[Article] Underdogs in the NBA Finals
The 5-seed Miami Heat made the 2020 NBA Finals and join a very select group of teams that made the Finals from the bottom half of the bracket.
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The Miami Heat are one of the unlikeliest teams to make the Finals in NBA History.
My beloved Heat came into the season with 60-to-1 odds to win the NBA Title. Some books had Miami at 100-to-1 odds! Miami is the biggest long shot to make the Finals since 2002, as the Action Network detailed. They came into the playoffs as a 5-seed after a 44-29 regular season in an NBA season that was anything but regular. The 4-month layoff due to COVID-19 and teams being sequestered in a bubble meant that the NBA playoffs would be weird no matter what.
However, the Heat’s arrival in the Finals is still wildly impressive. The team went from being locked into a mediocre core to Eastern Conference Champs in one NBA cycle (offseason and season). Jimmy Butler’s arrival, Bam Adebayo’s growth, a few surprising young players developing, and several veterans out-performing expectations combined to get Miami into the Finals. Zach Lowe detailed the whole process for ESPN and you should definitely read it.
It’s hard to find accurate historical comparisons for any 2020 team because of the circumstances of this season. But I do want to explore one aspect of the Heat’s run and see if we can learn anything from it.
Only six teams have made it to the NBA Finals from the bottom half of the NBA playoff bracket.
Those teams are (denoted using the year in which the playoffs took place) the 1969 Boston Celtics, the 1978 Seattle Supersonics, 1981 Houston Rockets, the 1995 Houston Rockets, and the 1999 New York Knicks. The NBA changed the playoff format to include 16 teams before the 1984 season, so only the last two teams on this list participated in Playoffs as we know them now. The ‘69 Celtics finished 4th in the Eastern Conference when only 8 teams got to the postseason. The ‘79 Supersonics finished fourth and ‘81 Rockets finished sixth in the Western Conference when 12 teams made the playoffs and the top two seeds got byes.
Only the ‘69 Celtics, led by Player-Coach Bill Russell, and the ‘94 Rockets, led by Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, won the title once they got there. Let’s dive into what these teams did because every single one of them is weird and interesting.
The 1969 Celtics were the last gasp of a dynasty.
The Boston Celtics won 12 championships in 14 seasons between 1957 and 1969, including 8 straight under Red Auerbach. But by 1969, the dynasty was on its last legs with Auerbach gone as coach, Bill Russell acting as player-coach, and an aging roster.
The Celtics battled injuries and Father Time all season long. They finished the season 48-34, the franchise’s worst record since 1955-56. Russell averaged a career-low 9 points per game and just 19.3 rebounds per game, which was the 2nd-lowest mark of his career. In fairness, he had a lot on his plate with being the team’s best player and head coach. In the playoffs, he decided to add “Boston Globe Reporter” to his list of jobs and recorded his thoughts after every game.
While they were the underdog on paper, everybody knew that “the Celtics are still the same, old tough Celtics,” as Philadelphia’s Billy Cunningham said before the first round. Sure enough, they beat the Sixers in a gentleman’s sweep (4-1) and took down the next year’s champion, the New York Knicks, in 6 games. Boston faced off against the Los Angeles Lakers and Wilt Chamberlain in the Finals. After fighting back from a 2-0 series deficit, the Celtics became the first team in NBA history to win Game 7 of the NBA Finals on the road. Boston knew how to win in ways that no other franchise did at that point and they still were the same, old tough Celtics.
The 1978 Sonics dug out of a hole and took advantage of a weird, sad turn of events.
Speaking of Bill Russell, the ‘77-78 Seattle SuperSonics had just moved on from Russell as their head coach and GM. After a disappointing 5-17 start to the season, Seattle fired Bob Hopkins, Russell’s replacement and cousin. Then, the Sonics finally found their man in Lenny Wilkens, former player-coach in Seattle and future Hall of Famer.
While this may not seem like the backdrop for a Finals run, it isn’t all that surprising that the Sonics got it together. Future Hall of Famers Dennis Johnson and Jack Sikma (as a rookie) along with “Downtown” Freddie Brown and a very deep roster got healthier and stronger defensively as the year wore on.
Two unfortunate NBA events helped the Sonics make their run: Bill Walton’s foot injury and Kermit Washington’s punch. Walton put up a monster stat line (18.9 points, 13.2 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 2.5 blocks per game) and locked up MVP in just 58 games before the injury. His Blazers were 50-10 at that time, then went 8-14 to end the season. The Kermit Washington punch (and his ensuing season-long suspension) did not have the same effect on the Los Angeles Lakers because Washington was more of a role player. But Washington was an important piece and may have caused LA to get a tougher whistle for the rest of the season.
Still, the Sonics went through Kareem Abdul Jabbar and LA in the first round, the defending champs in Portland in the second round, and the David Thompson’s Denver Nuggets who were coming off a very successful run in the ABA. They did it all with Marvin Webster, Paul Silas and this rookie Dutch Farmboy crushing offensive boards.
Seattle met the Washington Bullets in the NBA Finals in the only Finals to feature two teams with less than 50 wins. After taking a 2-1 lead, the Sonics were forced to play Game 4 in the Kingdome because of a mobile home show in the Seattle Coliseum (aka Key Arena). The then-largest crowd in NBA history (39,457) didn’t help Seattle as DC won in overtime. The Bullets then joined the Celtics as the only franchises to win a road Game 7 in the Finals (after the Celtics did it again in 1974). Only one team has done it in the 42 years since: The 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
The 1981 Houston Rockets make no sense.
I can’t find logic in the 1981 Western Conference. The Rockets, along with the San Antonio Spurs, had just moved to the West after the Dallas Mavericks entered the league as Milwaukee and Chicago moved to the East. Why it took an expansion team to force that very clear change is beyond me.
