The Definitive List of Reverse-Bandwagon Teams

My last post was about the biggest bandwagon teams of my lifetime.  This post is about the reverse-bandwagon teams. 

People can’t help but love a bandwagon team.  They can’t help but hate a reverse-bandwagon team.  

A reverse-bandwagon team checks at least two of these three boxes:

◻︎ They win so much that it becomes boring.  

◻︎ They’re too arrogant. 

◻︎ They exploit every advantage, sometimes to the point of cheating.  

A reverse-bandwagon team is a Goliath.  It’s no fun to root for Goliath.  Here are the seven most prominent reverse-bandwagon Goliaths of my lifetime:

Lebron’s Miami Heat

In the summer of 2010, the Bulls, Knicks, Nets, Clippers, Cavs, and Heat all had money to spend and were desperate to sign Lebron James.  He was a 26-year old free agent, a two-time MVP, and unquestionably the best player in the league.

Lebron went on TV and announced he was taking his talents to South Beach.  He chose the Miami Heat.

The two other prime free agents that summer, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, also chose the Heat. 

The celebration began immediately in South Beach at the “Miami Heat Welcome Party.”  Fans came out and packed the arena.  Loud music blared.  Lebron, D-Wade, and Bosh strutted on stage wearing their Heat jerseys.  

Lebron took the mic and predicted how many championships he and his new crew would win.  “Not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven,” he said.    

Six was (and is) the magic number.  Six is the number of championships Michael Jordan won.  Lebron announced that he was going to surpass Michael Jordan.

People loved to hate Lebron’s Heat team.  He had spurned the Clippers, Knicks, Nets, Bulls, and Cavs.  That’s one West coast team, two East coast teams, and two Midwestern teams.  The disdain was spread over a large swath of the country.  Those teams’ fans weren’t going to forget the heartbreak any time soon.

It wasn’t just about Lebron.  One key driver of all the Heat hate was the fact that they had also signed Wade and Bosh that summer.

As a Bulls fan, I was hoping Lebron would come to Chicago.  At the same time, I would have been just as excited for them to get Wade, or to a lesser extent, Bosh.  

I was thinking, “We have three chances at signing a great player!  Lebron would be awesome, but Wade or Bosh would be amazing, too!”  

No one expected the Heat to snatch up all three superstars.  

The Bulls were stuck.  They had to go with Plan E, signing Carlos Boozer, the undersized power forward who is famous for his trademark expression, “Hol’dat!”  They paid him $17 million per year to go out and average 15 points and 10 rebounds, play zero defense, and yell “Hol’dat!” 

(Boozer truly was Plan E.  Plan A was Lebron, Plan B was Wade, Plan C was Bosh, and Plan D was Joe Johnson.)

The Heat spoiled a lot of teams’ hopes and dreams in the summer of 2010.  They angered a lot of basketball fans.  They got the top three free agents, they did the Welcome Party, and they predicted 7-plus championships.  

On top of that, Lebron and his friends would now be spending winters soaking up the sun and playing basketball in Miami while all the suckers in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland shivered.  

In 2010-2011, Heat haters cackled with glee when the Bulls beat Lebron in all four of their regular season matchups.

Heat haters also cackled with glee when Derrick Rose won the MVP award over Lebron.  

Heat haters cackled with more glee than ever when the Dallas Mavericks and their one star player, Dirk Nowitzki, iced the Heat in the 2011 Finals. 

Miami proceeded to win the next two championships.  But after Tim Duncan and the Spurs beat them like a drum in the 2014 Finals, Lebron bolted back to Cleveland.  

He resurrected the Cavs franchise singlehandedly, brought the city of Cleveland their first championship in 52 years, and regained his previous nationwide popularity.

Lebron’s tenure with the Miami Heat lasted only four years, but that group was a reverse-bandwagon team for the ages.

The “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons  

Those guys were bad.  They were tough.  They were talented.  They conquered Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers on their way to winning back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990.  

Michael Jordan, the league’s up-and-coming superstar, tried and failed several times to defeat the Bad Boys in the playoffs.  They bottled up his explosive scoring like no other team could, using a secret set of rules called the “Jordan Rules.”  

