Background
During the championship parade in Los Angeles, Lakers coach Pat Riley guaranteed a repeat championship, something that hasn't been achieved since the Boston Celtics won the 1969 NBA Finals. The Lakers again earned the league's best record in the 1987–88 season, despite winning five games less than the previous year. After sweeping the San Antonio Spurs, they were pushed to the brink in the next two rounds by the Utah Jazz and the Dallas Mavericks, but ultimately prevailed on both contests.
After losing a tough seven-game series against the Celtics in the conference finals, the Pistons believed that this season was their time to rise atop the Eastern Conference echelon. They finished second to the Celtics with a 54-win campaign, then eliminated the Washington Bullets and Chicago Bulls in a pair of five-game series. In a rematch against the Celtics, they managed to steal Game 1 at Boston Garden, the first time they won in the building since 1982, eventually capturing the series in six games.
Read more about this topic: 1988 NBA Finals
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)