Who does not remember the 1979-80 NBA season with some teams that no longer exist today or simply their names were changed. During that season few teams could win 60 games or more, among the winners of that number of games were the Celtics and the Lakers.
The 1980’s playoffs were special, the first round had the Supersonics, Kansas City Kings and the Washington Bullets. But only the Supersonics advanced to the following rounds, conference semifinals and conference finals.
Another important point about the 1979-80 NBA season was that that season was considered the birth of what we know today as professional basketball in the United States and one of the players who was part of that birth was Larry Bird.
Who won the 1980 NBA championship?
The Los Angeles Lakers were the winners of the 1980 NBA Finals, they won the finals against Philadelphia 76ers in four games, but the Celtics were expected to reach the final to play against the Lakers and they did not because they lost in the conference finals against the 76ers.
Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson of the 1980 winning team Lakers
The MVP of the 1980 NBA Finals was Magic Johnson, plus that was his rookie season playing alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood and Jamaal Wilkes. The player with the best PPG in the finals was Abdul-Jabbar with 33.4 on average.
Johnson of the 1980 winning team Lakers
After that final the Lakers won another four NBA titles during the 80s, but the following decade of the 90s the drought invaded the franchise and the team did not win another NBA finals until the year 2000.
