2009 NBA Finals

• 1. Introduction

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  The 2009 NBA Finals opened on the 4th of June with a matchup almost nobody predicted. All spring, fans and analysts had been waiting for a showdown between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, the two most popular players in the league. Instead, the Orlando Magic had quietly beaten James' Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals, and suddenly the championship series featured a team many people had barely noticed.

  The Lakers were heavily favored. Bryant and the Magic's Dwight Howard already knew each other well. The previous summer, they had stood together on the podium in Beijing, gold medals around their necks as members of the United States national team. Now they were on opposite sides of the floor, and the questions the series would answer were simple: could Bryant finally win without Shaquille O'Neal at his side? And could the Magic, a team making only its second Finals appearance in franchise history, pull off one of basketball's great upsets?

• 2. A Disney Series

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  Journalists noticed something unusual about the geography of this matchup almost immediately. Walt Disney World sits roughly 20 miles from Orlando in nearby Lake Buena Vista. Disneyland sits roughly 30 miles from Los Angeles in nearby Anaheim. Disney also owns both ESPN and ABC, which was broadcasting the Finals. The series quickly earned the nickname the "Disney Series."

  Beyond the branding curiosity, the two teams arrived in the Finals by very different routes. The Lakers, seeded first in the West and holders of the second-best record in the league, had survived three grinding series against the Utah Jazz, Houston Rockets, and Denver Nuggets before reaching the championship round. That was the franchise's 30th Finals appearance overall, a record for any team in the NBA. The Magic, seeded third in the East, had been largely dismissed before the playoffs even began. They played in the long shadow of the first-seeded Cavaliers and the defending champion Celtics, who had gone 32-0 when leading a playoff series 3-2 and 17-3 in Game 7s at home. Orlando assistant coach Patrick Ewing publicly guaranteed a Magic win in that Game 7 in Boston. The Magic won.

• 3. The Lakers Take Control

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  Game 1 told the story of the series in miniature. After a balanced first quarter, the Lakers went on a 10-0 run midway through the second quarter and never relinquished the lead. Bryant finished with 40 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists, joining Shaquille O'Neal, Michael Jordan, and Jerry West as the only players to put up those numbers in a single Finals game. The 25-point margin of victory was the sixth-largest in NBA Finals Game 1 history. Dwight Howard, who would emerge as the series' most compelling storyline, made just 1 of 6 field goal attempts, the fewest made baskets of his entire playoff career to that point.

  Game 2 was something else entirely. The first quarter set a record-low combined score of 30 points. Then Rashard Lewis caught fire, scoring 18 of the Magic's 20 second-quarter points, including 16 in a row, on his way to a Finals franchise-high 34 points. With 47 seconds left in regulation, Hedo Türkoglu hit what appeared to be a go-ahead three-pointer, but replay showed his foot was on the line. The basket counted as two. Courtney Lee then had a chance to win it on a lob with 0.6 seconds remaining, but launched the ball from nearly behind the backboard and it missed. The Lakers won in overtime, with Derek Fisher stealing a pass and Bryant assisting Pau Gasol for a late layup-and-one that sealed the game.

• 4. The Magic's One Win

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  Game 3 gave the Magic something they had never had before in franchise history. Orlando shot 63 percent from the field for the game, an NBA Finals record, including 75 percent in the first quarter, also a Finals record. The Lakers stayed close for most of the night, but a steal by Mickaël Piétrus from Bryant in the final minute sealed it. That single victory ended a streak that had begun in 1995, when a Magic team led by Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway was swept by the Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler-led Houston Rockets. Orlando had lost each of its first six Finals games before that night.

  Game 4 produced one of the series' strangest moments. Howard set an NBA Finals single-game record with 9 blocked shots. Sitting on Orlando's bench as an assistant coach was Patrick Ewing, who had previously held the record with 8 blocks in Game 5 of the 1994 Finals while playing for the New York Knicks. Despite Howard's defensive brilliance, the Magic squandered a late lead because Howard missed two crucial free throws with 11 seconds left when one made basket would have forced the Lakers into a two-possession deficit. Derek Fisher, who had missed his first five three-point attempts that night, hit the shot that tied the game with 4.6 seconds left in regulation. The Lakers won again in overtime, and with it a 3-1 series lead.

• 5. Kobe, Phil, and the Record Books

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  Kobe Bryant averaged 32.4 points and 7.4 assists per game across the five-game series, a combination that had not been matched since Jerry West averaged 37.9 points and 7.4 assists in the 1969 Finals. For Bryant personally, the championship carried a specific weight. In the years since Shaquille O'Neal had left the Lakers, a persistent question had followed him: could he win without Shaq? The 2009 title answered that question directly, and NBA commissioner David Stern presented Bryant with the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Trophy on center court at Amway Arena after the final game.

  Head coach Phil Jackson captured his 10th NBA championship, surpassing Red Auerbach for the most titles ever won by an NBA coach. Jackson also surpassed Auerbach and NHL coach Scotty Bowman to become the winningest head coach across all four major professional sports leagues in North America. The series extended one of the more striking numbers in basketball: Jackson-coached teams had now gone 44-0 in playoff series when they won the first game. The series was also the third straight championship the Lakers clinched on the road, following 2001 and 2002. Among the players celebrating in Orlando, Pau Gasol became the first Spaniard to win an NBA title, and D.J. Mbenga became the first Belgian Congolese player to do so.

• 6. Aftermath

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  Bill and Luke Walton became the third father-son pair to each win a championship as a player; the prior combinations were Matt Guokas Sr. in 1947 with Matt Jr. in 1967, and Rick Barry in 1975 with his son Brent in 2005 and 2007. The series was also the first since 1984 to send two games into overtime, and it marked the final time a trophy silhouette was painted at center court, a tradition that had begun in 2005.

  The Magic won 59 games the following season and swept through their first eight playoff games by margins of 20 or more points, a first in NBA history. But they fell to the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. Howard was named Defensive Player of the Year for a second straight year and eventually traded to the Lakers in a blockbuster deal several years later. The 2009 series remains, as of 2023, the most recent Finals appearance in Orlando Magic franchise history. The Lakers, meanwhile, returned the following June and beat the Celtics in seven games to win back-to-back titles, the first team to repeat as champions since the 2001-02 Lakers.