The playoffs are wars of attrition. Always gonna be “what if so and so was healthy/didn’t get injured.” Such is life, such is ball.

Analytically the Cavs won the 2026 chip

Last 30 years? Sorry to tell you mate, 1986 was 40 years ago.

“Wade got 50 billion free throws” lol this one got me

the knicks asterisk is that analytically the series against the cavs is still ongoing.

Kendrick Perkins woulda swung the series for sure that’s the biggest asterisk here

Asterisk for this post: pointing out the asterisks.

yeah i always thought the asterisks were dumb. you win, you win. if u arent the 2017 astros that is

Lmaoooo

Please let us be asterisk champs! Please, pretty please! I promise we won’t be too upset about it.

I know we are just goofing - but the actual 1993 reason would be Cedric Ceballos getting hurt IMO

1999: Patrick Ewing Tore his Achilles in the Eastern Conference final

What’s funny about this topic is players and coaches say it all the time: you need some luck to go your way to win it all. But fans? Cannot fucking admit that.

I haven’t seen any of this among our fans, but lord knows the bots are out.

2010: Kendrick Perkins injured

brother…

Now this is a quality content post, haha.

How about reverse asterisks? When a team still wins despite injury losses?
Example Bucks without Divincenzo in 2021 or Raptors without Anunoby in 2019…

Some say Wade is still shooting those FTs.

1989: Byron Scott was injured before the finals started.

2002: Tim Donaghy did not ref any game in lakers vs kings series.

2021: AD gets hurt up 2-1 on the Suns while bron is playing hurt cause of soloass hill

As a Pistons fan, I’m always annoyed that the 1988 Finals has Laimbeer’s phantom foul in game six noted as the asterisk. Yes, it’s a phantom foul and deserves an asterisk mention.

But why does nobody talk about the fact that in game 7, with 2 seconds remaining, the Pistons were inbounding the ball while down by 3 points and the Lakers had something like 11 players and 14 cameramen on the court? How is that not the biggest asterisk in NBA Finals history!? This is an atrocity to pro sports.

In 2016 Curry was playing with an MCL sprain

Edit: Serious question - What’s the point of downvoting a factual statement?

Steph Curry is hypothetically undefeated in the NBA:

2009-2012 = Warriors were prioritizing Monta Ellis over him

2013 = David Lee injured

2014 = Refs missed obvious foul on CP3

2015 = Championship

2016 = Draymond suspension, Bogut injured, Curry and Iggy played hurt

2017 = Championship

2018 = Championship

2019 = KD + Klay injured

2020 = Klay torn ACL

2021 = Klay torn Achilles

2022 = Championship

2023 = Wiggins missed ¹⁄₂ the season to take care of family

2024 = Mike Dunleavy terrorism

2025 = Curry was injured

2026 = Jimmy Butler torn ACL

asterisk these nuts in your mouth

I haven’t seen any Thunder fans putting an asterisk on the Spurs beating us. They played the team in front of them and won a really tough series. Kudos to them, they earned the W

We want an asterisk? This is news to me lol.

But agreed. Asterisks are stupid, always have been

Its not college football where strength of schedule matters

We want an asterisk?

Slow fucking clap! 👏🏿👏🏿 thank you for doing this. So tired of ppl and their disingenuous goal post moving bulshit.

And through all that., the Warriors are still the last dynasty/champions able to repeat!

2004 is wrong: the real asterisk is Sam Cassell getting hurt doing the big balls dance in the semis and gifting the Lakers a finals appearance as a result

No one was stopping 2001 lakers regardless of who came out of the east.

Add to 2016 Curry playing on a sprained MCL

Asterisks are not stupid, they are absolutely necessary.

Injury fans like OP play this sleight of hand, where they claim that all championships have asterisks, as some sort of reductio ad absurdum. The “logic” is that since every year has an asterisk, the asterisks are equivalent and cancel out.

This is of course a sneaky sleight of hand. It is true that every championship has asterisks, however, some asterisks ARE bigger than others. This is the truth that injury fans like to steer clear from.

Notice the 2024 asterisk here, it’s inconsequential compared to 2025, 2021, and 2015.

The Celtics did beat Kyrie and his running mate fair and square in 2025, there’s not much of an asterisk there. However, freak and/or contact injuries in 2015, 2021, and 2025 directly lead to a worse team winning the championship. These are massive stains on SGAs and Giannis’ careers.

My point here is: asterisks are intelligent, every championship team had some fortune, but some hit the jackpot and others had to win it the hard way.

I don’t want an asterisk and think they’re stupid in general. I do think a lot of people talking about how the Thunder’s time has passed them and how they’ll never be able to beat the Spurs in the future should take the injuries into consideration though. SGA (and to a far lesser extent Jared McCain) were the only people for most of the series who could create anything off the dribble and it severely hampered their offense.

