Looking at the list of NBA championships since 1947, a few observations:
-I never realized how many teams have NOT won it. Only 20 teams have rings (counting different iterations of the same team, such as counting the Seattle Supersonics and OKC Thunder as the same team), and only 11 have more than one.
-The Lakers and Celtics historically dominated. I was already kind of aware of that, but only as far back as the late '70s and into the '80s. Each had basically two big runs during that time when they were back in the finals repeatedly, with the Lakers doing it with the Magic/Kareem and Kobe/Shaq teams, and the Celtics doing it with the Bird and Pierce/Garnett teams. But that, literally, isn't the half of it. 32 total appearances with17 wins for the Lakers and 22 appearances with 17 wins for the Celtics. No other team is even close to that (the Warriors are next with 7 wins out of 12 appearances). That's pretty amazing.
-Looking at players that have won multiple titles, I was floor by the ludicrous number that Bill Russell and a few others have. Obviously, he was before my time, so I never actually watched him play. But related to point #2, I wasn't really aware of how dominant the Celtics were early on. Looking at players with more than Jordan's six rings, almost everybody on that list was part of that early Celtics run, with Russell topping the list at 11. Horry is the only other person [with 7], who lucked into playing on three different teams to win multiple rings each. I guess the stat about him being the only non-Celtic to win that many is commonly known, but it was news to me.
-When you look at teams that had sustained Finals appearance runs, I tend to think of certain pairings where teams faced off against the same opponent repeatedly, such as Lakers/Celtics in the '80s or Warriors/Cavs recently. It was interesting to note that the Spurs didn't really have that repeat Finals nemesis, and beat 5 different teams. Then I realized that the Bulls' run with Jordan was kinda similar in that the only team they faced more than once out of their six appearances was Utah, and that was only twice.