What Could Have Been / Sports

Multiple Sports

• While they aren't as common as some of them used to be, some players have had a rare privilege of being athletic enough in multiple sports to warrant being selected for multiple teams in different professional sports leagues. One of the most famous players to go and play in multiple sports leagues was Vincent "Bo" Jackson, who was considered a successful player in both the NFL and MLB at the time. However, most players that have had the honor of being selected in two, three, or even four different professional sports leagues at one point mainly stuck with playing in one sports league for one reason or another (either due to the timing of certain leagues or one interest overtaking another), being unlikely to transition their time with one sports league's team to another so easily. One of the most recent examples of a player that's considered good enough to play professionally for multiple sports, Kyler Murray, was selected as a first round pick for both the Oakland Athletics in the MLB and the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL (being the #1 pick in the latter league), yet has decided to mainly stick with the NFL for at least the foreseeable future. Still, many of these cases bring interesting thoughts on if these certain players would have received similar, if not greater success if they chose another sports league instead of the one they mainly stuck with.
• Injuries generate their fair share of this trope: From players like Gale Sayers (NFL) and Bill Walton (NBA) - who were Hall-of-Famers despite chronic injuries that cut short their careers to players like Billy Sims (NFL) and Larry "Grandmama" Johnson (NBA) - who showed flashes of brilliance before injuries kept them from reaching HOF levels.
  • In particular, one Vincent "Bo" Jackson. He was arguably the most famous athlete on the planet in the late 1980s. A two-sport superstar (football and baseball) with an unmatched combination of strength and speed. He was the first player to play in two sports' all-star games (NFL and MLB). He might have re-written the record books in both sports if not for a freak hip injury suffered in an NFL playoff game 1991.
  • Had he remained uninjured, Gale Sayers would have been unquestionably the greatest running back in NFL history. He already routinely makes the top five on numerous lists, despite playing less than five seasons.
  • Cooper Manning, the eldest son of Archie Manning, was diagnosed with spinal stenosis at the age of 18. At the time he was an All-State wide receiver and considered a hot prospect for the University of Mississippi. What would the NFL look like with all three Manning brothers as active players (or better yet—Cooper as part of the same offense as either Peyton or Eli?) Archie might have made the Hall of Fame just on his genetic contribution to the game alone!
  • What kind of numbers would Mickey Mantle have put up if he didn't spend half his career on the disabled list?^note What kind of numbers would Mickey Mantle have put up if he didn't spend half his career on the disabled list and was sober?
  • Chad Pennington burst onto the scene for the New York Jets in 2002 and, after leading them to an AFC East title, seemed poised to be their first great franchise QB since Joe Namath. Unfortunately, he tore his rotator cuff in his throwing shoulder the midst of the 2004 season. The injury robbed him of most of his arm strength and never seemed to heal as he kept re-injuring it. He still had flashes of brilliance and to this day has the highest pass completion percentage of any retired NFL QB with 1,500 pass attempts, but was never able to regain his early form. Most experts agree that had he stayed healthy, the Jets would have easily competed alongside the New England Patriots for division supremacy, and maybe even have won a Super Bowl, during the 2000-10s.
  • Indianapolis Colts safety Bob Sanders only played more than six games twice in his injury-plagued, eight-year career. He was first team All-Pro in both those seasons; 2005 and 2007, also winning Defensive Player of the Year in the latter.
  • On a similar note, serious controversies that more or less ruin otherwise great or even promising careers can also result fit with this particular trope. Some controversies relate to problems with drugs or firearms, such as with Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards prematurely ruining his career in 2009–10 with a serious firearm controversy with then-teammate Javaris Crittenton (the latter of whom eventually was convicted of manslaughter in 2015). Others relate to death through unfortunate means either on their hands (Aaron Hernandez), through impairments (Henry Ruggs), or even via external means (Michael Vick via dogfights). Some players can especially be tragic if they were great players in the sport they were professional in, but ruined their public perception by internal or external problems that may or may not have been beyond their control, like with the controversial O.J. Simpson cases.
