You either win an NBA championship, or go home empty-handed. There is no consolation prize.
A team might make it all the way to the end, but if they don’t win, they’re in the same boat as the 28 other teams who are trying to figure out what they need to do to successfully scale the NBA mountaintop.
Warriors forward Draymond Green knows a thing or two — or four — about winning a championship, but he also is familiar with the sting of losing in the NBA Finals, and explained on the latest episode of “The Draymond Green Show with Baron Davis” podcast a brutally-honest perspective on teams, like the New York Knicks, for example, who found themselves close to reaching the Finals before losing to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals, but were not close to hoisting the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.
“If you want me to be quite honest with you, I personally think making it to the NBA Finals is one of the worst seasons you can have,” Green said. “And the reason being … going to the NBA Finals and winning a championship, those two things are so far apart. You can get to the NBA Finals and not be close to winning an NBA championship.
“Making it to a conference finals, you’re so far away from winning a championship, and it looks like it’s close because you’re one series away.”
The Knicks, just like the Minnesota Timberwolves, who lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals, had a successful season. By most accounts. However, without that championship trophy, Green believes those teams are left doing a similar level of soul-searching as other teams around the league.
“Even if the Knicks made it to the NBA Finals and didn’t win it, that’s not some accomplishment to me,” Green added. “You get nothing for making the NBA Finals except a couple tens of thousands of dollars more than the conference final loser and you get another three weeks short of summer.
“You walk with nothing. The [other] team goes on and celebrates and has this incredible summer and you’re kind of left stuck trying to figure out ‘Were we really close? Do we need to run it back with this team? What’s the tweak we need to make?'”
That soul-searching in the wake of disappointment might lead a team down the wrong path.
“‘You’re kind of left in this position of ‘Ahh, maybe we’re one tweak away.’ But what you should understand about this thing is one tweak could actually, it’s like Jenga sometimes, one tweak on a roster could make the whole thing fall.”
Could that one wrong tweak be the Knicks firing coach Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday, for example?
While New York and Minnesota might be kicking themselves for failing to make the Finals, either the Pacers or the Thunder soon will be in the same boat, regardless of if they made it all the way.
“Yeah, making it to the Finals is great, but if you don’t win it, it’s almost worse,” Green concluded. “You might as well have lost in the first round.”
