

However, by 1997, both Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan were in San Antonio, and things have gone pretty well since then. Rodman didn’t exactly get along with his teammates. There was a coaching carousel going on in San Antonio that certainly didn’t help, with six different head coaches during this span. There’s a multitude of reasons the Spurs just couldn’t click in the first half of the 1990s.

However, the team only made the conference finals once, in 1994-95, but fell to the eventual-NBA champion Houston Rockets. The team made the playoffs seven straight years, including having the best record in 1994-95 and being the No. “The Admiral” joined the Spurs in 1989 and completely flipped the trajectory of the franchise in one of the best turnaround seasons in NBA history.ĭespite bringing the Spurs to the top of the NBA table and having players such as Sean Elliot, Terry Cummings and Dennis Rodman all at some point on the team during this time, the Spurs failed to reach the NBA Finals between when Robinson came in the league and 1996. 1 pick in the 1987 draft and selected a center who would go down as one of the greatest players at that position - David Robinson. After a few years of being at the bottom of the NBA, the Spurs received the No. Milwaukee is heading to their first NBA Finals since losing in 1974 to the Celtics, with the Bucks beating the Atlanta Hawks in the conference finals. They reached three conference finals during that time, but never won more than one game in a series. The Bucks lost to the Seattle SuperSonics in 1980 when they were still in the Western Conference, but after that, Milwaukee was eliminated by either the 76ers or the Celtics in seven straight postseasons and never reached the NBA Finals. The problem was that also during that time, the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics were each just a step above the Bucks.

They were one of the most consistently dominant teams of that era. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference in the first seven seasons of the decade (minus 1979-1980 when the team was still in the West). Milwaukee made the playoffs every season in the ’80s, finishing as the No. The early ’80s teams featured two-time Defensive Player of the Year Sidney Moncrief, Marques Johnson and Bob Lanier, while the later teams had Terry Cummings, Paul Pressey, Junior Bridgeman and two-time Sixth Man of the Year Ricky Pierce. The 1980s were a great, but frustrating time to be a Bucks fan. Gervin was traded after the 1984-85 season, and the Spurs became a below-average team.
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San Antontio failed to win a playoff series the next two years, and then lost back-to-back conference finals to the Los Angeles Lakers in ’82 and ’83. The Washington Bullets (now the Wizards) shocked the Spurs in the conference semifinals in six games in 1978, and then the Bullets completed a 3-1 comeback the next year in the conference finals to stun the Spurs again. However, come playoff time, the Spurs couldn’t put it together. 2 seed five times in a six-year span between the 1977-83 seasons. There have been even more teams to consistently compete in multiple seasons as a title contender, but never make it to the final stage.Īre the Philadelphia 76ers starting to become one of those teams ? The Los Angeles Clippers? Teams that continue to be there towards the end, but never get to play for an NBA title for multiple postseasons? It may be tough to tell, but there have been a number of examples in NBA history of organizations that dominated for multiple years in an era, but could never reach the final round.

There have been plenty of great NBA teams that dominate the regular season and seem like sure candidates to play in the championship. There were a number of teams this season with early exits from the playoffs after being favorites to win the title, such as the Philadelphia 76ers, the Brooklyn Nets and the Utah Jazz.īut this is a trend that has happened year after year. No matter how good you are in the regular season, the playoffs are a different beast. It’s even harder to get to the NBA Finals.Īnd this NBA postseason further proved that point.
