2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Championship

Way back in April, I announced that I was going to undergo a major project over the span of about six months. The last 65 NBA champions, along with the nine ABA champions, were going to compete to find the greatest team of all time. I've run this experiment a couple times before coming to the same conclusion: the 1996 Chicago Bulls are the greatest. I wanted to include the ABA teams, however, because to exclude them might cloud things a little bit.

Those 74 teams were narrowed to 72 in June, and the ABA teams played a single round robin amongst themselves to give me a baseline to judge them by. That set the stage for a five week long tournament to narrow the field even further down to 32. And now, just two teams remain.

In one corner, we have a blue blood champion that has had some success in the first two tournaments. The 1997 Chicago Bulls romped through the first three rounds in 2013, losing just two games total before falling in seven to the eventual finalist in the 2005 San Antonio Spurs. 2015 was also kind to Chicago as they won that tournament's Group E with an 11-3 record and had no trouble in the first two rounds before dropping a heartbreaking Game 7 at Oracle Arena to the 2015 Golden State Warriors. After stewing on that loss, they came into the 2016 Tournament of Champions as a contender once again and held their own, going 13-3 and winning Group G. It's been a tough road in the Elimination Stage, but the Bulls have done their damage, knocking off the 2003 Spurs before avenging their elimination to the '05 Spurs. They beat their younger selves from 1992 then got arguably a sweeter revenge, knocking off the '15 Warriors in Game 7 to make up for last year's shortfall. Here stands Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and company: just four wins from immortality.

Standing in their way is a true Cinderella story. The 1985 Los Angeles Lakers easily dispatched their first round opponent in 2013 and got a Game 1 winner at the buzzer from Kurt Rambis in Round 2 before dropping four straight to the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers, including a winnable Game 4 where they blew an 11 point lead in regulation and lost on a buzzer beating dunk in overtime. Los Angeles went 10-4 in Group B last year, good for third place. They pulled a seven game upset in the first round and responded to a Game 1 loss in the next round with four straight wins to advance to the quarterfinals before running into the buzzsaw that was the 1996 Chicago Bulls. The Lakers got put in a tough group this year and managed to sneak into the Elimination Stage with an 8-8 record and overcome the 1993 Bulls thanks to the tiebreaker. They were the second-worst team to advance, but shocked the world by sweeping their group's winner and #2 overall seed in the 1990 Detroit Pistons. They then managed to get by three different iterations of Laker teams, starting with the constantly contending and underrated 1972 team before surviving a seven game war with their 1987 counterparts and knocking off Shaq and Kobe's 2002 team to arrive at the ultimate stage.

These two titans have earned their way here, but they need to win four more games to claim the prize as the greatest team of all time. To determine that, we are once again playing a best of sever series in a 2-2-1-1-1 format. Home court advantage goes to the Bulls by virtue of their winning their group while the Lakers finished in fourth place. All simulations are once again provided by WhatIfSports.com. And now, without further ado, let's crown a champion.

(4) '85 Los Angeles Lakers vs (1) '97 Chicago Bulls
Game 1: '85 LAL 129, @ '97 CHI 102 ('85 LAL leads 1-0)
Game 2: @ '97 CHI 104, '85 LAL 89 (Series tied 1-1)
Game 3: @ '85 LAL 115, '97 CHI 105 ('85 LAL leads 2-1)
Game 4: @ '85 LAL 112, '97 CHI 109 (OT) ('85 LAL leads 3-1)
Game 5: '85 LAL 110, @ '97 CHI 101 ('85 LAL wins 4-1)
The Bulls had no answer for the Lakers' bigs in Game 1, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went off for 28 points and 11 rebounds while James Worthy pitched in 18 and 12 to make the opener a laugher. Chicago regained control in Game 2 behind 29 points from Michael Jordan and 24 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists from Scottie Pippen to even the series heading out to LA. Back in Southern California, the Lakers used a 31-18 second quarter advantage to regain control of the series and got 26 points, eight rebounds, five assists, and four blocks from Kareem while Magic Johnson added 20 points and 11 rebounds in Game 3. Michael Jordan hit a corner three with 14 seconds left in Game 4 to give Chicago a 95-94 lead, but Byron Scott threw down a dunk to beat the buzzer and force overtime, and Kareem scored eight of his 23 points in the extra session to put the Lakers within one win of a stunning tournament run and ruin a 37 point night for Jordan. Back in Chicago, after taking an 81-80 lead in the fourth quarter of Game 5, the Lakers went on a 8-2 run to seize control, and the Bulls would get no closer than within three points as Los Angeles stunned the basketball world to win the Tournament of Champions despite 35 points from Jordan, but Kareem finished with 22 points and 10 rebounds, Magic added 17 points and 12 assists, and James Worthy scored 18 points to lead the Lakers to the title.

I'm in absolute shock. I thought there was no chance in hell they'd pull it off. But congratulations to the 1985 Los Angeles Lakers, who have established themselves as the new Champion of Champions! Since I don't anticipate running this tournament again any time soon (if at all, maybe in 2022 when I have 80 teams and don't need to do any pre-tournaments), they get to reign for the foreseeable future. That leaves one matter unattended.

In the past tournaments, I have created an All Tournament Team. I almost didn't do one this year because I wanted to do stats for every game in last year's tournament, and trying to keep up with that damn near killed me. Adding more games to the mix made it impossible to keep stats in real time for this year's tournament, and unfortunately for what I assume is server space issues, WhatIfSports deletes saved NBA games after two months (though I still have Death to the BCS Playoff games from as far back as 2012, so who knows). I did try to tabulate all the stats I could, but it's just too much. Even so, I'm going to look at box scores and names 15 players to the All Tournament Team, and include one MVP.

All Tournament of Champions Third Team
 Dwyane Wade, 2013 Miami Heat
 Kobe Bryant, 2002 Los Angeles Lakers
 Scottie Pippen, 1992 Chicago Bulls
 Draymond Green, 2015 Golden State Warriors
 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 1971 Milwaukee Bucks

All Tournament of Champions Second Team
Steph Curry, 2015 Golden State Warriors
Klay Thompson, 2015 Golden State Warriors
James Worthy, 1985 Los Angeles Lakers
LeBron James, 2012 Miami Heat
Shaquille O'Neal, 2002 Los Angeles Lakers

All Tournament of Champions First Team
Magic Johnson, 1985 Los Angeles Lakers
Michael Jordan, 1997 Chicago Bulls
Scottie Pippen, 1997 Chicago Bulls
LeBron James, 2013 Miami Heat
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 1985 Los Angeles Lakers

2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions Most Valuable Player
Magic Johnson, 1985 Los Angeles Lakers

I wish the outcome had been slightly different after over 600 games, but I tip my cap. Congratulations to the 1985 Lakers, your 2016 NBA/ABA Champion of Champions!