Bricklayer said:
You may have missed this but the Bulls/Pistons was a great rivalry right UP to the point where the Bulls finally won. Then it abruptly died. The Bulls became da Bulls, the Pistons rapidly faded away. The tension which had made it great was gone. However, the years BEFORE that event were tremendous. THAT was the rivalry. If the Bulls had lost that last series with the Pistons it wouldn't have taken a thing away from it.
No, but it added a necessary element to the rivalry. The Bulls, who had lost to the defending champs in 90, beat them in 91. While most people like to remember everything prior to 91, that year was indeed the year that defined the end of rivalry. That last year was a very important year purely in basketball terms, which is the only thing that should matter.
Lakers/Celtcis was obviously fairly unique. Basketball's version of the Steelers/Cowboys of the 70's. Two evenly matched teams at exactly the same point in their development. And starting out very young so it could keep on for a full decade. Happens once in a generation at most. Once in 50 years for basketball.
OK, I'll give you that. Then again, don't those type of rivalries define their sport? In fact, wasn't the Celtics-Lakers rivalry where the obsession with NBA team rivalries came from?
Lakers/Spurs was barely a blip. And much of the blip itself was based around extraneous stuff -- the asterisk, did Bowen try to hurt Kobe etc.
Barely a blip, it was 6 years long. It started with the Spurs beating the Lakers and winning the title in 99 and the Lakers beating the Spurs (but losing the title) in 2004, with three Lakers titles and one Spurs title in between. That's the definition of a rivalry, with two great teams losing it and winning it different years, and with it being all about on the court performances.
None of the Spurs-Lakers rivalry was based on extraneous stuff. Phil's asterisk comments were made
before the 99 campaign. Heck, that one Phil quote not even related to the Spurs at the time is still the only off the court thing Spurs or Lakers fans could refer to during the rivalry. The other 99% of the time, that rivalry was all about the game, their players, or a series. And I'm not aware of any controversial incident where Bowen hurt Kobe. And there was no “etc.”.