  • Likewise, players that died in their prime (like Nick Vanos in the Northwest Airlines Flight 255 airplane crash, José Fernández and his boat crash, or Tyler Skaggs' drug overdose) are nearly always going to be a case of this. More potent still is when multiple players from the same team meet with tragedy, such as when a fatal accident occurs with a team transport (notable cases include Manchester United in 1958, the Old Christians Rugby Club in 1972, and the Chapecoense football (soccer) team in 2016), as this can and often does derail a team's entire future. (In the Chapecoense case, for example, all but three members of the team were killed, and of the three survivors, Alan Ruschel was the only one who ever played for Chapecoense again, as the other two (defender Hélio Neto and backup goalkeeper Jakson Follmann) were forced into medical retirement due to the severity of their injuries.)
• "What-ifs" that surround Cleveland sports could fill their own sub-page. What if Art Modell decided to keep the team in Cleveland after the city passed the last-minute ordinance? What if José Mesa had learned to just throw the damn ball in the 1997 World Series? What if Jim Brown decided to stay in football during the height of his career? What if LeBron James never decided on "taking his talents to South Beach"?... Then again, as of Father's Day 2016, that last could be considered a Necessary Fail.^note Whether it was by LeBron learning how to win from Dwyane Wade, all the draft picks Cleveland got while LeBron was away (including the lucky grab of #1 pick Kyrie Irving from the Clippers), or both doesn't matter in that sense. There's a reason people once said "God hates Cleveland".
• You could make a whole page from potential relocations:
  • NHL:
    • During the 1995 season, the New Jersey Devils may have gone to Nashville, but they won the Stanley Cup that season, preventing the move. Nashville would get the Predators expansion team in 1998.
    • Before moving to Phoenix, the original Winnipeg Jets thought of going to Minnesota instead. Minnesota would get the expansion Wild in 2000.
    • The St. Louis Blues almost made it to Saskatoon. Saskatchewan has yet to receive an expansion team.
    • The Pittsburgh Penguins, the New York Islanders and the Phoenix Coyotes were all considered to move to Kansas City. However, the Penguins got a new arena which prevented the first one from happening while the Coyotes' planned new owner filed for bankruptcy. At this point, Kansas City is being considered more likely to get an NBA franchise due to the state already having the Blues on the other side selling out almost every night. It helps that the Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019.
    • Jerry Bruckheimer once considered buying the Phoenix Coyotes and relocating them to Las Vegas, meaning there could have been a Vegas team as early as 2009. Las Vegas would eventually get an expansion team in 2017 with the Golden Knights, while Bruckheimer would eventually be part of the ownership group of the recently formed Seattle Kraken.
    • Speaking of Vegas getting that expansion team, the other serious contender for that team was an attempt to revive the Quebec Nordiques (the previous incarnation having relocated to become the Colorado Avalanche).^note Seattle won due to having a larger population and being in the U.S., the NHL operates in U.S. dollars, so Canadian teams are usually at a financial disadvantage to begin with because the Canadian dollar is generally worth less (around 70 U.S. cents as of this writing). It's unlikely Canada will get another team in the near future, Quebec City is basically dead, Saskatoon or any city in the Maritimes is too small, and any attempt to put a second team in the Toronto/Hamilton area would be blocked by both the Maple Leafs and Sabres.
  • NBA:
    • The Cleveland Cavaliers almost moved to Toronto and became the Toronto Towers by 1983. The move was once considered a done deal by team owner Ted Stepien (needing only approval from the Board of Governors to make it official), before it was stopped by Gordon Gund buying the team from Stepien and the NBA helping to fix up the mess Stepien made with the Cavaliers in his tenure by giving them new first-round draft picks from 1983-1986. Toronto ended up getting its own team in 1995 with the Raptors 12 years later.
