What if the Underdog Won: 2019
Every year, there seems to be a team that we say… what if? A team that no one thought would have a chance come playoff time, and everyone wishes could have done just a little bit more. Sometimes, these teams win. Take the 2011 Mavericks or the 2004 Pistons for example. Who could have guessed at the start of the season, hell, even the playoffs that these teams would have done as well as they did? Who could have sat back in their chair and said with full confidence that Chauncey Billups would take down Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal? Or that Dirk Nowitzki would take down a super team of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and oh yeah, LeBron James? These are the teams we root for. These are the underdogs.
So I want to look back on the past few years of basketball and examine the teams who showed the same amount of might as the Mavs or Pistons. Who had the guts and heart to potentially beat the odds and be one of the next underdog teams to win it all. The last true underdog to win was in fact back in 2011. I suppose you could say that the Spurs weren’t meant to win in 2014, but no one was really surprised at all. Maybe the Raptors last year shocked some, but if you watched them at all you knew how insane Kawhi was playing, and when the whole Warriors squad went down I think we all really knew who was going to win. As good as Steph Curry is, there was no way he was beating the depth of the Raps last year. So I wanted to take a look back at the underdog that gave us all hope over the past years of the Warriors dynasty and even before that. In this article, I’m going to start with just last year, and then I’ll make a new article for each year prior.
2019 - Portland Trailblazers
This is the team that inspired this entire article. I don’t think anyone saw this coming, even though they were actually a 3-seed. Speaking from a personal perspective, I thought the Thunder had a decent shot with PG playing at an MVP level. I thought the Nuggets were the real deal with their young core and dominant regular season run. I even thought the Jazz vs. Rockets series could ultimately decide who would be going to the Western Conference Finals because either of those teams, in my mind, could end up defeating the Warriors. But the last team on my mind was the Portland Trailblazers, especially after their embarrassing performance in the 2018 playoffs. Oh how wrong I would turn out to be.
Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, and the rest of the Portland squad ended up being the team to surprise everyone. I think I speak for every basketball fan in existence when I say that Dame’s shot in game 5 to finish it was quite possibly the most savage buzzer beater I have ever witnessed, (at least up until that point in time). Russell Westbrook and Paul George were defeated, and that was the last game they would play together. He ended an entire era of the franchise with one shot, essentially, and that was only the first series.
People gloss over the fact that the Blazers and Nuggets went 7 games including an unfathomable quadruple overtime game 3 which they ended up winning. They gloss over the fact that the Warriors were taken to 6 games in the very first round by the Clippers, who managed to come back by over 30 in one of those games. They even gloss over how the Trailblazers were so close in nearly every single one of the games in the Western Conference Finals, and even blew a couple of them. The Blazers were the perfect underdog story. If they could have gotten past the Warriors, then who’s to say they couldn’t have gotten past the Raptors? Or the Bucks? All of this is hypothetical, of course, so now one actually knows what could have been of how we would have seen the Blazers after all. However, it does beg the all important question - what if they won?
If the Portland Trailblazers won the 2019 NBA Championship, then this is what I believe would be the way of thinking nowadays. I don’t think there would be much difference, expect for two things. One, the Blazers would obviously have their first ever set of rings and most likely attract more of a free agent market, while also retaining more of their key pieces. And two, Damian Lillard’s legacy would be forever changed. He was recently listed on the back end of the top 74 players in NBA history. If he wins a ring last year, how much would he catapult up that list? Would he be ranked higher than Carmelo Anthony? Chris Paul? Hell, even John Stockton? In basketball, a ring changes everything. Where would we see Kevin Durant if he never won a ring in Golden State? Certainly not ranked as high all-time as he is today. Damian Lillard would be regarded as one of the top 10-15 point guards of all-time, and Portland Trailblazers would have their first and only NBA Championship. And that’s what would’ve happened if the underdog won.
