Philly can't get no peace

The Bulls polished off a four-game sweep of the Heat earlier today, which, as you may have read, is the first time that a defending NBA champ has been swept in the first round of the playoffs since 1957.

Of course, they had to bring that up, and of course, it has something to do with the Illadelph.

There were only two rounds of playoffs before the finals in 1957 - the Eastern and Western division semis and finals. That year, the defending champion Philadelphia Warriors were swept in the Eastern division semis by the Syracuse Nationals, two games to none. The Nationals were led by their future Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes, while the Warriors boasted pretty much the same line-up that had won the title the previous year, including two future basketball Hall members, Paul Arizin (pictured above right) and Neil Johnston.

The Nationals then went on to be swept by the Celtics in the Eastern division finals, and then Boston won it all in a down-to-the-wire seven game series with the St. Louis Hawks, who were led by the immortal Bob Pettit. This was the first championship in Celtics' history, and not coincidentally, it was also the rookie season of a certain center out of San Francisco. Surprisingly, not only was Bill Russell denied the MVP award that year (it went to teammate Bob Cousy) he didn't even win the ROY honors, which went to another of his teammates, the great Tom Heinsohn (Russell would win his first of five MVP's the following season).

Beginning with that iron-clad core lineup of Russell, Cousy, Heinsohn and Bill Sharman, Boston would go on to appear in the next 12 NBA Finals, winning ten of them. During that period, they would beat Philly teams in the playoffs a total of seven times. Just in case you were wondering why all those years I felt like Red Sox fans could shove the Curse of the Bambino right up their drunken Irish asses.