What were the Jordan Rules?  The Pistons wouldn’t say.  But if you watched the games, it was pretty easy to figure out.  It appeared to boil down to just one rule: hit him, shove him, and knock him to the floor at every opportunity.  

They didn’t call them the Bad Boys for nothing.  Bill Laimbeer, Dennis Rodman, Rick Mahorn, Mark Aguirre, Vinnie Johnson, Joe Dumars, and Isiah Thomas were a formidable bunch.  They didn’t have a single weak link.  

The only skinny guy in the group was Rodman.  But what he lacked in strength, he made up for in tenacity and aggression.  He was the most physical defender out of all of them.  He was also crazy.

Outside of Michigan, not many people liked the Bad Boys.  They slowed the game down, they mucked it up.  They grabbed, they held.  They made it a wrestling match.  

Fans wanted to see Jordan fly.  They didn’t want to see him get tossed to the ground.

In 1991, under the guidance of new head coach Phil Jackson, Jordan and the Bulls finally broke through and beat the Bad Boys in the playoffs.  They swept them 4-0.  While the Game 4 blowout was winding down, Isiah Thomas and the Pistons’ starting five walked off the court and into the locker room.  

No handshakes for the Bulls players, no congratulations, no passing of the torch.  Just sour grapes.  It was the Bad Boys’ way.  

In the subsequent years, Isiah suffered a rash of injuries.  Bill Laimbeer, Vinnie Johnson, and Mark Aguirre slowed down with age.  Rick Mahorn was traded.

The Bad Boys’ brief dynasty was over, but their legacy as an all-time reverse-bandwagon team lives on.  

Pat Riley’s Knicks

After Jordan vanquished the Pistons, along came Pat Riley’s Knicks, following the same playbook.  

Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, John Starks, Xavier McDaniel, Derek Harper, and Anthony Mason set out to commit so many fouls that the refs couldn’t possibly call all of them.  Their playoff battles with the Bulls throughout the ‘90s featured a lot of pushing, shoving, holding, hand-checking, trash talk, and taunting. 

Unfortunately for the Knicks, the Bulls knew how to win those types of games.  Bill Cartwright, Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen, John Paxson, Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Luc Longley, Ron Harper, and even Steve Kerr could hold their own in a tussle.  Most importantly, they had the edge in talent over the Knicks. 

Pat Riley’s Knicks never made it easy for their opponents.  The games weren’t fun to watch.  Their brand of basketball was rugged and ugly, and they dragged other teams into that style of play.  

By the early 2000’s, the NBA was ready for a change.  They made new rules to eliminate a lot of the rough physical contact.  They opened up the game for more movement and scoring.  

Those Knicks were the last of their kind in the NBA.  They were a classic reverse-bandwagon team, and I’m sure they were fine with that.

The Shaq/Kobe Lakers 

In his prime, Shaquille O’Neal was so big and athletic, it was unfair.  Multiple defenders would hang on him, and he’d still dunk the ball.  If Shaq had the ball in the paint, no one could stop him from getting to the hoop.  Defenders had to foul him, or else he’d dunk every time.  He usually only made half of his free throws, but he’d come out ahead in the end because he’d send all of the opposing big men to the bench with foul trouble.  

Kobe Bryant was the surly young phenom.  The Charlotte Hornets drafted him, but he refused to play there.  He wanted to play in a big market.  He wanted to play in L.A.  So, the Lakers shipped off Vlade Divac, one of their most popular players, in exchange for Kobe.  

Kobe liked to have the ball in his hands.  Kobe liked to go one-on-one.  Kobe liked to put up big scoring numbers.  

It wasn’t exactly convenient for Kobe that he played alongside Shaq, the most dominant offensive player in the post-Jordan generation.  Kobe was competitive.  He thought he could be more dominant than Shaq.  Kobe was going to show everyone.  He just needed to have the ball in his hands enough.

It was strange to watch two great players play tug-of-war with the basketball.  Ultimately, it didn’t matter if Kobe or Shaq ended up with the ball.  Whoever got it was going to score.  

While Shaq and Kobe wrestled for the ball, their selfless teammates Derek Fisher, Robert Horry, Brian Shaw, and Rick Fox scurried around to help.  They rebounded, played defense, and occasionally made clutch shots.  Coach Phil Jackson did his best to massage all the egos and contain the madness.  

