Golden State is the new Denver
Thursday, May 3, 2007
I knew Dirk’s team wouldn’t make it out of the Oakland Arena alive. (Oh wait, I’m supposed to call the arena The Oracle now?)
Tonight’s upset of the top-ranked Dallas Mavericks (67-15) by the Golden State Warriors (the last team to make the 2007 NBA playoffs at 42-40) reminded me of a very similar occurrence more than a decade ago. As a 15-year-old, I was very excited to see the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets (42-40) upset the mighty Seattle SuperSonics in the 1994 playoffs. At that time, I liked the Nuggets a lot. I especially enjoyed watching Denver’s reserve guard Robert Pack, who was like a 6’2″ firecracker coming off the bench. Denver’s team roster also included Dikembe Mutombo, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, and LaPhonso Ellis.
Shifting gears a bit, check out this quote about NBA championships from another guy named Ian at SI.com:
Ever since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revolutionized pro basketball in 1979-80, a cabal of eight stars — Magic, Bird, Moses Malone, Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan — have claimed 26 of the 27 championships. If you weren’t on their team (or a member of the anomalous 2003-04 Detroit Pistons), then you had no hope of winning the title.
This reminds me of a couple of my NBA-related posts from 2003 and 2004: “So you want to win an NBA championship?” and “Hubert Davis is the NBA’s lucky penny.” The first one is about how one of two guys, Robert Horry and Steve Kerr, won the NBA championship for 10 straight years. The second post is about when Hubert Davis won 26 games in a row, with two different teams.
Good luck to the Golden State Warriors in the next round against either Utah or Houston. If it’s Utah, that would be the same franchise that eliminated the upstart Nuggets in seven games in 1994.