    • The Utah Jazz almost moved to Miami (in 1985) and Minneapolis (in 1986). In the Miami situation, Utah car dealership owner Larry Miller bought a 50% stake in the team to keep them in Utah, and for Minnesota he bought the remaining share. He owned the team until his death in 2009 (his family retained ownership until a local tech billionaire bought it in 2020, with ex-NBA star Dwyane Wade becoming a part-owner the next year). Miami would get its own team in 1988 (Heat) and Minneapolis would get its own team in 1989 (Timberwolves). The Jazz also played 11 home games in Las Vegas for the 1983-84 season, which was seen by some as a trial balloon for a potential move there.
    • The Phoenix Suns were threatened to move to Columbus, Ohio during the late 1980s after some of their players were involved with drug usage (specifically cocaine) during that period. However, that was prevented by Jerry Colangelo making more shrewd moves to help change the team's status into a long-standing contender, including a trade where their best player at the time, Larry Nance (Sr.), was traded to Cleveland for promising, successful young talents that included Kevin Johnson and then "Thunder" Dan Majerle once he was drafted in 1989.
    • The Minnesota Timberwolves almost moved to New Orleans during 1994. New Orleans later got its own team in 2002 with the Charlotte Hornets moving to New Orleans before eventually being called the Pelicans in 2013, with the Hornets being revived in Charlotte again a year later.
    • The Vancouver Grizzlies were also looking to move to New Orleans before going to Memphis in 2001.
    • After the original Charlotte Hornets first wanted to move out of the city due to waning popularity of then-owner George Shinn for rape allegations, they initially looked into going to either Norfolk, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; or St. Louis, Missouri (each city being a location reviving professional basketball there, with St. Louis previously having multiple NBA teams in the past and Norfolk and Louisville both having new teams after previously losing the Virginia Squires and Kentucky Colonels from the ABA days respectively) before ultimately moving to New Orleans in 2002. The Hornets also looked to move to Memphis at first before the Grizzlies moved to Memphis first.
    • The Sacramento Kings came within an eyelash of getting the NBA to return to Seattle (likely as the new Seattle SuperSonics) in 2013.
  • NFL:
    • One of the original locations the Baltimore Colts initially planned on moving to from as early as the 1970s was Phoenix, Arizona. The Colts initially had promising talks with Phoenix at first before ultimately moved to Indianapolis on March 29, 1984, infamously leaving nothing behind for the city of Baltimore to take from the Colts. Phoenix eventually had a new team years later when the St. Louis Cardinals football team moved to the city, while Baltimore later ended up getting a new NFL team in the 1990s (albeit under similarly controversial means) with the Baltimore Ravens.
    • From 1995^note when the Raiders moved back to Oakland and the Rams moved to St. Louis through 2015, the NFL didn't have a team in Los Angeles. Several teams were rumored to make the move to L.A., and several teams used the threat of moving there to get concessions from their cities. Several prime candidates included the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Minnesota Vikings, the Buffalo Bills, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Vikings, in particular, were unhappy with the Metrodome and threatened to move without a proposal for a new stadium, which the state legislature passed after initially rejecting it. What if the Minnesota Legislature had stuck to their guns, though?
    • It's considered fact by most fans and experts that the 32nd NFL franchise would've been awarded to Los Angeles in 2000. All they really needed was a plan for an upgraded NFL-level stadium^note Of the area's three football stadiums, the Rose Bowl was far too big for an NFL team, Anaheim Stadium had been restored to a baseball-only stadium, and the L.A. Coliseum was in much the same state that the Raiders abandoned. But disagreements over what plan to approve (a new stadium and where to put it or renovation of the L.A. Coliseum), caused the city to miss several NFL mandated deadlines for submitting a plan. Eventually, the NFL gave up on the L.A. bid and accepted the bid of Houston's Bob McNair (Houston having lost the Oilers to Nashville, two years previous). The continued lack of a stadium plan was a major reason none of the above-mentioned teams had relocated to L.A.
    • After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, owner Tom Benson came super close to moving the New Orleans Saints permanently to San Antonio (where they played their home games in the 2005 season). Then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue stepped in to say the league would fight the move, then eventually talked Benson into staying in New Orleans.
