Between 17 Super Bowls and NBA Finals, 16 World Series and Stanley Cups (should be 17 Cups, thanks Bettman), Boston has won roughly 14 percent of them all. That's a fairly high percentage.
Of course, that's still 86 percent of ticker tape parades not involving duck boats. It's been a pretty good run, but there've still been a few cases of being forced to root for teams outside of the greater 617 area code.
Once in awhile, it's not even a bad thing to able to relax and watch a championship event with no rooting interest. Think Steelers-Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, the year after 18-1. I still wasn't emotionally recovered from the events of exactly a year prior (I'm still not, if you want to know the truth) and just wanted to watch a good old fashioned football game. And man, did that game deliver. Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald for the lead...annnnnnd it's gone on Ben Roethlisberger's toss to Santonio Holmes. For my money, second best Super Bowl of all-time (right behind this one).
The beauty of that game is that I didn't feel strongly one way or another in terms of who won and who lost. I mean sure, the Patriots had beaten the Cardinals by 40 that regular season (the Matt Cassel year), so it was one of those transitive property things. Roethlisberger hadn't really been exposed as someone with, um, questionable character yet, so it was nice to just watch the game and when it was over, that was that.
But in certain cases, even when a Boston team hasn't been present, there's still a major rooting interest. Mostly for negative reasons (rooting against LeBron, A-Rod, Peyton Manning, etc.), but a few feel-good stories as well (Ray Bourque getting his ring, maybe even the White Sox snapping an 88-year championship drought the year after the Red Sox).
I'm keeping the focus mainly on titles won since 2000, since hey I wasn't alive much before then and didn't have much of an emotional investment in, say, the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers finally breaking through over the Yankees. Consider that an honorable mention, as well as the following:
- 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks (defeated Yankees in World Series, 4-3)
- The Yankees had won four of the last five World Series, and were three outs away from winning a fifth before Mo Rivera gave up a blooper to Luis Gonzalez. This was less than two months after 9/11, so it was hard to root against New York. But in a vacuum this one definitely fits the mold.
- 2012 Miami Heat (defeated Thunder in NBA Finals, 4-1)
- What? Lev was rooting for the Heat? No. But I was able to justify rooting for LeBron with a personal asterisk, as that was the lockout-shortened 66-game regular season. And it was only four years after the Sonics were stolen from Seattle, which was (and still is, as I've pointed out) much too soon. Don't worry, I return to my LeBron hating roots in a few minutes.
- 2003 Florida Marlins (defeated Yankees in World Series, 4-2)
- If this were literally any other National League team, this would crack the top five. It still comes close, thanks to how the Yankees got to this particular Fall Classic. But the Marlins beat the Cubs on the Bartman incident, and it's the Marlins.
- 2001 Colorado Avalanche (defeated Devils in Stanley Cup, 4-3)
- Of course I'm happy for Ray Bourque, but this one hasn't stood the test of time. This was about eight months before the Patriots took out the Rams, so Boston wasn't exactly titletown yet...so they threw Bourque a parade. Sheesh. It would've been better if Boston Rob had gotten a parade after winning Survivor on his fourth try in 2011.
- ? Chicago Cubs
- This is going to happen in the next five years, and it is going to be spectacular.
And now, without further ado, your top five:
5. 1997 Denver Broncos (defeated Packers in Super Bowl XXXII, 31-24)
Ignore the current incarnation of the Broncos, this was the tail end of John Elway's career as a QB, and he was still chasing that elusive first ring. I was 7 here so I didn't know what rings meant, I just knew that the evil Packers has beaten the Patriots the previous year and I didn't like that mean Brett Favre guy.
4. 2014 San Antonio Spurs (defeated Miami Heat, 4-1, in NBA Finals)
The Spurs and Patriots truly go hand-in-hand, the perfect cross-sport comparison if there ever was one. Two of the greatest players in their respective sports at the peak of their powers (Brady, Duncan) and two of the best coaches (Belichick, Popovich) linked at the hip from Day 1.
One major parallel might not be the most flattering, but it's important: the dynasties were growing stale. The void between Rodney Harrison flapping his arms around Jacksonville and Malcolm Butler's pick at the goal line in Arizona was nine long, agonizing years with more than their share of heartbreak.
The Spurs, too, had a decent sized drought between the early years and the proverbial 'cherry on top' championship of their own. They'd swept LeBron and the Cavs' in '07, only to see the Lakers re-emerge with Kobe and Pau Gasol, followed by Dirk's breakthrough and the aforementioned Thunder run out west.
San Antonio's loss to the Heat in 2013 wasn't quite in the Tyree stratosphere, but it was still a pretty gut-wrenching kick to the groin. To LeBron no less, in a full-season, thus taking away the asterisk of no rings in a non-shortened season.
