An O'Brien Trophy Monopoly

It's that time of the year again, when we've finally gone through what feels like 18 weeks of basketball playoffs and are left with the final four, battling for another week until we're left with only two teams. This year's contenders are the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs in the West, and the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Pistons in the East. And I probably couldn't be more disappointed.

Now, granted, Boston and Detroit are probably the most entertaining teams in the East, and the best match up for competitiveness. Indeed, it would be hard to justify wanting more of the Cleveland "LeBron James and four sandbags" Cavaliers, or any other ultimately mediocre team (though Atlanta going far would have been up there with George Mason). Similarly, San Antonio and Los Angeles were arguably the best teams in the West this year. New Orleans was a fantastic story, and I was rooting for them, but you'd be kidding yourself if you thought they would have had an answer for Kobe et al.

My big gripe with this outcome is that these four teams--Lakers, Spurs, Pistons, Celtics--are four of the eight different teams that have won the NBA championship in the last 28 years. Since 1980, only eight have won.

And saying eight makes it seem like more teams than it really feels like; in 1983, the Sixers won it all once. Similarly, the Heat won it once in 2006. So outside of these anomalies, a mere six teams out of 28-30 (depending on the year) have dominated the championship for nearly three decades. The Lakers won 8 times, the Bulls 6 times, the Spurs 4 times, the Celtics 3 times, the Pistons 3 times, the Rockets twice, and then Miami and Philly.

That's not even looking before 1980. Let's not forget that from 1959 through 1966, the Celtics won it every single year, and then again in '68, '69, '74 and '76. The Minneapolis Lakers also won it four out of the first five times the NBA had its modern championship. This isn't really a modern trend; sure, there are odd teams like the Syracuse Nationals or the Golden State Warriors winning once or twice, but largely, only a handful of teams seem ever to win.

What accounts for this ridiculous streak? Dynasty is the obvious answer, almost hardly worth mentioning. You assemble a good team, and if you're able to lock those players up, you'll probably win it all a couple of times in a row. But these are all different time periods that the Celtics and Lakers consistently won. Doesn't it seem a bit anomalous that they would be able to assemble such powerhouse teams so many times over history? And the franchises in Minneapolis, Detroit and San Antonio are hardly overflowing with money. After all, if money were a factor, the Knicks would have won at least once since 1973.

I'm not saying that it's inexplicable that these same franchises keep finding ways to dominate. But it does bother me that the same teams win over and over--especially this year, where the West was the most competitive conference in NBA history, and yet we almost ended up with the same Western Conference Finals match up as last year (SA vs Utah). In a year where New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix and others seemed like legit contenders, the same teams ended up on top. And when this 28th year ends, we'll still only have eight unique champions.

Here's hoping that next year, we get a Memphis/Indiana finals. Screw the terrible ratings; I want to see something new for once.