Random thoughts on how to define dynasties

I have been thinking about dynasties, and how they end. The reason has nothing to do with the Spurs, or even basketball. It has to do with football. But hang with me — we will get back to the NBA, and the Spurs. 

Indeed, by the time we get to the end, this won’t just be about how dynasties end.  Instead, it morphed into how we define dynasties in the first place.  Funny how writing about one thing sometimes leads to writing about something else.

My son-in-law Cam is from Kansas City and very proud of his birthplace.  Naturally, Cam is a big Kansas City Chiefs fan.  When he stayed with us during the pandemic, watching and rooting for the Chiefs became a family event.  The timing was good because the Chiefs had just won their first Super Bowl that February. We watched with Cam when the Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20 in the 2020 Super Bowl.  Led by their dynamic young quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coached by Andy Reid, the Chiefs made the Super Bowl in 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025, winning twice. 

All dynasties end, and we might be at the end of the Chiefs’ run. They averaged only 22.6 per game last season, about a full touchdown less than at their peak.  Yes, they went 15-2 in the regular season, but for the season, they outscored their opponents by only 59 points, barely 4 points per game.  The Chiefs then got crushed by the Eagles in the Super Bowl and started this season 0-2, (averaging less than 20 points per game).  They finally won last Sunday but scored only 22 against a woefully bad New York Giants team.  The Chiefs may turn it around, but even though Cam and I would enjoy it, and it might just happen, I don’t think we will see KC in this season’s Super Bowl. If I am right, that could be the end of the Mahomes/Reid Dynasty.

The previous NFL dynasty was the New England Patriots, quarterbacked by Tom Brady, coached by Bill Belichick. Led by that duo, the Pats won a bunch of rings. I think it is fair to call the Pats’ dynasty the Brady/Belichick Dynasty that only ended when the Pats’ owner chose to keep Belichick and let Brady walk (after which Brady won another ring in Tampa Bay).

Unlike football and basketball, having a great player in baseball does not have nearly the same impact — see, for instance, Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels. While still important, the baseball manager also probably has less impact than a great football or basketball coach. Further, even the best baseball teams lose about 40% of their games, a problem exacerbated by MLB’s playoff system which starts with a three-game series. Perhaps those reasons explain why baseball has not had a repeat World Series champion this century. However, my Dodgers have made the playoffs (including this season) 13 straight years, winning the West 12 of those years, and winning the World Series twice. They also had Clayton Kershaw and manager Dave Roberts for all 13 years — can we call it the Kershaw/Roberts Semi-Dynasty?

If we talk about NBA dynasties after the merger with the ABA, we start with the dueling 1980’s dynasties: the Lakers and the Celtics. The Lakers won 5 crowns, the Celtics won 3. Both dynasties ended with a whimper. The Lakers last NBA Finals ended with the two-time defending champs losing to the Pistons after both starting guards, Magic Johnson and Bryon Scott, tore their hamstrings in the Finals against the Pistons in June 1989.

The Celtics’ health issues weren’t as sudden, as their Big Three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish just wore down – Bird in particular with back issues that left him laying down on the sideline when not playing. The last of the Celtics’ championships in that era was in 1986. But before the dynasties ended, both were keyed by the same personnel. We can call the Lakers’ run the Magic/Kareem/Riley Dynasty with the Celtics defined by their own Big Three (all big players) – the Bird/McHale/Parish Dynasty.

Of course, the 1990s were dominated by the two three-peats by the Bulls, separated by the two years Michael Jordan “voluntarily” took two years off to pursue Double A baseball in Birmingham, Alabama. Because the two iterations of the team had completely different supporting casts, we can just refer to the Bulls as the Jordan/Pippen/Jackson Dynasty – six rings while those three were the faces of the franchise. As we all know from watching The Last Dance, this dynasty essentially ended when the players and management decided they had enough of each other.

