It seems like a lot of fans like to use the 4-6 argument for Lebron or Finals losses affect a player’s legacy negatively more than early round losses. Why don’t we celebrate winning the East/West pennant more often? It’s almost as if making the Finals is as useful as making the playoffs and getting knocked out in the first round.
Yet in the MLB making the World Series is a BIG deal even if you get swept and blown out each game. It’s considered so prestigious that we always say AL or NL pennant. Why don’t NBA ever get to the same prestige level on winning the pennant as MLB?
We definitely give teams credit for getting to the Finals. It’s a major accomplishment. Years from now, people will still remember how the Heat made it after barely getting into the playoffs.
The problem comes when a team has higher expectations than just making it to the Finals. If they are the one seed or even the two seed in the conference, they may have a legitimate expectation of winning it all. And at that point losing in the Finals is a disappointment.
In baseball, for example, I don’t think the Yankees have ever been proud of losing in the World Series, because they’ve won it all so often that just making it there isn’t a big deal. Of course, its better than missing the playoffs entirely, but it’s still not part of Yankees lore.
I feel like it’s the opposite because media members and people on here (and get highly upvoted) are still claiming the Heat are either going to miss the playoffs or not make it past the play in despite their performance between 2020-2023. People are claiming the Sixers, Cavs, and Knicks are in a better position than the Heat lol despite the Sixers being incapable of making it out of the second round AND the dysfunction they’re currently dealing with.
If anything, I think the discourse surrounding the Heat proves the question OP is asking; there was no respect when they made they run (most of their performance chalked up to “fool’s gold, lucky shooting, and Giannis was injured and tatum’s ankle!” while ignoring that they lost Herro to an injury for the whole post season and that despite Giannis being out for a game and a half, the Bucks still won the only game Giannis was completely out of – and lost the games he played, including when he triple doubled and with an insane performance by Brook Lopez. Same for the Celtics- lots of "but tatum’s ankle!! while conveniently overlooking that Celtics dropped 3 games with a perfectly healthy Tatum --2 of which were at home). They were gentleman swept by the Nuggets but very little props given for beating Denver at home–something literally not one team in the post season accomplished.