It worked.  Shaq and Kobe won three championships together in 2000, 2001, and 2002.  

Then, it stopped working.  Shaq and Kobe were bickering too much.  They were sick of each other.  One of them had to go.  

Phil Jackson preferred Shaq.  Shaq was more coachable.  

The Lakers’ owner, Jerry Buss, preferred Kobe.  Kobe was younger and had more razzle dazzle in his game.

Shaq got traded to Miami.  In his second year with the Heat, he taught Kobe and the Lakers a lesson when he won a championship with his new sidekick, Dwayne Wade.  

Kobe and the Lakers suffered through some lean years.  When they put together a trade for Pau Gasol in 2007, they became contenders again and brought home two more championships.  

While they lasted, the Shaq/Kobe Lakers were annoyingly unbeatable.  They were a reverse-bandwagon team extraordinaire.  

The Roger Clemens Yankees

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the Yankees had Roger Clemens.  That team was dominant.  They went to four World Series and won two of them.

Clemens was difficult to root for.  He was with Boston for a long time and Toronto for a short time before asking to be traded to New York so he could chase championships.  

He was also taking a lot of steroids.  

Clemens was the worst, but the rest of the Yankees weren’t much better.  Andy Pettitte was also using steroids.  They had Paul O’Neil, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and David Wells.  A couple of them were okay, but most of them seemed like jerks.  

Every year, Clemens would say, “I don’t want to pitch this year.  I’m retired.”  But by the time August rolled around, he’d be signing another contract and re-joining the Yankees just in time for the playoffs.  All juiced up and ready to go.  And he would go out and dominate.

You might say, “At that time in baseball, everybody was doing it.  Everybody was on steroids.”  Yes, a lot of guys were on steroids because Major League Baseball was blatantly looking the other way.  

Nobody was quite as shameless as Clemens, though (with the possible exception of Barry Bonds).  Once, when Clemens was caught with steroids, he blamed his wife, saying the drugs were hers.  He said she was taking them to get ready for her upcoming photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Maybe she really was on steroids.  But to pin it on her, trying to escape your own culpability?  That’s low.  That’s so Yankees.  And it’s emblematic of how unlikable that reverse-bandwagon team was.  

Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide

No list of unlikable sports teams is complete without Nick Saban’s Alabama football team.  Year in and year out, Saban’s guys are bigger, faster, stronger, and more talented than everybody else.  

They don’t play flashy football.  They don’t wear flashy uniforms.  They’re disciplined and efficient.  They rarely make mistakes.  

They almost always qualify for the College Football Playoff.  They’ve won six national championships in the past twelve years.

They play in a competitive conference (the SEC), but their non-conference schedule is always weak, featuring the likes of Western Carolina, Mercer, and Troy.  

Alabama is never an underdog.  They have reduced winning down to a science.  Saban runs a system that is engineered to recruit the best players, train them to play mistake-free football, and win national championships.

Alabama isn’t a team, it’s a system.  Rooting for a system is not fun.  No one wants to hop on their bandwagon.  Therefore, they are a reverse-bandwagon team.  

Given that they’ve averaged a national championship every other year for the past decade, I don’t think they’re too worried about it.

The Brady/Belichick Patriots

They’re cheaters.  They’ve been caught red-handed three times now (Spygate I, Deflategate, and Spygate II).  It makes you wonder how much additional cheating they’ve gotten away with during their unprecedented run of six Super Bowl championships in the past eighteen years. 

Quarterback Tom Brady is kind of cocky.  Coach Bill Belichick is dismissive and rude to reporters.  Owner Bob Kraft committed a crime in a South Florida massage parlor, but he walked away unpunished.  The Patriots’ uniforms are horrible to look at.  

The Patriots do a lot of winning, but there’s not a lot to cheer for.  Who, except for a true blue New Englander, would ever cheer for the Patriots?  If a literal Patriots bandwagon came rolling through my town, with Belichick, Brady, and Bob Kraft on board, coaxing me to jump on, showing me a cozy recliner where I could sit and relax…

That would be weird.  Why would that ever happen?

Anyway, my point is, the Patriots are the biggest reverse-bandwagon team of my lifetime.  The Patriots are terrible.  Thank you for reading.