RealGM

One of the more forgotten things in NBA when looking back at the 2000s was how close the Lakers possibly were to 4 peating! In game 5 of the 2003 second round series vs the Spurs with the series tied 2-2, the rallied back from a huge 4th quarter deficit to pull within two of the Spurs would possession of the ball. Robert Horry missed a game winning 3(one of the very few clutch moment playoff shots he missed) that woud've put the Lakers up 3-2 heading back home for a closeout game . The ball literally went in an out! It was really similar to the season prior when he made the 3 against the Kings!

If he hits that shot, and the Lakers go on and close out the Spurs, they play the Mavs and Nets in the next couple rounds. Do they go on to win the title, and 4peat? I think so. The Spurs were the best team in the NBA that year, and were the toughest matchup for them. They were the only team that season who could play the Lakers and have the best player on their team, with the way Duncan played in 2003. The Mavs series would've been good, and had they beat Dallas they play the Nets. While the Nets were better in 2003 than 2002, the Lakers were the absolute worst matchup for them. The Kings were already eliminated by this time by Dallas.
What do you think?

If Dirk still gets hurt in the WCF, yes.

Meh, they probably lose to the Kings the year that things were rigged, so they may be lucky to have a 3peat, let alone a 4peat.

Long as we're playing what ifs.

Cappy_Smurf wrote:Meh, they probably lose to the Kings the year that things were rigged, so they may be lucky to have a 3peat, let alone a 4peat.

Long as we're playing what ifs.

Pretty sure Weber got hurt in those playoffs

Dominater wrote:

Cappy_Smurf wrote:Meh, they probably lose to the Kings the year that things were rigged, so they may be lucky to have a 3peat, let alone a 4peat.

Long as we're playing what ifs.

Pretty sure Weber got hurt in those playoffs

Pretty sure you should do some research on game 6. Kings would have closed out the series.

do the warriors win in 2015 if Love and Irving never get injured?
do the Celtics repeat in 2009 if Garnet doesn't get injured?

Could they have even 5-peated, with a championship the prior year staving off some of the drama that derailed them in '04 against the Pistons?
Obviously what-ifs aren't worth much, but it's amazing to think about the fact that they were even that close. Most dominant team post-Jordan's Bulls, easily.

alienswon wrote:do the warriors win in 2015 if Love and Irving never get injured?
do the Celtics repeat in 2009 if Garnet doesn't get injured?

Yes

No

LAL wrote:

alienswon wrote:do the warriors win in 2015 if Love and Irving never get injured?
do the Celtics repeat in 2009 if Garnet doesn't get injured?

Yes

Yes

Fixed that for ya

The Lakers were really bad that year. Even if Horry made that 3 the Spurs would've still won that series in 7.

Yeah they do.

I still have nightmares of that Horry shot bouncing off the rim. The Lakers weren't as good that year and Shaq was morbidly obese, not to mention already making noise behind the scenes over his contract extension. Still, they would've won it all if they beat the Spurs. No question.

GoCeltics123 wrote:

LAL wrote:

alienswon wrote:do the warriors win in 2015 if Love and Irving never get injured?
do the Celtics repeat in 2009 if Garnet doesn't get injured?

No

Yes

Fixed that for ya

Fixed it some more...

Though I think Warriors win it in 2016 had Bogut not gone down, even with the Green suspension, Barnes playing like crap, and Curry being hurt. So it's a wash.

I don't think it is as clear an affair as some make it out to be. By 2002-03 the Lakers' roster has become old. Outside of Kobe and Shaq they were garbage. In the regular season outside of those two only Robert Horry had a positive BPM and he fell off the cliff in the playoffs, missing just about everything (although Fisher stepped up a bit). I do think that if that shot in game 5 goes down that the Lakers would have had a very good chance of closing out the Spurs in LA in game 6. The combination of blowing a big lead, getting beaten on the buzzer and LA being their nemesis would probably have been a tough hill to climb for San Antonio.

But I think the Mavs series wouldn't have been an LA cakewalk. The 2002-03 Mavs were a really good team. #1 in SRS, #1 in offense, #9 in defense. They did go 1-3 against the Lakers (with one game being the famous one where LA overcame a 27 point deficit entering the 4th quarter by outscoring Dallas 44-15 in the quarter) and the Lakers would have been the favourites. But in my opinion it would have been a close affair on the score board. The Lakers would have had the two best players of the series for which Dallas had no answer. But likewise the Lakers have nobody really to stop Nowitzki. The series would have come down to whether LA's supporting cast could have held off Finley/Nash/van Exel enough to have the Lakers star power advantage push them over the top.

They lost in the semifinals. They weren't close to anything.

