III. The Most Memorable NBA Championship Teams
78) This is Part III in a Five Part Series - looking at the NBA Champs from 1991 through 2023, spanning the 33 teams that finished as the very best in the League
For PART III - I’m starting in reverse order with the teams at the bottom of the “SILVER STANDARD” all the way to the championship teams that make up the “GOLD STANDARD”
The Dallas Mavericks live to see another game! And this story right here is a perfect lead-in before you pop your popcorn and get comfortable, while the Celtics try to close out these Mavs in 5 on their home-floor.
PART II - Provided analysis of the “Lower Tiers” & the “Bronze Standard” Champions.
PART IV - (which comes out next) will provide analysis of the “Platinum Standard” Champions.
For the record, some of the clips I curated don’t necessarily capture that exact finals, or don’t give an all encompassing story of what happened during those playoffs, but rather are a snap-shot of that postseason. For example the “MJ 3 point barrage” is famously remembered as the time in Game 1 of the 1992 Finals that Michael Jordan destroyed the Blazers. The “MJ Flu game” is the most memorable playoff and finals game of the Bulls 1997 postseason run to Title #5.
Who can forgot how happy LeBron James was as he was on the precipice of winning his first championship in 2012. (pictured above)
By the time I got to these two tiers, I started to struggle a bit more with their exact rankings. Do I rate teams higher based on how memorable the whole playoff run was or how memorable the finals were? For example, the 2012 Heat had a more memorable playoff run, but the 2013 Heat certainly had a most memorable finals.
Feel free to share your thoughts on my rankings, in the comments section, below.
SILVER STANDARD 20-13
#20/19 - 1994 Houston Rockets, 1995 Houston Rockets; The 1994 Champion Rockets were amazing! Hakeem and the Rockets as a lowly 6-seed in 1995 were probably even more amazing! They mowed through everyone. The 1994 Knicks were primed for a championship. The Rockets also took out the Suns in 94 and 95, as Sir Charles never led his team back to the finals after falling to Jordan and the Bulls in 93.
Hakeem Olajuwon might have had two of the most under-rated championships ever. They just happened to be wedged in-between MJ and the Bulls historic run of 6 titles in 8 years. Hakeem the Dream! He truly was something special.
The Orlando Magic in 1995 were supposed to be a team of destiny with Shaq & Penny at the helm. Their collapse in game 1 of the finals, and their eventually getting swept, left an indelible mark on that team.
In 1996, the Magic got swept in the Eastern Conference Finals and after that, Shaq ended up leaving the team for LA. Once he was gone, the Orlando Magic never even made it to another Eastern Conference Finals until 2009.
Within a couple of years, and with Michael Jordan out of the league (save for a brief 2 season stint in DC), a Western Conference team has won 17 out of the last 25 championships. https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/
Big Shot Rob really burnished his image as a clutch player in the 2002 Western Conference Finals.
#18 - 2002 LA Lakers; Kings V. Lakers 2002 WCF! What an incredible series. Whoever won this Conference Finals was going to be the Champions. The Lakers got it, and went on to 3-peat. This is even though this series seemed completely fixed in the pivotal Game 6. (Yes this video is long with the song ‘fix you’ from Coldplay playing as you see how many calls the Lakers got, but, still one of my favorites NBA clips, ever!)
#17 - 2014 San Antonio Spurs; Spurs just annihilate the Heat! This was the coronation of the “Big 3 Spurs” and it was also the emergence of a new star in Kawhi Leonard. The 2014 Spurs were on a redemption tour! After losing the Finals in the most heartbreaking of fashions in 2013, their last chip was truly a sight to be seen.
#16 - 2012 Miami Heat; LeBron’s first Chip! The shortened 66 game season doesn’t get discussed enough. We asterisk the clunky 50 gamer in 99, but not this one. I get it. This one was much more well-planned, it was totally LeBron and KD’s league, too. It was a special time. It’s a shame OKC broke apart their Big 3 (Durant, Westbrook and Harden) after this series, however.
I can’t put this championship above LeBron’s 2013, despite his Game 6 masterpiece in the 2012 ECF versus Boston. Although this might have been the most significant game of LeBron’s career. (And no that’s not hyperbole!)
#15 - *2000 LA Lakers; Start of the Lakers 3-peat! That Lakers Blazers series was quite memorable. Kobe taking over for a fouled out Shaq in Game 4 of the finals was incredible too. But, this season just felt like the only suspense was whether Shaq could get it done or not. He had a historically dominant MVP season. It’s possible I’m ranking this one too low, but I don’t know. This was the first real season in the post-MJ Bulls era (as we just can’t count the 1999 lock-out season).
