Worst Team to Win a Championship

Interesting thing about those 1981 Rockets coached by Del Harris ... They beat the Kansas City Kings in a Western Conference finals that featured two sub-.500 teams. The Rockets and Kings both were 40-42. The Western Conference only had three teams win 50 or more games, while the East had three win at least 60 (Celtics, Sixers, Bucks).

 

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The Hickory story really plays that up, but the truth was that Milan was a really, really good team. It was a bit small (its starting center was 5'11) but pretty much invented the four-corner offense and put teams away.

The part of the story everyone forgets is that Milan was a state semifinalist the year before, before falling to eventual champ South Bend Central. The year Milan won the whole thing, it beat Oscar Robertson's Crispus Attucks team (which would win the state title the next two years and be pretty dominant along the way). The Attucks game gets underplayed a lot because Indy schools were not really seen as "real basketball schools" and there was the perception in the 1950s that African-Americans were not disciplined enough to be good basketball players. Attucks kinda changed that perception the next two years -- it was possibly the most dominant two-year run in Indiana history. They became the first team from a segregated all-African-American school to win a state basketball championship anywhere in the country and coming within one game on a slippery floor of going unbeaten back-to-back years.

 

As to the '87 Twins, as someone who was living in Minnesota both then and now I can tell you that you don't make many friends pointing this out, as it's hard to overestimate just what finally winning a championship did to the psyche of Minnesota sports fans, and how beloved that team was . . . but a huge dose of good fortune is the only way that team dreams of winning a World Series. Les Straker as your #3 starter? They gave up more runs than they scored on the season, and went 29-52 in road games.

But they were in a bad division, which they clinched with six games to go, allowing them to rest up and set their rotation while the Tigers and Blue Jays played down to the wire. Back when these things were rotated, they had home field for both the ALCS and the WS (they had the same luck in '91). No position players missed any significant time with injuries that year. And in the World Series, the Cardinals were missing Jack Clark, and Terry Pendleton only played three games. You can point to good luck for almost all winning teams, but the Twins had a much bigger dose than most.

 

I think if I had to list my top 10, they might all be college football teams, because, at least the other teams got hot at the right time and won when they needed to...

Nobody is going to mistake last season's NY Giants team with the 1972 Dolphins, but they won when they needed to.

I love watching an underdog team go on a playoff run. I don't love watching an undeserving college team play for the national title.

 

Also, if I recall correctly, they never at any point during the season trailed by more than seven points. They had six losses, four by a field goal (two in overtime) and two by four points. Add in the staggering number of injuries, and they were far from a "worst" of anything.

 

Philly sports history is chock full of teams like that. The late 70s/early 80s Phillies certainly qualify (five division titles, one division series loss in 1981, and two World Series appearances in an eight-year span from 1976-83, but only one World Series championship).
And, even though they never won a championship, the Donovan McNabb Eagles' teams of the past decade deserve an honorable mention for their uncanny ability to choke in NFC title games.

 

CFB would be BYU back in the 80s with Ty Detmar at QB.

College basketball might just be the NC State team coached by Jim Valvano. They just did not have an over-abundance of talent on that squad.

The 88 Dodgers have to be in the discussion for MLB.

 

I'll shorten that for you ... many in Indiana in the late 50s (and beyond) were stone-cold racists.

 

Check your facts. Detmer didn't play on that 84 BYU team, he came around several years later (he won the Heisman in 90). Robbie Boscoe was the qb of the 84 team.

I'm not sure how to assess 84 BYU in these discussions--they at least did do everything they could do by going undefeated--albeit against a crappy schedule. I'm more partial to 90 Colorado as the college football choice. That Colorado team should've had three blemishes on their schedule if not for the infamous 5th down against a 4-7 Mizzou team, and would've had four blemishes if Ismail's Orange Bowl return had not been called back. Nothing about their season suggested national championship worthiness, and any other year except for that odd 90 season and they wouldn't have been anywhere near the conversation.

 

The storyline about 83 NC State being a plucky bunch of undertalented overachievers is largely a myth.

The truth is for most of that season they were regarded as precisely the opposite: a talented team that had been highly rated pre-season, but had underachieved and disappointed during the regular season, but suddenly got red hot at the end winning the ACC Tourney and then having an amazing NCAA tourney run where everything seemed to miraculously bounce their way.

Four of their five starters, Thurl Bailey, Lorenzo Charles, Cozell McQeen and Sidney Lowe, would later play in the NBA (albeit McQueen only for a few games), and the fifth starter, Derek Whittenberg, had been 2d team All ACC and was one of the best shooters in the country; and they were senior laden with a huge front line.

As talent goes, there have been considerably less equipped NCAA champs than that bunch.

 

That's why I used the word 'forming'. If they win a 3rd with Eli Manning it'll be lumped in with the 90's Cowboys and 00's Patriots, which just doesn't feel right.

 

Possibly, but 1988 Kansas is always definitely in the all time worst/best NCAA Champions disucssion. Larry Brown was drafting guys off of one of the worst college football teams in modern history to play against in practice. Would make for a great Hollywood screenplay, kind of like a real life Replacements