The first decade of this century was bookended by the Lakers’ two separate mini-dynasties; The first was the Laker three-peat from 2000 through 2002 – the Shaq/Kobe years, who finally won when they added Phil Jackson as coach. Conventional wisdom says that they didn’t win more because Shaq and Kobe couldn’t get along, but I disagree. I believe that the mini-dynasty ended because the Lakers lost key players such as Robert Horry. The attempt to replace them with aging stars Karl Malone and Gary Payton failed when Malone hurt his knee in the Finals, and Payton just never fit in.

The second Laker mini-dynasty resulted in championships in 2009 and 2010, with Pau Gasol replacing Shaq. The Lakers barely beat the Celtics in 2010, coming back from 15 down in Game Seven. The next season, they were swept in the second round by the Dallas Mavericks, the Lakers traded Lamar Odom in the off-season, and they did not return to the Finals until the Bubble Playoffs in 2020, cratering out in the mid 2010s. How to refer to the Lakers bifurcated dynasty? The only constants were Kobe and coach Phil Jackson, so perhaps the Kobe/Jackson Dynasty.

The next (and perhaps last) NBA dynasty was the Golden State Warriors, who won it all in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022. They also could have and should have won in 2016, but Draymond Green’s antics turned the Finals around. Because Pounding the Rock is a family show, we won’t detail Draymond’s transgression other than to say it involves balls. The Warriors’ dynasty felt like it was over after injuries derailed them in 2019, followed by Kevin Durant’s decision to leave the best team he ever played on. Of course, the Warriors came back to win it all one last time in 2022, upsetting the much younger Celtics. Can the Ws win another crown after adding Playoff Jimmy Butler? It is possible, but age remains largely undefeated, as evidenced by Steph Curry’s injury in last year’s playoff loss to the the Timberwolves. In any event, if we are going to assign this post’s naming convention, the Warriors’ dynasty would be called the Curry/Kerr Dynasty.

Have I failed to include any post-merger NBA dynasties?

Yes, yes I have. Between the bookend Laker championships. the San Antonio Spurs won the grasshopper championships in 2003 and 2005 and 2007, after winning their first crown in 1999. Everyone reading this also knows that the Spurs completed their handful of five rings in the Redemption Finals in 2014. While the Spurs hopscotched across the years by never winning back-to-back, their twenty year run over two decades of 50 plus wins clearly makes them a dynasty. Indeed, after the pinnacle of hoops with the Beautiful Game Spurs in 2014, the Spurs then won 55, 67 and 61 games the next three seasons, but didn’t make it back to the Finals in any of those seasons.

The constants throughout were the Great Tim Duncan and coach Gregg Popovich. Those two icons managed to win during all those years while playing wildly different styles depending on the players around Duncan. Of course, that included My Man Manu Ginobili and the Oui Frenchman Tony Parker. But it was still the Duncan/Popovich Dynasty, largely because both of them were receptive to changing to accommodate each team’s strengths and weaknesses. As I have discussed here previously, Pop’s willingness to change styles to fit his players likely grew out of his experience coaching in college at the Division III level. That dynasty ended when Timmy, Manu and Tony aged out, gracefully, inevitably, but forever Spurs. (Who even remembers that Parker actually spent his last season with Charlotte?)

While this has been a fascinating exercise to work through, I have concluded that I don’t like my own idea of defining dynasties by naming each dynasty with the top players, or the top players and the coach. That convention would fail to recognize that all championships are team championships. The top players and their coaches in any sport could not have won without everyone on the team contributing. Indeed, I have written before how much I dislike referring to players on the Bulls dynasty teams as Michael’s “supporting cast”. I much prefer how the Spurs referred to the other players: “Teammates”, as I discussed ten years ago.

The 1980s Lakers would not have won without Byron Scott and Michael Cooper, the 1990s Bulls would not have won without John Paxson or Dennis Rodman, the 2000s Lakers would not have won without Rick Fox or Robert Horry, and the Spurs dynasty would not have happened without Mario Elie, Patty Mills, Boris Diaw and many others. The “others” also include assistant coaches such as Mike Budenholzer and shooting coach Chip Engelland. Some of those dynasties died when those teammates moved on even if the stars remained.

So let’s continue to refer to those dynasties by using the names of the teams, because these are team sports. Everyone OK with that?