Sizing up the Spurs’ 21-season playoff streak
The modern sports world tends to be cyclical. Teams are up, then they are down. Except the San Antonio Spurs.
With a win over the Sacramento Kings on Monday night, the Spurs clinched yet another NBA playoff berth, their 21st in a row. That run, which includes five NBA titles, is amazing, but not unprecedented, and not even the longest current streak in major American sports — if you delve into the college ranks.
Still, the first year of the Spurs’ streak, 1998, was so long ago that the team included David Robinson, Chuck Person, Avery Johnson, Will Perdue and Vinny Del Negro, now all in their 50s.
The constant in the run has been coach Gregg Popovich, whose staggering tenure is more than 11 years longer than the coach with the second-longest tenure, Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat, who has been in charge for a comparatively paltry 10 years.
Popovich, whose interviews can be humorously pugnacious, wasn’t in the mood to look back on the streak on Monday night, saying “Awww, it’s wonderful,” without further elaboration.
Spurs fans can’t even really complain about the last season that the team did not make the playoffs, Popovich’s first in 1996-97. The season was a bust at 20-62, but it gave the team the No. 1 pick in the draft, which turned into the star center Tim Duncan, who was a part of the first 19 of those 21 playoff teams.
Despite the impressiveness of the Spurs’ streak, it is not the longest in NBA history. That still belongs to the Syracuse Nationals/Philadelphia 76ers franchise, which made the playoffs 22 straight times: every year from 1950 to ’71. The first season of the streak was also the Nationals’ first season in the NBA; if you count their playoff berths in the ’40s in the old National Basketball League, the string runs to 25.
No other current major professional streak in North America matches the Spurs. In baseball, which lets only 10 teams in the playoffs, the Los Angeles Dodgers lead with a mere five straight. The Braves hold the record of 14 between 1991 to 2005 (assuming you don’t penalize them for the strike year when no playoffs were contested).
The New England Patriots are in a multiway tie for the NFL record at nine, and can break it next season. The Pittsburgh Penguins have 12 straight NHL appearances, far behind the Boston Bruins’ streak of 29 from 1968 to ’96.
Other notable streaks: The Edmonton Eskimos made the Canadian Football League playoffs 34 straight times from 1972 to 2005. The Los Angeles Galaxy of MLS had a 10-season streak from 1996 to 2005. Kansas has an active men’s NCAA basketball tournament streak of 29, and Tennessee has made the women’s tournament every year it has been played, 37 in all, plus a run of five years in the tournament’s predecessor, the AIAW.
There are good streaks, and there are bad streaks. After the Buffalo Bills finally made the NFL playoffs this past season after a 17-year drought, they passed the torch to the Seattle Mariners, who have missed the baseball postseason for 16 straight seasons.