You could add to 2022 that Khris Middleton was hurt, if he was healthy the Bucks beat the Celtics in the ECSF.

Asterisks are stupid, but so is pretending some teams don’t get much more lucky than others and sometimes end up winning titles because of this.

Nitpicking here, but Magic was very much still in his prime in 1991. He finished 2nd in MVP voting (after winning the award back-to-back the previous 2 seasons), and was still All-NBA 1st Team.

Feel like there’s a difference between an asterisk and using the injury circumstances to push back on “the Thunder core’s window is closed, have to blow up the core to beat the spurs and will never be good enough to beat them.” 

In my completely non-biased opinion the real asterisk of 2022 was Khris Middleton’s injury

If asterisks are stupid, so is putting so much weight on championships if we can’t have objectively healthy and competitive games to decide who is truly best.

Warriors first recent championship (2015?) they didn’t play against a single starting point guard in every series. All starting point guards were injured.

2009 rockets were the only team to push the lakers to 7 games and did so with Yao getting injured in the series and TMac being out (to be fair those 2 were often injured of course)

LMAOOOO I LOVE THIS

I recall someone doing a longer list, like 50-60 years maybe, and there being one team to have no asterisk sometime about 50+ years ago. Or maybe it was 2011. Idk

It’s not even that Magic was old, just the injuries that did them in.

refs incorrectly called two baskets earlier, resulting in a 5 point swing in favor of the Bulls

What’s the story here? 

You should add “Chet scared of opposition” to the asterisk.

Spurs have some hella sturdy titles tbh. Lol

Although Dirk got hurt in ‘03 and thats better than the Nets note lol

Also TD was hurt in 2000 and I want that added dammit lol

Availability is the most important ability.

The only one I agree with is the malice at the palace. The pacers were robbed because Meta world peace is a dummy

I think you can add in the year Yao went down in the playoffs 

The lakers shot 18 free throws in the 4th quarter in 2000, and 6 of them were intentional fouls in the Last minute.

Including Len Bias’ death as an asterisk in 1987 is ridiculous. As good as he was, he wasn’t swinging a title towards Boston in his rookie season. It should instead be included as an asterisk for every season on the 90s.

Can they have an asterik for points added from flopping shooting fouls?

Fuck those cross eyed inbreds

I mean, that list is pretty good, but I think you’ve got the story line wrong in 2017.

Let us not forget Chris Webbers non-contact torn meniscus in West semi’s 2003

And this isn’t even counting the Asterisks in the games leading up to the finals. 

There are so many “what if” stories, and one that I think of often is the Brooklyn Nets. Kyrie and harden both injured against Milwaukee and they are still a long ass KD toe away from reaching the finals. 

Looking forward to next year’s. You’re doing great work, OP

(as a Sonics fan, I think every season since 2008 has an asterisk … but that’s just me)

2003 - Played the two-time-Eastern Conference champion Nets. I guess only being second in their conference in 2003 and sweeping the 1-seed that year wasn’t enough. I guess a team with Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin, and Dikembe Mutombo just sucked back in the day.

I had forgotten about Haliburton getting hurt in 24 as well

Scottie migraine being on this list is fucking hilarious man. Can you imagine if Chet just decided his head hurt too much to play? He would get fucking murdered

great post OP. the playoffs are a different animal, just surviving the gauntlet to play for let alone win a title takes a ton of luck in addition to skill

plus, so many legendary moments boil down to unlikely heroes stepping up in relief. case in point: Luke Kornet. he was hot garbage for most of this series because it was a bad matchup for him. Wemby gets into foul trouble in the 4th and he HAS to play a few minutes, and all he does is make the play of the game to likely get the Spurs over the finish line. compared to Chet, he’s a random. Chet played like a random all series long, THAT’S your asterisk right there OKC. Chet needs to go see a wizard about getting some heart

Pacers were hurt this year and couldn’t keep knicks at bay. Eastern Conference, you had one job!

They should pin this post to the top for the rest of the year.

Ok yall are just making shit up cuz i am chronically online here and havent seen a single fan post saying it should be an asterisk… ive seen however fans turning on Chet.

Yall are weird

2018 should be like 10 paragraphs

1991: Old Magic,

You what? He was 31 years old and 2nd in MVP voting that year.

“2002: Absurd officiating in Game 6 of the WCF, reffed by Tim Donaghy who admitted to betting on games he officiated”

Wrong. Donaghy didn’t ref in that series. The refs in that game were Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt.

