Actually the Bartman game itself is kind of an example of the thread-topic dynamic at work: a lot of people recall that as the end of that series, but the Cubs had to come back and lose the next day, as well, to send the Marlins on to New York.
Last year’s SEC Championship football game between Alabama & Georgia was a far, far better and tougher game than watching Alabama mercilessly beat the snot out of Notre Dame a few weeks later in the BCS title game.
In December of 1971, the AFC playoff game between the Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers ended with the Immaculate Reception, one of the most legendary plays ever.
But the Dolphins beat the Steelers the following week to go to the Super Bowl.
The FedEx Cup is supposed to be the PGA (golf) Tour’s equivalent of the World Series or Super Bowl, but they can’t convince anyone else of that. And the first couple of years, the point system was so messed up that the Tour Championship, the final event of the playoffs, was all but irrelevant, because Tiger Woods (2007) and Vijay Singh (2008) had accumulated so many points in the earlier playoff events.
They have since changed the system so that you have to at least play in the Tour Championship to win the Cup, but it’s still possible to win the Cup without winning a single event all year.
This is the one that lept to my mind. I’m in California and generally hate the east coast bias of much of the coverage, but that series was quite memorable. After the comeback by Boston, the World Series seemed like a mere formality.
Or for that matter, what about the 1986 World Series? Everyone remembers Game 6 (the “Buckner game”), but Game 7 (which the Mets won 8-5) is nearly forgotten.
The second semi final of the 1999 cricket world cup is much more remembered than the fairly dull final. The game was a tie, although South Africa should have won it, but Australia went through because they’d finished higher in the table in the previous round.
I think the entire 2011 baseball playoffs were an anticlimax following the final day of the regular season. However, the World Series turned out to have its own set of unforgettable moments.
Actually that game was in December 1972. I remember it because I was a Raider fan at the time and the outcome of that game really hurt. For years afterward, the Steelers were my #2 most hated team just behind the Dallas Cowboys.
Also, sorry about my 1983-2003 mistake. It was late.
Definitely. I don’t blame Bartman for the Cubs collapse and think it’s ridiculous to do so. The problem was the Cubs mentally unravalled right after that play (either that or God really hates the Cubs and started screwing with them again).
I remember that. It would turn out to be the 3rd championship for the Lakers in a row. The Kings had been antagonists for the Lakers for the last 2 years with the Lakers eliminating them from the playoffs each time. There was bad blood between the cities as Shaq had called them the Queens and Phil Jackson had mentioned that Sacramento was a “cow town”, spurring the fans at Arco Arena to bring in cow bells and turn that place into the loudest one in the NBA
This was the first time in which the Kings had a better record overall and the best record in the league behind a prime power forward Chris Webber, surprisingly good point guard Mike Bibby, Doug Christie the defensive wingman, old but still good center Vlade Divac (and former Laker), 6th man of the year (I think) Bobby Jackson, 3 point specialist Pedrag Stojakovic, and future Orlando Magic trade embarrassment Hedo Turkoglu.
The entire series was back and forth with the teams splitting the first 2 at Sacramento and the next 2 at LA. Game 4 was ended by the famous Robert Horry shot from atop the key. The Lakers had been trailing 2-1 in the series and were down by as much as 24 points in the first quarter, it looked like a blowout. But for a halftime shot by the LA backup center Samaki Walker, on a 3 pointer that would not have counted if there was instant replay, the Lakers stormed back to almost tie it. On the last play of the game, Kobe drove in to the basket but missed, the ball bounced off the rim and right into Shaq’s hands who was like 1 foot away from the basket. Arms flailing, Vlade’s beard twitching, he tossed it up too hard and the ball spun off the rim. Vlade swatted the ball away and that should have been the game, but like divine intervention, it landed perfectly in Robert Horry’s hands who was standing at the top of the 3 point line. He grabbed the ball and swished in a 3 pointer as time expired, the Staples Center crowd blew up, and the Lakers would go on to win the game and the series.
The Kings would come back with a 1 point win of their own the next night, setting up the much maligned game 6, which was admitted full of fouls on the Kings. Incidentally, this was the series that disgraced former ref Tim Donaghy said that refs stole for the Lakers. Game 7 at Arco was terrific as well, it went into overtime and the Lakers escaped with a win on the road.
The 2000 NBA playoffs also had a pretty good run that kind of overshadowed the finals. This was the first year of the Shaq-Kobe-Phil team that had the Lakers bring in the former Bulls coach to help LA get their 2 superstars to work together. As Phil Jackson admitted earlier, he was hopeful they would do well, but didn’t envision a championship just yet. However, the Lakers pulled off a monstrous 67 win season and seemed poised to run through everyone.
