Georgetown basketball had arrived by 1981. A program that was desolate when John Thompson arrived in 1973 had become a consistent NCAA Tournament team and got within a basket of the Final Four in 1980. All that was left was to take the next step. 1981 Georgetown basketball continued the pattern of success, but in […]
The 1979 Seattle Supersonics were both a franchise on the rise, as well as one that had a bitter taste in their mouths over the end of the previous season. Those two elements combined to make them NBA champions. Seattle made a surprise run to the Finals in 1978 before losing a Game 7 at […]
1981 was a seminal year for college basketball in the northeastern part of the United States. It was the first year that the Big East, a league that had gotten a partial start in 1980, played a full double-round robin conference schedule. It was also a seminal year for Boston College. A program that had […]
The Seattle SuperSonics (today’s Oklahoma City Thunder) didn’t have much of a history coming into 1978. Since their founding a decade earlier, the Sonics had made the playoffs just twice. They were known more for the fame of their coach—Celtic legend Bill Russell was on the sidelines for those postseason trips of 1975-76 but was […]
The 1978 Denver Nuggets were coming off a year where they had proved they belonged. One of several franchises from the old American Basketball Association (ABA) that merged with the NBA for 1977, the Nuggets had won a division title and produced one of the league’s electric stars in David Thompson. 1978 produced more excitement—winning […]
The 1978 Portland Trail Blazers were on top of the world. They were coming off a surprise championship run in 1977 and validating that run by dominating most of the ’78 regular season. Then, in the blink of an eye, the cruelty of sports showed its hand in a dramatic way. An injury not only […]
1980 Georgetown basketball was coming. John Thompson, after inheriting a disaster situation in 1973, had reached multiple NCAA Tournaments in an era when the size of the bracket ranged from just 25 to 40 teams. The Hoyas were consistently posting winning seasons. In 1980, the first year of the new Big East Conference, Georgetown took […]
The 1978 Milwaukee Bucks were in rebuilding mode. The franchise won an NBA title in 1971 and returned to the Finals in 1974 behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But Kareem was discontented in Milwaukee and the organization traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers. After a brief stretch in the wilderness, Don Nelson was hired as head […]
The Spurs had been one of the American Basketball Association (ABA)’s more successful franchises in the 1970s, covering a move from Dallas to San Antonio and leading to their inclusion as one of the four teams absorbed into the NBA in the merger of 1977. The Spurs immediately showed they were for real by making […]
Georgetown was a program on the rise. John Thompson came to Washington D.C. in 1973, inheriting a team coming off a three-win season and no NCAA Tournament appearances in the postwar era. Thompson got them into what was then a 25-team NCAA field by 1975 and did it again in 1976. Over the next two […]
The 1978 Philadelphia 76ers were looking to take the final step. After acquiring Julius “Dr. J’ Erving in 1977, the Sixers reached the NBA Finals and won the first two games. Losing the next four left a sour taste in their mouth. After a tumultuous start to the ’78 season, Philadelphia reached the playoffs in […]
The Washington Bullets had made two recent trips to the NBA Finals, in 1971 and 1975 respectively. But they hadn’t yet won a title–in fact, they hadn’t even won a game in the Finals, being swept out both times. The 1978 Washington Bullets weren’t as good as their ’71 and ’75 predecessors during the regular […]