And 2020 is such a huge outlier compared to every other championship in history, so the asterisk is 100% accurate/deserved.

As a Spurs fan - I will add one each way.

Lakers don’t even get to the Finals in ‘04 if not for the bullshit timekeeper shenanigans that was 0.4. (I will refuse to listen to reason that it happened on the Spurs home court, and was apparently the home timekeepers).

The Pacers are probably favourites in ‘05 if not for the Malice in the Palace followed by the complete one-sided response from Stern in ending their season while only giving the Pistons a slap on the wrist.

And bullshit of OKC to think this has an *, when Fox was playing at like 60-80%, and Dylan Harper had no legs for most of the series.

Some of these are merely circumstantial (like Sabonis) as we have no idea how any of it plays out

Not all asterisks are equal

And yes, 2016 will always be the worst. (1.) As you mention, Draymond is suspended for G5 off a technical foul that the NBA retroactively upgraded after the game. Not worthy of a flagrant. (2.) The refs put Curry in foul trouble from the 2nd quarter on. 2 calls egregious. 1 questionable. Curry couldn’t get in a rhythm, missed 8 mins of game time & eventually fouled out. Notoriously threw his mouth piece and his wife tweeted about it being rigged. Only playoff game Curry has fouled out of to this day.

Warriors force a game 7 in 2019 if Klay doesn’t get hurt.

Also I’m happy my boy Dragic made the list. That Heat/Lakers bubble series, you could just see the Heat were 1 point guard away from winning…

I’m a little disappointed that 2000 doesn’t have the same prompt as ‘90 and ‘92. Sabonis with 14 years of NBA experience going up against Shaq is a pretty fucking big asterisk compared to 5 years experience and having been broken by the Soviet ‘health care’ system.

Bubble should be the opposite of an asterisk

My brother, please tell me you spend time offline too.

Injuries happen. I think the only “legit” asterisks are:

• Legitimate game fixing (or an extremely obvious incorrect call that decides the entire series)
• Significant extenuating circumstances that have nothing to do with what’s happening on the court or in the course of normal basketball operations

Of all the ones you listed, that pretty much leaves just 2002 with the rigged WCF, 2020 with the Bubble, and maybe 1999 with the lockout.

2002 is absolutely an asterisk season. Donaghy literally went to federal prison for fixing games/point shaving, including during the WCF that year. (Still salty about that one, will probably never let it go.) Fuck Tim Donaghy, fuck Scott Foster, and FTL

2020 I’m less inclined to give a “real” asterisk, even though it’s the Lakers and I’d like to discredit it on principle alone. Yeah the Bubble was absolutely fucky, but I don’t think you can say it really benefited any one team over another. I think there’s a high high chance the playoffs play out differently if the Bubble didn’t happen, but that’s simply “butterfly effect” type natural variation

Same goes for the lockout season, but I think it probably had even less of an overall effect. There were still fans in the stands.

This is a great post. The arguments of teams not beating any 50 win teams or beating teams that are hurt are so stupid. All you can do is play the team in front of you and play against the players they put on the court. There should be no asterisks, ever.

Fox missed 2 games for the spurs, then came back and played through injury for the rest of the series. During that time… Harper also was playing through injury. Not to mention, didn’t Mitchell get injured chasing down Castle to commit a second Thunder hard foul? He played in 3 games of the series.

Edit: I see the Thunder fans heard the dog whistle

If your “asterisk” is about a non-elimination game that wasn’t even in the actual finals, gtfo

Asterisks are not for “injuries”. They are for irregular seasons where the standard season schedule didn’t occur.

The most common are Shortened seasons from failure of the owners to sign an acceptable CBA the players support in time for a season to occur.

The bubble season is an example of an asterisk season not caused by contract disputes, even though Lakers fans hate hearing it. They’re was literally a multi-month gap in the season, irregular number of games played, no love audiences for playoff games, and no playoff home court advantages. It’s as big an asterisk season as you could ever imagine lol.

²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ should NOT have an asterisk at all

Nobody is asking for an asterisk. I think it’s more just disappointment we didn’t have our guys because we think we win with them. Good on SAS for beating us and I hope the get stomped by the Knicks lol

No OKC fan is asking for an *

There’s injury luck with any run, but the OKC injuries are really overstated:

JDub played 33 games this year and averaged 17/5/5. They had a better winning percentage with him out.

Ajay is their 8th man and didn’t even play in the playoffs last year.

Compare:

Fox missed the first two games with an ankle sprain and put up: 11/5/6 in the series.

The games play very differently with health, but no guarantee OKC wins this if everyone’s fit.

The biggest absence for OKC was Tony Brothers missing so many games.

thank you for giving us the asterisks against the spurs. Every title is tainted