This Season’s NBA in Many Ways Resembles Another in the Distant Past
Every NBA pundit tells us that this season’s Western Conference teams are like no other in NBA history. Should Denver win tonight at home against Memphis, every playoff team in the West will have won 50 games. Golden State, the 9th-place team in the West, ends its season tonight at home against the Seattle SuperSonics. Should the Warriors win they will finish 49-33 despite starting the season 0-6, largely due to team captain Stephen Jackson’s suspension. With a victory tonight they will enter the record books tied with the 1971-72 Phoenix Suns for the team with the most wins without making the playoffs. That year the Suns finished their season with a 49-33 record.
Oddly, that 1971-72 season mirrors this season in more ways than just the Warriors and Suns records. Today there are 30 NBA teams. Thirty-six years ago there were 17. Today a total of 16 teams compete in the playoffs for the Larry O’Brien trophy. In 71-72 eight teams advanced to postseason play. Like this season the 1971-1972 Western Conference dominated regular season play, record-wise. Each Western team won at least 50 games and two won more than 60. The playoff teams representing the Western Conference were: Los Angeles - 69-13, Milwaukee - 63-19, Chicago - 57-25, and Golden State - 51-31. The teams from the Eastern Conference were represented by only two teams with winning records: Boston - 56-26 and New York - 48-34.
And like this season, the number one seeds from each conference in ’71-’72 were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers.
That season the Lakers, while on their way to winning the NBA title, ran off a 33-game winning streak, the longest in NBA history. This year Houston won 22 in a row, which is the second-longest streak to that of the Lakers. Unfortunately for the Rockets they will finish their season with 54 or 55 victories, depending on the outcome of tonight’s game, good enough for a 5th-place finish and are by no means favorites to win the title, nor are they favored to come out of the morass of closely-bunched Western Conference teams and reach the Finals. Yet the Rockets finished but 2.5 games behind Los Angeles.
Also in 1971-72 the dominant big men in the game resided in the West. They were an aging Wilt Chamberlain and a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This season the dominant centers are again west of the Mississippi; an aging Shaquille O’Neal and a much younger Yao Ming - though Yao is injured and out for the season.
The MVP that season was Abdul-Jabbar and the MVP this season is likely to come from either New Orleans - Chris Paul - or Los Angeles - Kobe Bryant. Paul has 30 games with 20 points and 10 assists, the most since Tim Hardaway did the same in the 1991-1992 season with Golden State. Bryant was out the Lakers’ door and on his way elsewhere before the season began, but stayed in L.A. and has been the driving force behind a very young Lakers team to the Western crown. And though Kevin Garnett is sure to garner his share of consideration for the award, because he played on a team with perennial All-Stars Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, his accomplishments pale in comparison with those of Paul’s and Bryant’s, who played on teams with only one other All-Star - David West of the Hornets - between the two teams.
Despite the similarities between the two seasons they are different in one major way. In 1971-1972 the Lakers were the dominant NBA team and proved it by cruising through their opponents on the way to a title. This season there is no truly dominant team. Los Angeles will finish no more than eight games ahead of eighth-place Denver.
The likeliest teams to advance to the Finals from the Western Conference are the Lakers, defending champion San Antonio, Phoenix, and Dallas. At the moment Dallas is 7th, the Suns are 6th, and the Spurs are 3rd. And it’s not as if it is impossible for three of the other four teams, New Orleans, Utah, and Houston to make their way into the Finals. Only Denver, a team that does not generally play consistent defense, would be a shock to come out of the West.
But even the Nuggets are potentially a very dangerous opponent. With Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony each able to score 30 to 40 points on a given night and with Marcus Camby in the lane to wipe away shot attempts and score from as far out as 15-18 feet, Denver is a tough out. Add the mercurial Kenyon Martin, rising star Josh Smith, and a capable bench to the Nuggets’ mix and head coach George Karl is only the right motivational speech and a little team discipline away from a run to the NBA Finals.
In the Eastern Conference Detroit and Boston are the prohibitive favorites to reach the Finals. But defending conference champion Cleveland has something to prove as most NBA writers talk about the Cavaliers as if they are an afterthought. Any team with LeBron James cannot be overlooked.
This means that, unlike the 1971- 1972 season when the Lakers were heads and shoulders above their competition, this season potentially eleven teams have a realistic shot at the title in what should be, arguably, the most exciting and competitive NBA playoffs in league history.
Be there or be a four-cornered object with sides of equal length.
Tags: 1971-72 NBA, Boston Celtics, Chris Paul, Detroit Pistons, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, Nancy Pelosi, NBA, Phoenix Suns, playoffs, San Antonio Spurs
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