The Warriors and championship asterisks

The Golden State Warriors were infamously derided for their luck last postseason, when they didn’t have to face the San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers, or a fully-armed Cleveland Cavaliers team. The winds shifted this year, as they’re without Stephen Curry due to a knee injury that followed an ankle problem. The basketball gods immediately responded with season-ending injuries to both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. While everyone lamented the woes in Los Angeles, the Warriors’ path got a lost easier. Now they’re facing the type of team in Portland that doesn’t normally make the second round while Curry regains his health. Where is the fairness? Is this going to be another dreaded asterisk title?

Going back into NBA history, injuries are common, and devastating ones have been tearing apart the league for decades. A full 57 years before Kyrie Irving hurt his knee in the finals, Bill Russell missed multiple games against the Hawks in the finals, losing for the only time in his career in the final round. Yet Bob Pettit, the star who led the Hawks to their title, is still a Hall-of-Famer and the championship still counts.

People have been stating certain titles deserve asterisks, a literal and figurative black mark, for a long time. It’s a way to demerit certain championship seasons when the perception is that it wasn’t fully earned. For a comprehensive reference, I’ve included a table of every title since the ABA merger with asterisks included where needed. The asterisks are inserted for: star-level or valuable players who missed entire postseasons or series on contenders; key players who missed games in the Finals or other high-leverage series; superstars who missed entire seasons; and lockout years, where everyone is rusty and nothing apparently counts.

As you may have noticed, every season has an asterisk: injuries happen every year, from the momentous — Bill Walton won MVP on a team that was barnstorming the league and then got injured for the 1978 playoffs and sat out the entire 1979 season — to the specific — Kendrick Perkins does not belong with the other names in terms of star power, but before his injury he was a defensive force who was sorely needed for a Game 7 against the Lakers frontcourt of Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom. Some players get injured often in the playoffs, like Larry Bird and Charles Barkley, while others have ill-timed injuries at the height of their powers like Russell Westbrook.

Many of these events are forgotten, like Tim Duncan getting injured for the entirety of the 2000 playoffs, paving the way for Shaquille O’Neal’s first championship. The Spurs were the defending champs with a fearsome tandem of Duncan and David Robinson, and people do not discount Shaq’s first ring. Those rings are not forged by playing the best possible set of opponents. Teams have no direct control over their opponents, and throughout history there is no consistent “fairness” in who plays whom. In the early 80’s, for example, the Western Conference was weak with the exception of the Lakers, so when the Lakers were upset in a super short series in the first round by the Houston Rockets, who made the playoffs with a losing record of 40-42, Houston made the Finals. That was a lucky break for the Boston Celtics, and Bird got his first title.

The Warriors will face who they have to face. They do not set the schedule, and it does not limit them being arguably the greatest team of all-time. Fortune favors the prepared, and the Warriors have more than proven they’re great enough to deserve a championship. There’s no world that exists where injuries and other bits of random luck are erased from basketball, and there’s an infinite well of possibilities for great players that could have been and teams that should have been. This imperfect world is our world, and injuries are a part of the game. By the same token, if the Spurs or someone else win this season’s title it will not be invalidated by injuries to Curry or anyone else.

Stephen Curry got his first title without having to play the defending champions in the San Antonio Spurs and against a Finals team missing two of its stars, but that’s not a historical aberration. Bird got his first title against a Finals team with a losing record, Jordan got his first one with Isiah Thomas and a few of the Lakers banged up. Duncan won his first in a weird lockout season, and Shaq won when Duncan got injured the next year. The Warriors may have been saved by the injuries of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, but that’s what champions needs: luck. And that’s okay.