*I can’t adequately rank the “probable” 2024 Champion Celtics just yet, but they would fall somewhere in this category, as their trajectory reminds me a bit of the 2000 Lakers. For comparisons’ sake, the big acquisitions in Boston were Porzingis and Jrue Holiday. For the Lakers in 2000, the big acquisition was Head Coach Phil Jackson. Both teams were at it for a while, before they finally got over the hump, showing their chops with absolutely dominant regular seasons. Neither of these teams were quite like the 2015 Warriors where it was like “Whoa, where did you come from!?” Rather they were both battle tested.
It’s possible if I had to rank the 2024 Celtics, they’d be in this tier, just behind the two Rockets Championships, but with room to move up (especially if they can win more than 1 ring with the same core intact.)
**Of course if the Mavs make an unheard of (in NBA history at least) comeback from being down 3-0, I’m going to scrub that last paragraph off of this story, so when people visit the archives, they will never know that I wrote something so cock-sure, before a series was even over :P
***Good thing I don’t care who wins this series, as I’m not worried about jinxing it, LOL!
#14 - 2013 Miami Heat; The Ray Allen Shot! Was this the greatest shot in NBA Finals history?) How about the Heat and their 27 game win streak? If not for Ray Allen, who knows how history would remember this team?
But, at the same time the Heat had a chance to make this a historically amazing season, yet they struggled too much through the playoffs to truly be that elite. Still, both Game 6 & Game 7 of those finals were simply incredible. Fortunately for Heat and LeBron fans, it turned out the correct way for them.
#13 - 2011 Dallas Mavericks; Dirk and the Mavs win a most improbable title! I loved this Finals. In some ways it might be ranked too low. Yet, I don’t think anyone can get over the fact that LeBron choked away his best chance at his first ring.
GOLD STANDARD #12 - 10
The only team out of these next three people might do a double take on is the 2003 San Antonio Spurs. But, let’s not underrate how great and underrated Tim Duncan truly was. This was definitely his most impressive season from start to finish. He has to be included in the mix here.
For the record all three of these postseasons listed in the “Gold Standard” were truly memorable, just a notch below the top 9.
#12 - 2008 Boston Celtics; The start of the Big 3 Era! This team was the precursor to the LeBron, Wade, Bosh Miami Heatles. Then the LeBron, Kyrie and K-Love “Big 3” Cavs Squad. Then The “Hampton 5” Warriors of 2017. This easily is one of the most celebrated championships I can think of. You’d think this squad would have won more than one, but they didn’t. This is why I can’t rank them above these next two teams.
#11 - 2003 San Antonio Spurs; Tim Duncan shows why he’s a TOP 10 Player ever! David Robinson was washed up and in his last year in the league. Tony Parker didn’t even play crunch time minutes in some of the key games during this Finals. And Manu Ginobili wasn’t Manu Ginobili just yet.
This Spurs team also took out the 3x Champion Lakers (Lakers being the last team to win 3 in a row). Duncan literally took out everyone this year.
#10 - 2010 LA Lakers; Celtics v. Lakers epic 7 Game Series. This might have been the single greatest post-game press conference by a player after winning a championship. This player (formerly known as Ron Artest) also hit a huge 3 pointer in game 7 to help vanquish the Celtics (as featured in PART I of this series). Let us not forget his heroics in the WCF against the Suns when the series was tied 2-2.
In PART IV of the Most memorable NBA Champions, there is going to be an in-depth analysis of the TOP 9 most memorable champions, ranked in reverse sequential order. The TOP 9 grouping in this one is known as the “PLATINUM STANDARD”, the very best of the very best.
As long as there is a Game 6 of the NBA Finals this year, PART IV will drop on Thursday before game-time. If the Celtics take care of business on their home-court, PART IV’s publication date might be pushed back to Friday.
Until next time!
-JPJ
A great post. This is the long for sports journalism that we've missed.
That Nets / Spurs series is cosmically underrated. Bread and butter basketball, with Duncan and Kidd - forgotten because of the 'small market' tag that upset fake fans and the NBA oligarchs.
Good to see the 1995 series get mentioned. I too thought that Magic team was going on a 10 year run of success. I figured 3 to 5 titles, Hardaway and Shaq in the HOF ... how could it possibly fail?
And that Sacramento team got robbed by the powers that be. As Portland did in 1999, the Top of the Pyramid managed things so that they got the lucrative result they needed.