    • Robert Kraft twice blocked moves that would've seen the New England Patriots relocated: In 1992, when new owner Victor Kiam tried to sell out to interests in Jacksonville, Florida, and in 1994, when Kiam's successor, James Orthwein, wanted to move to his native St. Louis, and in the process, renaming them the St. Louis Stallions. Kraft, as lease holder to the Patriots' home stadium, Foxboro Stadium^note The Sullivan family sold the team and stadium after going bankrupt. They were sold as separate assets and Kraft outbid Kiam for the stadium, refused both times to release the team from its lease agreement. When Orthwein sold the team, Kraft used that existing leverage to buy the team himself.
    • In 1998, Kraft himself backed off of a deal that would've moved the Patriots to Hartford, Connecticut. He chose instead to build what is now Gillette Stadium.^PostscriptThe Hartford-area stadium project would later be built in a scaled-down form, and now hosts the UConn Huskies.
    • In the end, the Rams wound up returning to L.A. in 2016, after owner Stan Kroenke finally got a stadium deal through in suburban Inglewood. They played in their original L.A. home of the Coliseum^note L.A. wasn't the original home of the Rams; Cleveland was until the new stadium opened in 2021 after previously being delayed for 2020. The Rams ended up winning the Super Bowl in their first season in that new home arena.
  • MLB:
    • Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, envisioned what would have been the first domed stadium for his team to replace the aging Ebbets Field. Despite his willingness for the Dodgers to remain in Brooklyn, his public feud with New York City's planning supremo Robert Moses led to the denial of every new stadium site he proposed. Moses offered land in Queens that would eventually become Shea Stadium but O'Malley sought land elsewhere and moved the club to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
    • While the O'Malley–Moses feud was going on, Horace Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants, was seeking a new home to replace the even older Polo Grounds. Stoneham was having the same difficulties finding a new stadium site in NYC as O'Malley, though without the public feud. He originally sought to move the Giants to Minneapolis, where they had their top farm team, but O'Malley intervened. He needed another team to move to California with him^note (if the Dodgers had been the only team to move, the closest NL team would have been the St. Louis Cardinals, 1,600 miles/2,600 km away; a second team would make travel to the West Coast more economical for the rest of the league), so he arranged a meeting with San Francisco's mayor. Within days, it was official—the Giants would move to San Francisco.
    • Calvin Griffith, who acquired the Washington Senators after his father Clark Griffith's death in 1955, briefly considered moving the team to San Francisco in 1957. The Giants beat them to the punch, and the Senators eventually relocated to Minneapolis-St. Paul after the 1960 season, where they would become the Minnesota Twins.
    • Almost from the moment the ink dried on his 1960 purchase of the then-Kansas City Athletics, Charlie Finley shopped the team around to other cities. First, in 1961 and 1962, he entered into serious negotiations with Dallas–Fort Worth interests to move the team there, but in the end made no effort to move the team... yet. Next, in 1964, Finley signed a contract to move the team to Louisville, but was shot down by American League owners. A few weeks later, the owners nixed his first attempt to move the team to Oakland. During this time, Atlanta, Milwaukee, New Orleans, San Diego, and Seattle were all floated as potential landing spots for the A's. The AL owners finally approved a move to Oakland for the 1968 season. Ironically, decades later, the A's were involved with new negotiation problems in the late 2010s and early 2020s, to the point where a potential move to Las Vegas was floated around. This was eventually confirmed to be the case in 2023 while the team is (as of present moment) in the throes of one of the worst seasons in baseball history.
  • Australian Football League: The North Melbourne Kangaroos came within a whisker of relocating to Gold Coast, Queensland at the end of 2007, with a majority of the club's board supporting the league's proposal to move, but the rank-and-file club members opposing it and pressuring the board to reject the move in a final vote. The Kangaroos had been playing select home games in Gold Coast, and had previously played home games in Canberra and Sydney, which were perceived as testing the waters for a full-time move to those locations. In fact, they'd officially dropped "North Melbourne" from their branding in that era and just called themselves the Kangaroos, seemingly with an eye toward moving elsewhere. The league's next expansions (Gold Coast Suns in 2011, Greater Western Sydney Giants in 2012) were into the markets that the Kangaroos had been considering (GWS officially includes Canberra in its territory and plays some home games there).
