Partially because it was a 1997 contest between the Spurs and Bucks. The Bucks were the worst team in the NBA during that particular decade, outside of the then-miserable Dallas Mavericks. And the Spurs? They took in their only terrible year of (I'm guessing) your cognizant lifetime. David Robinson was hurt to start the season, and then he brook his foot a few games after returning. Will Perdue was prominently featured. Tim Duncan was still at Wake Forest.
And it should be pointed out that the NBA scheduled this game, played in Milwaukee, against the Super Bowl. Against a Super Bowl featuring the Green Bay Packers, a team based in Wisconsin (if you're unaware) against the New England Patriots.
And in a community where a Bucks playoff game would take in fewer viewers than a Packers contest played in sweaty September, this didn't go well. The Bucks won, but take it from someone who saw the highlights on cable that night, thirteen thousand people weren't there. Sure, 13,179 tickets were sold, but nobody was showing up to see Carl Herrera shoot 15 times in an NBA game.
The Bucks played on, though. Ray Allen hit three of five from long range (he hit two of four, yesterday, on a Super Bowl Sunday played 14 years later), Johnny Newman came off the bench to score 18 points on only nine shots, and Glenn Robinson gave the punters (so to speak) a double-double with 19 points, and 12 rebounds.
And the Spurs? They were terrible. They scored fewer than 90 points per 100 possessions, and even that was sub-par for the course for a team that would go on to earn the top pick in that spring's NBA draft lottery. The bench (led by Vinny Del Negro, at 3-12) shot 7-25. The starters weren't much better. And starters included Perdue, Herrera, and Avery "1-4, in 36 minutes" Johnson.
Good thing nobody was there to notice. Because, in 1997, Brett Farve's name wasn't an anathema to all involved, Reggie White was dominating defensively, and Desmond Howard wasn't ticking off prissy golden boys that weren't any better than Jeff Hostetler. And that's from a guy who hates the Packers.
The NBA's gotten wise, since then. No games on Sunday night, competing against an NFL championship that has actually been consistently competitive over the last near-decade.
Although, if we're honest, I probably would have tuned into a re-showing of this contest on NBA TV last night, were it offered up. Carl Herrera was really good on the baseline.
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