In 2002/03, the Mavs' last win at LAL was at The Forum in 1990/91. Magic Johnson and Rolando Blackman were playing that night. LA was something like 35-40 Ws and maybe 6-7 Ls vs Dallas in that span, including 3-1 that season. It was some obscene tally, don't wanna look it up, and it included all of Dirk and Nash's career up to that point. This wasn't the 2011 Lakers or Mavs. This was 2003 with Shaq. Mavs were finally starting to move away from such consistent losing to the Lakers around that time, but who knows... If they're going to beat the Lakers in a 7 gm series, they're going have to win far more consistently in those 7 than they had for the prior 25. To conceive of them beating the Lakers is conceiving of them finally breaking thru out of nowhere. Not impossible, but not the guarantee it seems like talking about it 15 years later. Someone used that 27 pt 4th qtr comeback on 12/7/02 as a suggestion that the Lakers were slipping. I dunno how that doesn't prove that the Mavs choked damn near every time they played LA on the road instead. Coming back from 27 points in the 4th Q isn't a worse reflection on the winning team than it is on the team that walked off the court with heads hanging low. Cuban sitting there thinking to himself, "That did not just happen... It's only a nightmare, wake up NOW!..."

JellosJigglin wrote:I still have nightmares of that Horry shot bouncing off the rim. The Lakers weren't as good that year and Shaq was morbidly obese, not to mention already making noise behind the scenes over his contract extension. Still, they would've won it all if they beat the Spurs. No question.

Far as I can recall it actually rattled inside the rim.

(EDIT: watched that clip above - yep, that went in deeep. that's how i remembered it. that's one I don't go back to revisit too often for fun. haven't watched any of that series since it happened.)

Shaq wasn't morbidly obese in 03. Morbidly obese describes Oliver Miller. He had lost a step between the 02/3 and 03/4 seasons, though, but he was still practically unstoppable in 04. So much so the Pistons didn't try to. He started off the 03 season with the turf toe issue, but didn't have an appreciably bad, eyepopping down year. Maybe a marginal one in terms of health and athleticism, but the numbers were still comparable to 01 and 02 if not the sheer athleticism he had especially in 2001 and earlier. By 03, you could just begin to see the slippage on that front. By 2004, it was bad enough not to ignore and a major factor in his trade. It's just that with Shaq, he was still dominant even if not in his prime athletic years. In 2005 and 06, he was still dominant enough to not only make Miami title contenders, but to put them in the more select group of legit championship favorites.

Horry and Fox would've been the problems in this theoretical if anything. Those two were on a Slip 'N Slide with the spigot going full blast. I hated watching Fox by that point and when Phil would play him in 03/4, I was convinced he was trolling the fans. Horry with the 2/38 treys in those playoffs. If he hit that Spurs shot and LA won G6, but that general pattern continued, that's where the Mavs could've had their shot. I wasn't confident in Horry or Fox even in 2002. They both happened to have good games in Gm 7 at Sac otherwise they lose. That was a tense ass proposition going into the final game. I remember being stressed about those last two gms all week. Shaq and Kobe weren't the problem, it was everything else. However, at that point, Shaq and Kobe were still enough with such minimal help to hang with the Spurs and to beat almost every lesser team. SA was among the best 1-3 teams every year.

Cappy_Smurf wrote:

Dominater wrote:

Cappy_Smurf wrote:Meh, they probably lose to the Kings the year that things were rigged, so they may be lucky to have a 3peat, let alone a 4peat.

Long as we're playing what ifs.

Pretty sure Weber got hurt in those playoffs

Pretty sure you should do some research on game 6. Kings would have closed out the series.

Sorry mate. I was thinking of the "if they beat the Spurs" scenario. I believe in that Kings/Mavs series, Kings were in the driver seat then Weber went down.

But I agree, 2002 was blatantly rigged

It's kind of funny how threads like this one turn into catch-alls for other what-if scenarios instead of focused discussions about the what-if scenario the thread was made to discuss; I suppose that's the nature of the topic, though.

On-topic: yeah, I think the Lakers would've gone all the way if they'd gotten past us. That series stands as my second-favorite sports moment of all time (behind the '14 Finals) because of the intense rivalry between the two teams, the need for vindication after losing to them in the previous two playoffs, the personal disdain I felt at the time for all things Lakers/Kobe, the semi-friendly rivalry I had with a bunch of my Laker friends, and the fact that it happened at one of the very lowest times in my personal life, when feelings of victory were hell to come by. I know it's just a playoff series, but it was a cup of cold water in a desert for me at the time and I cherished it.

...sorry; I didn't mean to get misty on y'all.

alienswon wrote:do the warriors win in 2015 if Love and Irving never get injured?
do the Celtics repeat in 2009 if Garnet doesn't get injured?

Do the Celtics win in 08 if Bynum and Ariza wasn't injured?