• Baseball used to be all there was in terms of team sports in the US. For a long time, it was not just the national pastime, it was the only thing there was. College football started to eat into this dominance early on, but professional football, ice hockey and basketball had a hard time coming even close to the popularity of baseball. However, in the 1950s and into the 1960s when the NFL and even more so the rivalry of NFL and AFL (1960-1969) exploded onto the scene, baseball was undergoing something of an Audience-Alienating Era outside of the New York City area. Competitive balance was hard to find and most games interested a local audience at best. Football on the other hand soon took advantage of the new medium of TV, and through innovations like Monday Night Football (professional sport in prime time! On a weeknight!) became the sport of the TV age. What if baseball had read the signs of the time? Could MLB have grown to a league with an average of 60,000 people at each game? The NFL certainly has. And NFL tickets are much more expensive than even the most expensive Major League Baseball tickets. Or would baseball have changed so much to adapt to TV that old style fans would have turned away in disgust?
• The COVID-19 Pandemic threw the entire 2020 sports calendar into chaos, causing the postponement or outright cancellation of major events including the Tokyo Olympic Games, Euro2020, Wimbledon, the American, Japanese and Korean pro baseball seasons, the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League regular season and playoffs, the Final Four and Frozen Four tournaments, the 2020 XFL regular season and playoffs, the Kentucky Derby and multiple NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula One races. Even though some sporting events would return by following social distancing protocols (i.e., the NHL holding its 2020 postseason in Canadian "hub cities" via Toronto and Edmonton, the MLS, NBA and WNBA playing their 2020 games and the NBA G League playing their early 2021 games in a "bubble" out in Florida, the "2020" Tokyo Olympic Games barring spectators from attendance altogether after another rise of cases (including Delta variant cases) in July 2021, and the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games barring spectators from attendance as well with the Omicron variant increasing new cases by January 2022), the speculation on What Might Have Been had these events taken place uninterrupted (or at all in some cases) will last for decades.
  • On that note, the barring of fans in many sporting venues from 2020 to at least 2021 for some nations (some of which lasted for entire seasons with some sports leagues, with others saw them going on into at least 2022 without fans in attendance, if not longer, depending on how long vaccines for the virus will be given out to certain nations) will also raise some new questions on What Might Have Been had fans been allowed in during some of those seasons at all.

American Football - College

• This is one of the things college football experts debate on when it comes to the 1984 Orange Bowl: How would the college football landscape have changed had Nebraska coach Tom Osborne decided to kick the extra point and settle for a tie (overtime would be another two decades away, and the tie would've probably given Nebraska the national championship). The Miami Hurricanes won the game when they stopped the two-point try. Not only did this cement Miami's place among the college football elite, but sounded the death knell for using run-oriented option offenses like the wishbone and Nebraska's power-I on the elite level (Miami exposed it as having a severe vulnerability to defensive speed). Would the status quo have remained if Nebraska tied (or made the conversion)? Would Miami still have risen to the elite with a loss/tie?
• The documentary The Best That Never Was is all about this trope, regarding Marcus Dupree - who in 1981 was the most heavily recruited high school football player ever. He lived up to the hype as a freshman running back at the University of Oklahoma, setting school records and making highlights with every game. But a combination of bad attitude (his reliance on physical gifts over practice and work infuriated his college coaches, leading to an ultimate split), bad luck (injuries marred his sophomore year and derailed his pro career), bad decisions (leaving Oklahoma, then quitting college altogether), and bad advice (leaving all his USFL money in the hands of his de facto agent, never getting a second opinion when his first doctors advised him to give up football) led to his being a washed-up burn-out by age 24. A brief comeback with the Los Angeles Rams from 1991 to 1992 showed some of what could have been had he toughed things out or had better advisers: Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer called his handling of Dupree - riding him hard out of both frustration for Dupree's lack of drive outside of game day and not quite knowing how to handle someone that young with that much talent - his most regrettable move as a head coach).
