NBA

The NBA's two most legendary franchises squared off in an epic NBA Finals that went the distance and wasn't decided until the final moments of Game 7. The Lakers defeated the Celtics 83-79 to claim their 16th NBA title. Kobe Bryant was named MVP while Phil Jackson won his NBA record 11th title in 19 seasons as a head coach.

The Lakers were favored to repeat as NBA champs that season. In addition to Mikan, the team boasted a solid frontcourt in Jim Pollard and Vern Mikkelsen and a better-than-average backcourt in Bob Harrison and Slater Martin. Minneapolis took the Western Division by three games and posted the league's best record at 44-24. But the playoffs didn't go according to plan. Minneapolis lost a game to the Indianapolis Olympians in the division semifinals, marking the Lakers' first-ever loss in a preliminary playoff round. They nevertheless won the series, two games to one, and advanced to face old rival Rochester in the Western Division Finals. The Lakers won Game 1, but the Royals came back with three straight victories to take the best-of-five series.

It was only 23 years ago when the Miami Heat were the NBA's newest expansion team. They immediately made a name for themselves in the league as it took the team over a month to win their first game. The 0-17 start set a then current record for the most games lost to start a season as Rony Seikaly, Kevin Edwards, and Grant Long all became household names in South Beach It was those players that the Miami Heat franchise put out to fill the starting lineup in their inagural season as they finished a league worst 15-67.
Now we see one of the NBA's best as that starting lineup now consists of two of the league's best players and one of the league's best power forwards. Even before Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh joined the team, the Heat have produced and showcased a number of superstars. Even within a decade of the teams first season, they had a few of the league's premier stars that were setting franchise records that have still stood even in the Dwyane Wade era.

The Celtics came into being on June 6, 1946. On that day 11 men (all of whom owned either professional hockey teams, large arenas in major cities, or both) met to discuss the formation of a new professional basketball league. They christened the new league the Basketball Association of America and modeled its season-which featured a 60-game schedule and a series of playoffs-after the National Hockey League's. The game itself was based on college basketball, but with the contests lengthened to 48 minutes rather than the 40 played in college. A driving force behind the BAA was Celtics owner Walter Brown, who ran the Boston Garden and was part of the NHL's Boston Bruins organization. Brown hired John "Honey" Russell as his first coach, and the Celtics' maiden home game was played on November 5, 1946. The contest began an hour behind schedule because Boston's Chuck Connors (later the star of television's The Rifleman) splintered a wooden backboard with a practice dunk before the game. Boston lost to the Chicago Stags, 57-55, but the 4,329 fans in attendance not only got to see the Celtics' first-ever home game but also witnessed the first broken backboard in professional basketball history.

The Chicago Bulls joined the NBA for the 1966-67 season. The franchise struggled for the better part of a quarter century, occasionally putting excellent teams on the court, such as the tough units of the mid-1970s that featured Bob Love, Norm Van Lier, Jerry Sloan, and Tom Boerwinkle. More often, however, the Bulls worked hard for mediocre results. That all changed in the mid-1980s with the drafting of Michael Jordan, the dominant player of his era and possibly the greatest player of all time.
Jordan won seven straight scoring titles with a combination of breathtaking slam dunks and a bag of thrilling shot-making tricks. He put up some of the biggest numbers in NBA history and wrote some of the most memorable chapters in the annals of the league. In the early 1990s the Bulls assembled a strong supporting cast for Jordan and won three consecutive NBA titles, becoming only the third franchise in history to string together a trio of crowns. After more than a year of "retirement" to try his hand at professional baseball, Jordan returned to lead the Bulls back to another title in 1996, one more in 1997 and a third in a row in 1998, the Bulls' second Three-peat of the decade and their sixth NBA championship trophy.
Prior to the inception of the Bulls organization, two pro teams had failed in Chicago. One squad, the Stags, had been a charter member of the 11-team Basketball Association of America, the predecessor of the NBA. The franchise folded after the 1949-50 campaign. The Packers debuted in 1961-62, but after two last-place finishes and a name change to the Zephyrs, the franchise moved to Baltimore and eventually became the Washington Bullets.

A Look Back at the 1981 Draft

Success did not come early or often for the New Jersey Nets franchise. The fortunes of the franchis changed in 1981. That year the Nets christened their new home court at the Brendan Byrne Arena (now Continental Airlines Arena) and had a draft most teams could only dream out.