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Weakest Champions '80s


All Champions are great- First and foremost- But if take ALL 10 teams that won the NBA title from 1980-1989

The Weakest Team is

the 1980-81 Boston Celtics

Disagree?

Bring it.

No Voting till complete please.


This is a hard TD to argue. As you have stated above all champions are great and in this decade the champions were all exceptionally great. This decade gave us some of the greatest of all time.

I am going to argue that the weakest team is

the 1987-88 Los Angeles Lakers

This team while the names on it are impressive, they really struggled through the playoffs. In their 4 playoff series leading to the championship 3 of them went to 7 games.


This is why I placed the 80-81 Celtics at the bottom rung of the 80s

Center

Parish in his first year with the C's went 19 and 9 that year- vs KAJ 14 and 6 in his next to the last year of his career. Even though they have matched up constantly and Kareem always did well vs Robert- This matchup goes to the 27 year old over the 40 year old.

PF

AC Green went 11 and 8 that year- moving into the low post as KAJ got older- but he would be NO match for Larry Bird -in his second year- as he lead the team with 21 PPG and 11 Boards 5.5 dimes- Big Edge to the Celtics here

SF

James Worthy went for 20 and 5 and had one of his better years on the defensive end and would have a feild day against the smaller and slower Maxwell (15 and 6)

SG

Byron Scott had his best year going 22 and 4boards with 4 assists as he took more of the scoring load from KAJ- his 6-3 size would be ok vs the 6'5 Chris Ford 9ppg and 4assists with 2 boards in his next to last year

PG

Magic went 19.6ppg and 12 dimes to go with 5 boards a game here. That would blow the 32 year old Tiny Archibald (13 and 7ast with 2 boards a game) out of the water


In short from your argument the Celtics were stronger on the inside especially when they went with the Parish - McHale - Bird lineup. Defensively this lineup controlled the paint with both Parish and McHale in the top ten that year in blocks.

The Lakers would then have the edge at the guard positions.

The reason that I took the Lakers however was that they certainly didn't cruise to the championship. Each of the series they were in after the first round could have gone either way. If the Lakers didn't get a few breaks or if the ball took a little bit different bounce they would not have been the champs.

The only team that the Celtics struggled with while winning their championship was a 76er team that won 62 games that year and was led by Dr. J, Darryl Dawkins, and Maurice Cheeks.


As far as Kevin McHale is concerned- that was his rookie year ans he was the 6th man- only started 4 of 17 games in the playoffs and 32 all year, going 18 and 7 however.
The 6th Man for the Lakers that year was Mychal Thompson, going 12 and 6 that year.

I love how it seems everyone of these TDs my opponent comes up with ohhhh My team lost more games in the playoffs

Lets see
Round 1 (4-0) versus Chicago Bulls (45-37) who had no all Stars
Round 2 (4-3) versus Philadelphia 76ers (62-20) who were without 6th man Doug Collins for the run
Won NBA Finals (4-2) versus Houston Rockets (40-42) -who were UNDER 500 that year with no all-stars either

Oh yeah REAL ROUGH road there.

Now the Lakers

First off they had an extra round
Round 1 (3-0) versus San Antonio Spurs (31-51) Who did have an all-star that year-

Round 2 (4-3) versus Utah Jazz (47-35) they had some players Named Malone and Stockton, not to bad there.

Round 3 (4-3) versus Dallas Mavericks (53-29) These Mavericks had 3 All-Stars that year.

Won NBA Finals (4-3) versus Detroit Pistons - you know the team about to win back to back titles

So IF the Celtics HAD struggled- that would have been bad.


Let's start at the championship and work are way through your argument.

Houston Rockets - true they were under .500 however no all-stars? Maybe you have heard of MOSES MALONE, ALL-STAR AND 1ST TEAM ALL NBA. They did underachieve in the regular season however, they were as hot as you get in the playoffs and beat some good teams to get to the finals.

For the Lakers to win the championship from the Pistons the biggest factor was the fact that Isiah wasn't playing at 100%. He had that horrible ankle injury. Isiah not being injured that series would have been different.

Conference Finals:

80-81 Celtics beat a team in the 76ers led by Dr. J, Darryl Dawkins, and Maurice Cheeks two hall of famers and Dawkins
The 87-88 Lakers beat Aguirre, Blackman and Tarpley

These two teams play who would you put money on?

Semis even with the Jazz's key 6th man Darrell Griffith not playing the Jazz team was still better than the Bulls team that the Celtics beat. However this is the only round where the Lakers beat was better than the team the Celtics beat.

Lakers played lesser teams and lost more games in the playoffs. Regular season identical records.

David I will take one more crack at it

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BLASPHEMY NC!

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I know I know- one of my favorite teams there.

But I mean LOOK at the 80s kinda hard to FIND a team there without 3 HOF MIN there.

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David I will take one more crack at it

Alfalfa

HEy no worries you are MORE than welcome to any of my TDs you see out there.

Almost Like CCC and I Td each other enough to make sure neither of us come close to the top 25 in %

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Hey Dave, I did a little research....

The bottom line is, there were NO weak champions in the 80s! That decade might be fairly called the Golden Age of the league! BTW it was dominated by the great Celtic and Laker teams of Bird and Magic! They took 7 of the 10 Championships!

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Both of you have to argue that teams stacked with HOFers were weak!
Good Luck!! LOL

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coach that is truly sad that you had to do research to figure out that those teams of the 80s were great

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t-painandd-wadearefriends can't read....he already voted

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Coach, add in the Pistons gret team, and 9 out of 10 were taken by tams with at least 3 HOF's, There was no team that won that was bad. You could probably call the 80's the highest quality of champions over a decade in ANY sport.

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How do a weak Bulls team, a Loaded Philly team with 2 HOF and a sub 500 Rockets team with Moses end up lesser than a Pistons team about to go back to back, the Jazz with Stockton to Malone and the Best Dallas team pre Cuban?

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read arguments and stop arguing if these TDs were meant to have more arguments after it was over wouldn't they just make the TDs longer?

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I missed where we couldn;t leave comments

and considering these USED to be 500 characters be glad we get 1200 now.

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you argue that the Rockets have not all stars clearly wrong. Philly was loaded - Isiah was hurt and the best pre Cuban Mavericks....wow now that is a feat considering they had a total of 6 winning seasons before Cuban

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rockets have not all stars
typo
rocket had no all stars

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