 2001, the Lakers returned the favor to an over-matched Spurs squad by sweeping them out of the Western Conference Finals en route to one of the most dominating post-season runs in NBA history. If it weren’t for Derek Fisher’s series-shifting shot in Game 5 during the 2004 Western Conference semifinals, it is possible that the Spurs could have moved on to defend their crown that season and then these two teams would account for all but one of the last nine championships.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
"it is possible that the Spurs could have moved on to defend their crown that season and then these two teams would account for all but one of the last nine championships."
It wasn't even close between the Pistons and Lakers that year. It's possible that the Spurs would have beaten the Pistons instead, but I'm not seeing how the team that lost to Team A who lost to Team B in 5 games would beat Team B themselves.
2 - El Bicho
San Antonio beat Detroit the following year, so thinking they could have beat them the year before with both teams pretty much intact doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.
3 - Silvs
If Fish doesn't make that shot, the Spurs end up going up 3-2 instead of facing elimination and it's a completely different series. Plus, it's all about matchups and momentum. You can't make assumptions about how the Spurs would have fared against the Pistons because if that shot doesn't go down, you're looking at a totally different dynamic in that team.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Silva: "You can't make assumptions about how the Spurs would have fared against the Pistons"
Bicho: "San Antonio beat Detroit the following year, so thinking they could have beat them the year before with both teams pretty much intact doesn't seem like that much of a stretch."
The names were mostly the same, but one team was good and getting better, while the other was great but getting older.
The '04 Spurs team was learning how to play without David Robinson and were ranked in the middle of the league in offense. The following year when they won the Finals they added a big man (Nazr Mohammed) and got improved play from Parker and Ginobili, and their offense was back near the top quartile.
Meanwhile, the 2004 was probably the career year for Ben Wallace. The other difference was they also had Mehmet Okur, who was a post-up AND 3-point threat, who they lost to free agency the following year.