My All Time Favourite NBA Teams

Ahead of tonight’s Game 2 of the Finals, I figured I would go over my favourite NBA teams, for perhaps obvious reasons.

2000-01 Toronto Raptors

I’m cheating here because I was not a basketball fan yet. I went to a few Raptors games before this season – including at the Dome! thanks Mom! – and one Grizzlies game during this season but I wasn’t really a serious fan. We watched hockey at school, not basketball. But I watched Vince’s infamous Dunk contest and year before and did watch the odd Raptors game each season, and I watched much of this “run” including the infamous final game. But I wasn’t truly a basketball fan. I just feel like I have to say this team because, for a very long time, it was the Greatest Raptors Team of All Time because it made it to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals and it would be a long time – 15 years! – before they would be back.

2005-2006 Dallas Mavericks

To the extent I was a basketball fan in the aughts, it was more Steve Nash than Vince Carter that did it for me. I became a Mavericks fan because of Steve Nash even though I knew so little about basketball that I once mistook Raptors Center Rafael Araujo for a Point Guard in a conversation with a friend in, like, 2004, because I didn’t even really know the positions yet. But I knew I liked watching Steve Nash.

Because I’m a sports fan from a time that prioritized team loyalty over player loyalty, I did not become a Suns fan when Nash went back there. (Though more on those Suns teams in a second.) Instead, I rooted for the Mavericks. And their Finals run in 2006 was the first time my heart was truly broken as a basketball fan, yes even more so than when Vince missed that shot.

This was the first team that I really followed through to the Finals cheering for them every round. Yes, I cheered for the 2004 Pistons over the Lakers but I can’t say that I followed them through all four rounds.

Whereas these Mavericks I knew much better and so I was devastated when Dwyane Wade averaged 16 FT attempts during the Finals and seemed to get a call every time a Maverick breathed on him. You know how everyone thinks the 2002 Western Conference Finals were rigged by the league? Well, that’s how I felt about the 2006 Finals for, well, 5 years…

2006-07 Toronto Raptors

This was the first Raptors team that I can say I truly seriously followed. They also happen to be the first Raptors team to win their division, so that worked out pretty well for me. (Even though they did not do so well in the playoffs against Vince. Also, because it’s the Eastern Conference they only had 47 wins.) Jose Calderon remains my favourite Raptor of All Time and I was also a massive Garbajosa fan. Even though I did watch Vince’s Raptors teams off and on (and in the playoffs) this was the first time I really was a true fan – I finally knew the roster and positions – and it was a lot of fun until the playoffs.

The 2009-10 Phoenix Suns

Though I was a Mavericks fan and I even cheered against Steve Nash and the Suns when they played the Mavericks, Steve Nash was, and remains, my favourite basketball player of all time. And I loved watching the Suns. They were dubbed the “7 seconds or less Suns” in the 2005-06 season, when they lost to the Mavericks, due to how quickly they tried to get into their offensive actions. And I generally loved all the teams. But If I had to pick one season as a favourite, it’s the plucky “underdog” season (they still won 54 games) when they made the Western Conference Finals and the former Greatest Canadian Basketball Player of All Time did this:

Honourable mention to the 2006-07 Suns where Nash did this:

2010-11 Dallas Mavericks

When the Mavericks won the 2011 NBA Championship, I thought things would never get better for me as an NBA fan than this. I thought that because, if you had asked me in 2011 to be my (very meagre) life savings on whether or not the Raptors would win the Championship in my lifetime I would have bet absolutely not. These were dark years for the Raptors and so it made sense to me to have another team to cheer for. They even met the dreaded Heat in the Finals. Not only was I already a Mavericks fan from back in the Steve Nash days but I also wanted the Heat to be punished for both the egregious calls from 2006 and the sheer hubris of their 2005 summer:

(After this they apparently went around at Summer League telling everyone they would be unstoppable.)

The Mavericks beating the Heat in 2011 felt like the mountaintop, like nothing could ever be better. I was wrong about that but it was still pretty awesome.

2012-2014 San Antonio Spurs

I always sort of liked the Spurs. I liked Tim Duncan in particular and I just liked how competent they seemed and how unflashy they were compared to the Lakers. But the teams that made back-to-back Finals in the early teens were teams I truly loved. They are known as the “beatiful game” Spurs because of their possessions which would have seemingly endless passes leading to open looks. They also had former “7 seconds or less” Sun Boris Diaw, one of my favourite players ever.

I was devastated by the loss in 2013 even though I could at least make fun of Heat fans for beating the traffic:

And it was just great to see that same team come back and just beat the shit out of the Heatles. (As you can tell, I really did not like the Heat.)

2014-15 Golden State Warriors

I should love the 2014-15 Warriors because of the way they played. However, at least a couple things happened in the interim to completely ruin whatever positive memories I had of that season:

• They became so hilariously dominant they broke the single-season wins record the next season, then lost in embarrassing fashion in the Finals and then got a certain player and became even more dominant

• They became extraordinarily arrogant, particularly their owner and some of their fans but some of the players too

• Draymond Green (a former Favourite Player of All Time) did things that would have seen him exiled from the league if the league actually had standards about violence against fellow players

• They met the Raptors in the Finals.

About that…

2018-19 Toronto Raptors

For obvious reasons. I might have to watch my DVD again once these Finals are over.

2022-23 Denver Nuggets

I love Jokic, he is one of my Favourite Players of All Time. It was great to see him dominate especially because certain people within the NBA media establishment didn’t actually watch him play for years and assumed, due to his pudgy-for-an-NBA-player look that he was not that good. And then he went and averaged 30-13.5-9.5 on 70% (!!!) True Shooting and made those people look like idiots. Jenn bought me a t-shirt.

2024-25 Indiana Pacers

The reason for my post.

At the beginning of the season, Jenn and I were talking about who we wanted to in the Championship this year and we both agreed that the Thunder winning would be pretty great. They have Canadians on their team – including the new Greatest Canadian Basketball Player of All Time (I’m sorry, I think I have to admit it) – and their franchise hasn’t won since 1979. (I hear that the new Seattle team will take over that legacy so, in that case they’ve never won.)

But, you know, life happens. And these Pacers are soooooooo much fun. I don’t care if they don’t win another game, they have become one of my favourite teams ever.

• They are scared of nobody

• Pascal is on the team

• They have two Canadians, just like the Thunder

• Tyrese Haliburton is the second-coming of Steve Nash, only he’s a better rebounder, he’s probably a better defender – Haliburton is not good but Steve Nash was, according to one coach, “the worst defensive player he’s ever seen” – and he’s not as good a shooter as Nash was unless there is less than 2 minutes left in a close game and then he is The Greatest Shooter of All Time.

How can you not cheer for these guys?

I mean, how can you not root for these guys? (And I like this Cavs team.)

Seriously, how can you not root these guys? The Knicks are the Leafs of the NBA.

Seriously, how can you not?

These are Madness-esque comebacks. I’ll likely never seen anything like it again in the NBA. Amazing.

Original post here.