It did, however, make 2014 that much more enjoyable. LeBron's cramping in Game 1 was a great Twitter moment and Pop's trolling at the end of the series (not 3, not 4...5 championships)...I mean seriously the LeBroning movement was all-time. Gold, Jerry, gold! As you'll see down the line here, sometimes it's more than just rooting for a team, it's all about rooting against others.
This comparison is copyright Jake Levin, circa June 2014.
3. 2014 UConn Huskies Men's Basketball (defeated Kentucky in National Championship Game, 60-54)
A brief foray into collegiate athletics, and all sorts of forces of good and evil were meeting up in this one.
Forget about John Calipari for a second, this was UConn's first season in the American Athletic Conference, better known as the hodgepodge of forgotten children from the Big East and Conference USA. The Huskies were snubbed by both the ACC and Big Ten (Rutgers! They chose RUTGERS over UConn!), and were forced to make do in this cluster you-know-what of a league spanning from Storrs, Conn. to Florida to Texas. Gimme a break.
On the court itself, Calipari and his latest band of one-and-done's were about to win a second championship in three seasons with entirely different casts. Out went Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague, in came Julius Randle, James Young, the Harrison twins and Dakari Johnson. Only a slew of bench scrubs, including Scituate, Mass. native Sam Malone, remained from the 2012 team; this was Calipari stacking the deck as a glorified AAU team with no concept of team-building or year-to-year continuity that used to make college basketball so great.
Got all that? UConn needed to win this one to stick it to multiple facets of the NCAA, which they did, thanks in large part to another native Masshole, Shabazz Napier.
Unfortunately, this win hasn't changed much of the bottom line: UConn remains stuck in the American, and Calipari reloaded in 2014-15 to take Kentucky undefeated into the Final Four, where they did lose to Wisconsin (which wound up losing to another buncha one-and-dones at Duke). But on at least one night in early April 2014, the Huskies were able to keep the world on its axis. And my mind from self-combusting.
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| States with teams in the American Athletic Conference. Not very American if it doesn't touch the west coast, IMO. Manifest destiny, ever heard of it? |
2. 2009 New Orleans Saints (defeated Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, 31-17)
In the fall of 2009, I began my freshman year at URI with a wardrobe consisting of 99.9 percent Boston sports apparel. Championship t-shirts, Randy Moss and Paul Pierce jerseys, you name it, I had it.
But things weren't exactly off to a swimming start for me in Kingston, and that's before I touch on academia. The Red Sox were swept out of the playoffs by the Angels, and the Yankees won the World Series. The '09 Patriots, by almost any metric, are the worst team of the Belichick era, having suffered embarrassing defeats such as the fourth-and-2 game at Indy, not to mention the playoff loss to the Ravens.
A-Rod had been on that World Series team, with Kobe Bryant a defending NBA champion and Sidney Crosby a defending Stanley Cup champion at the time. Things were less than groovy, and it looked as though Peyton Manning was about to win his second Super Bowl -- both more recently than Tom Brady at that point in time.
That is, until, The Who closed out their halftime set with "Won't Get Fooled Again," perhaps an omen to the Colts getting fooled by an on-sides kick to begin the second half. Peyton's pick-six to Tracy Porter in the fourth quarter served as a reminder that he still lacked a 'clutch gene' (cc: Skip Bayless) and perhaps most importantly, the Saints had won for the city of New Orleans, less than five years after Hurricane Katrina nearly forced them away from the city permanently.
Caleb's been getting on me lately for an overuse of "people forget that," but people do forget that the Saints wanted out of New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina. They played four games in San Antonio and four games in Baton Rouge (at LSU's stadium) that season with the Superdome unsuitable. If you think I get fired up about the Sonics relocation to OKC, the parallel universe where the Saints leave Louisiana is not a sight for the faint of heart.
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| Who dat?! Dat Peyton on the ground. |
1. 2011 Dallas Mavericks (defeated Miami Heat, 4-1, in NBA Finals)
July 8, 2010:
June 13, 2011:
More so than any other championship on this list, this was more against the team that lost than for the team that won. Which isn't to say I have an issue with the Mavericks, not by a long shot. Dirk is truly one of the more underappreciated superstars of this generation. Dallas won 50-plus games 11 seasons in a row from 2001 to 2011, and haven't finished below .500 since the season prior to that. Sure, they only have one championship to show for during that run, but better to be the '90s Braves or '00s Colts than the team that never broke through.
The Bruins won the Stanley Cup a few nights later, making this sneaky one of the greatest weeks ever to be a sports fan in New England.
Oh and who was the owner of said Dallas Mavericks?
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| Mark Cuban |
So there you have it. The five nights I've enjoyed more than any other, save for the nine Boston title clinchers, as a sports fan. Did I miss any? Do I still hate LeBron a little too much? Should I let the SuperSonics thing go? How much does it suck A-Rod is undefeated (1-0) in the World Series? Let me know @JakeLevin477.
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