However, in their first series, the Lakers ran into the pesky Kings (who would be a foil for them in the coming years) and lost both road games at Sacramento. I remember the commentary around that time, that the Lakers weren’t tested and that losing on the road does not show championship resolve. There was talk about how the Lakers aren’t really worthy if they can’t win any road games, talk that Shaq brushed off and I did too. Secretly though, I worried that this would come back to haunt them in the future.
For anyone who follows basketball, you know that the Lakers have always had this weird sort of relationship with Portland. Too big to be a small town, too small to be a big city, Portland suffers from a lot of LA envy like a lot of mid-sized cities in that LA constantly overshadows. Its said that Portland fans are so zealous because they’ve got nothing else going on in their city, and like a lot of other towns up the coast, they see the Lakers as their main rival when LA doesn’t even respect them. Maybe for that reason, the Lakers have always had a lot of problems playing up in the Rose Garden.
The Blazers around that time had a really interesting team. Interesting in that their talent is undeniable, but they suffered a lot from their reputation. Outsiders and locals alike nicknamed them the “Jailblazers” because they had a ton of headcases that would wear the black and red. No doubt the #1 headcase was Rasheed Wallace, who lead the league in technical fouls (41! One every 2 games). On that same team, you had Damon Stoudamire, Bonzi Wells, a disgruntled Scottie Pippen, Brian Grant who seemed like the nice kid who fell in with a bad crowd, and future rioter Jermain O’Neal who would be most famous for his SLIDING PUNCH OF DOOM part he played in the Malice at the Palace riot in a few years. I remember that the team was supremely talented but had major chemistry issues. Their own, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, famously quipped that he “didn’t major in chemistry in school”. But when they got their shit together, this was as dangerous a team as any. They had won 59 games to the Lakers 67, 2nd in the league but 3rd in the West owing to the quirk of not being a division leader
Though the teams split the 2 games in LA, the Lakers took both games in Portland cruising to a nice, cushy 3-1 lead. People were saying the Lakers finally shook off their demons from being new to the playoffs under Phil and were poised to live up to their potential. However, the Blazers took the next 2 games convincingly and set up a final showdown in LA for game 7. Those were bad losses. From game 5 and on, Portland essentially won every quarter up until the last quarter in game 7. They completely outplayed the Lakers in their 2 wins, and went into the 4th quarter up by 15 on LA. Things looked bleak, a 67 win season was going to be wasted and everyone in the crowd was nervous.
I’m sure you all know what happened next. The Lakers ramped up their defense and caused the Blazers to miss something like 13 shots in a row as they stormed back. The capper on this is the famous alley-oops pass from Kobe to a one-handed dunk by Shaq. That put the Lakers up by 4 or 6 with less than 2 mins to go. It completed the Lakers come back and cemented Shaq and Kobe as the best one-two punch in the league for the next 3 years. It turned a promising big man like Shaq who once said he had “won everything except in college and the pros” into one of the most dominant centers ever and high school kid turned pro Kobe Bryant into the best guard since Michael Jordan.
Ha. Well, that fourth quarter plus his 28 and 12 averages in his career up to that point did it, let’s say.
**astorian **mentioned Duke’s 1991 game against UNLV, but even bigger was the Duke-Kentucky game in 1992 where Christian Laettner hit the last second shot. It was only the Final Four. Duke went on to obliterate Michigan and the Fab Five in a forgettable final.
NCAA Tournament is full of early games and Cinderellas as being more memorable than the Championship game. While the final game between Louisville and Michigan this year was very good, in a few years most people will remember Florida Gulf Coast and their upbeat style and not any particular game.
Wolverine-The Laettner game was a Sweet 16 or Elite 8 game.
You’re right. It was the regional final (elite 8). The point still stands as being remembered over the finals.
I was at that game; it totally fucking rocked! My old man and I were in the upper deck tho, so we didn’t storm the field.
Totally agree it’s the most memorable moment of the tourney. Just correcting the round. 
BTW, remember people going inside to a lite snow, emerge to blizzard?
In a general sense, I find the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to be all about the games before the championship game. The semi-finals are usually more intriguing than the final. The quarterfinals, and making it to the Final Four, are far more dramatic in my estimation.
A lot of it is the large number of teams involved, the difficulty in measuring/predicting them against each other, the “anything can happen” factor and the one loss and you are done aspect.
Forced to make a choice I would give up watching the championship game to be able to watch the preliminary games.
Forgettable except when recalling time-outs with none left.
I wonder if last year’s NCAA will go down like that, with the crazy Michigan-Kansas game overshadowing their loss to Louisville (who had a memorable victory over Duke).
The AFC/NFC championship round is nearly always better than the Superbowl that follows.
Nope. That was the following year against North Carolina when the Fab Five were sophomores. That’s how forgettable the 1992 Duke-Michigan final is. It’s upstaged by a game from a different year.