Cinderella visits Suns, SuperSonics
Unlike the other major professional sports, the NBA doesn’t cater to out-of-nowhere champions.
It’s why the Phoenix Suns or the Seattle SuperSonics could become such a wonderful story this spring.
Cinderella rarely visits this league.
It has been 27 years since an NBA team won a championship a year after finishing with a losing record, but it’s something the Suns and Sonics are starting to note.
In Major League Baseball, a team won the World Series a year after having a losing record six times in the past 18 years. It has happened twice in the past three years, too. In the NFL, three of the past five Super Bowl champions have finished with a non-winning record the previous season.
By contrast, the last team to do it in the NBA was Portland, which went 37-45 in 1975-76, then won the title the following season. In the 27 years since, the worst record in the previous year for a champion was 47-35.
Even making the NBA Finals a year after a losing record is a rarity, happening only twice in the past 25 years (Portland in 1990, New Jersey in 2002).
The Suns and Sonics, neither of whom made the playoffs last season, will give the NBA two chances this season to produce one of those surprise endings.
The Suns were 29-53 last season, but they are the clear class of the league now, springing to a 28-4 start through Friday. The Sonics, until losing back-to-back games last week in Orlando and Washington, had the second-best record in the league. And they were only 37-45 last season.
“We’ve been fortunate to win more games this season than people expected,” Seattle coach Nate McMillan said last week.
“But we thought if we played the right way, played unselfishly, we would win.”
One of the biggest reasons for the difference between the NBA and the other sports is the frequency of free-agent movement.
It’s easier in football and baseball, which is why those sports are harder to follow.
The NBA is designed so a team has a better chance of retaining the players it likes by allowing it to pay more than anyone else could offer in free agency.
And one star player in basketball can make more of a difference than in either of the other two sports.