The Rockets had to win 4 straight games at the end of the season just to sneak into the playoffs by one game over the Golden State Warriors. Houston finished as a 40-42 8th seed, your basic modern-day Eastern Conference team that refuses to tank. They came into the playoffs as 75-to-1 underdogs to win the NBA title.
Houston had a superstar center in Moses Malone and dynamite scorer in Calvin Murphy (who hit 78 free throws in a row this season). But, they had to go through a gauntlet to get the Western Conference Finals. They beat the defending champion Lakers with (an admittedly hobbled) Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a 3-game series. Then, they went 7 games with the San Antonio Spurs and won Game 7 after Murphy put up 42 points.
The Western Conference Finals featured two teams with losing records for what has to be the first and last time as the 40-42 Kansas City Kings also made it there. After dispatching the Kings, the Rockets became the second team in NBA history to make the NBA finals with a sub-500 record (the 1959 Lakers being the other). They ended up losing in 6 to the heavily favored Boston Celtics. I think I’ll need to dig into this season a bit more thoroughly later to make sense of it.
The 1995 Houston Rockets won in an exceptionally odd season
This is the year where Michael Jordan came out of retirement midway through the season and wore #45 until the playoffs before switching back to #23, which was the weirdest factor. But a bunch of other things were also odd. Shaq led Orlando to the NBA Finals in just their 5th year of existence, making the Magic the second-fastest team to go from its founding to the Finals (Milwaukee made in their 3rd year). The Seattle SuperSonics had a great year, but had to play in Tacoma due to stadium renovations. The San Antonio Spurs’s home opener was delayed when they used fireworks INSIDE the arena and set off the sprinkler system which doused everyone in the building.
With this backdrop, the Houston Rockets made the weirdest championship run in NBA history. The Rockets won the first 9 games of the season and looked solid in their title defense as they got out to a 30-17 start. They were 5th in the West, even though Vernon Maxwell got suspended 10 games for punching a fan who (allegedly) made fun of his wife’s recent miscarriage. But, things were largely going fine.
Then, they traded Otis Thorpe, a crucial piece to the championship team, and other players for Clyde Drexler, the 33-year old Portland Trailblazers legend. In a vacuum, making that trade is an easy decision. Drexler was a star and good friends with Hakeem Olajuwon. But, teams don’t typically mess with championship teams and especially not in-season. It was a risky move considering Drexler’s age and how important Otis Thorpe was in 1993-94.
And it immediately looked terrible. The Rockets finished the season 17-18 with Drexler. The team needed time to mesh and injuries hampered that process. Hakeem, Drexler, Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, and MY BOY Carl Herrera all came into the playoffs nicked up.
Yet, Hakeem Olajuwon put up one of the greatest playoff performances ever. He averaged 33 points, 10.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1.2 steals, and 2.8 blocks a game. He led the Rockets through four 50-plus win teams on the way to become the lowest seeded team in NBA history to win the title: Utah (60-22), Phoenix (59-23), San Antonio (62-20) and Orlando (57-25). Olajuwon put up those numbers against Karl Malone (who is a terrible person), Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and Shaquille O’Neal. Just stunning.
Honestly, f*ck the Knicks
The Knicks made a great run in the 1999 playoffs to get to the Finals as an 8-seed. But you’ve heard about it a lot because it’s New York and the Knicks haven’t had anything else to be proud of in the 21 years since. They also beat my Miami Heat in the first round, which included Allen Houston hitting a game-winner that you’ve seen a million times because it’s New York. The Spurs beat them in 5 games after Patrick Ewing got hurt in the Eastern Conference Finals (no, the Ewing Theory didn’t actually lead to a title). This is my newsletter and I don’t feel like including them.
I think the team that most closely resembles the 2020 Miami Heat is the 1978 SuperSonics. The team came out of nowhere and took advantage of a situation that weakened better teams (Walton’s injury for Seattle and the Bubble for Miami). I also believe that the Heat’s run will look less weird in hindsight as the team gets better, which is exactly what happened after the Sonics won the 1979 title. Jack Sikma and Bam Adebayo are both futuristic, young centers who had coming-out parties in the playoffs. Hopefully, the Heat have a different Finals result.
The lesson here is that nothing is as predestined as we like to think in the NBA.
The NBA enjoys a certain stability from the fact that only 5 players play the game at once and, therefore, any one or two stars can completely alter the league. However, some media members and fans often bemoan that we always know who the champion will be. In the 1990s, Michael Jordan dominated and he was definitely going to win every ring. In the early 2000s, the Lakers were by far the best team in the NBA and earned a three-peat. Over the past 6 years, the Golden State Warriors BROKE THE LEAGUE and easily romped to 3 championships.
However, these teams prove that the league still has a good amount of randomness and underdogs can still achieve greatness. We often think of the Celtics as an unstoppable dynasty, but they had to upset their way to the ‘69 title. The 1978 season should have been Bill Walton’s tour de force, instead the Seattle Supersonics won the West. Those two Rockets championships in the middle of the Jordan-era feel like snug fits because of Hakeem Olajuwon. But that 1994 team really had no business winning the championship. (The Knicks suck.)
Let’s stop oversimplifying the narrative. Nothing is set in stone just because a team has great players (See, e.g, 2020 Los Angeles Clippers). Every champion needs great players, chemistry, and a little luck. You can see where this behavior could lead us in 2020. Either the Lakers will win and we will say that Lebron’s team was always just better than everyone else (or that he “took the easy way”) or the Heat win and many will say that the Bubble Title is illegitimate. From researching this history, I can tell you that both positions are false.