Don Nelson golden showered by Golden State

Nelson is probably the singular reason why I've never bought into the too-easy meme about coaches who can't win the big one.

Those Bucks teams had to run a gauntlet from 1981-87 with Boston and Philadelphia in their way. More often than not, they more than held their own. They swept Boston in '83 and knocked Philly out twice only to run into a peak-level Boston team in the mid 80s.

They could never beat both of them in the same season. Not Nelson's fault, just the way it was.

I still maintain that if the Bucks had stayed in the Western Conference after the 1980 season, they would have taken the Lakers out once or twice and been in the Finals during that period. Certainly, they were better than the Rockets teams that were in the Finals in '81 and '86.

It's too bad because the Bucks deserve to be remembered as one of the elite teams of their era, a team that had two very elite teams in front of them.

 

Nelson has been stealing money for years.

 

Watching Nellie play the matchup game, especially in the days of Run-TMC in Oakland, made the NBA fun. And who could forget the sight of Manute Bol throwing up a 3-pointer?

Always felt it didn't end well the first time in Oakland, but we were only starting to find out how woeful an owner Chris Cohan would be. And I thought he became a parody of himself in Dallas. Shawn Bradley throwing up 3's wasn't the same.