  • A side note the documentary never addresses: Had Dupree transferred to a lower-division (I-AA or lower) he would've been eligible after his aborted sophomore season. And had he gone to nearby (to Mississippi native Dupree) I-AA Mississippi Valley State, he would've been paired with the record-setting duo of receiver Jerry Rice and quarterback Willie Totten. The mind boggles at the kind of numbers that trio could've put up.
• In 2009, ESPN's College Football Live asked "What If" to many of the most notable moments in college football history, wondering what would happen if they went the other way. Among the moments they checked out were (along with some of what they suspect would've happened):
  • What if Tom Osborne had settled for the extra point instead of going for 2 in the 1984 Orange Bowl against Miami (making Nebraska the national champs instead of Miami)?
    • If Miami didn't win the national championship that year, Howard Schnellenberger would've stayed with Miami (instead of leaving for the USFL) and cemented the late 80s/early 90s Hurricanes dynasty even sooner. The '83 Cornhuskers would go down as possibly the greatest college football team of all time, on the flip side, with Osborne going down as possibly the greatest college football coach of all time.
  • What if Florida State's first Wide Right had gone the other way?
    • The Miami Hurricanes' dynasty (they were mentioned a lot in this series) would've been cut short as FSU would've won the '91 national championship. The momentum from that would've overturned the numerous Wide Rights that followed, possibly cementing FSU as the undisputed team of the 90s and early 00s. (The Cornhuskers also have a claim to that title having won one more national championship than the Seminoles.)
  • What if Boise State's series of trick plays leading to their Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma had failed?
    • A Boise State loss would've caused a huge dent in the various mid-major conferences' efforts to gain the respect of college football fans, possibly redeeming the BCS in the eyes of the fans a little bit.
    • In another Boise State example, what if Auburn hadn't been able to come back from their 24-point deficit against Alabama, and Boise State's Kyle Brotzman hadn't missed the field goal against Nevada that sent the game into overtime?
  • Several years earlier, the SEC proposed a four-team playoff for the national championship; it was shot down.
    • But it didn't stay dead—in 2014, the College Football Playoff began, featuring four teams picked by a Final Four-style committee. And in 2024, the playoff will expand to 12 teams.
  • What if Teddy Roosevelt had not called for college football to institute rule changes to make the game safer in 1906 (which among other things, led to the forward pass)? Would the perceived violence of the sport have led more colleges to eliminate it? And what might have replaced it? A few West Coast colleges switched to Rugby Union around that time, but gave it up after about a decade when no other schools bothered to join them.
  • Several proposed conferences came very close to becoming a reality, which would have led to huge changes in the college football landscape before the big realignments of the last two decades. Most notable are the "airplane conference" that several prominent schools ^note USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Washington, Army, Navy, Air Force, Duke, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, Pennsylvania, Penn State discussed forming around 1959; Joe Paterno's long-standing idea for an Eastern-based conference ^note Penn State, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia; and the 1990 proposal by the Metro Conference ^note then an Olympic sports conference with Cincinnati, Florida State, Louisville, Memphis State, South Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Tulane and Virginia Tech to add 8 more schools ^note Boston College, East Carolina, Miami (Fla.), Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia and start playing football. The Metro proposal stalled because many of the presidents of the smaller schools were put off by the scale of the proposed changes and the uncertainty over what it would mean to both their schools and the college sports landscape. The Metro broke apart in 1991, with burgeoning football powers Florida State and South Carolina bolting for football-playing conferences and Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) and Cincinnati leaving to form the basketball-centric Great Midwest Conference. The Metro folded in 1995, when it and the Great Midwest merged to form Conference USA (which did include football). Ironically, the sea change the smaller Metro and independent schools were afraid of happened anyway a couple of years later, kickstarted by the dissolution of the Southwest Conference.
• The March 8, 2004 issue of Sporting News explored several "what if" scenarios, complete with projected alternate histories.
• What if Nebraska faced Florida State for the 1997 national championship, instead of the somewhat baffling choice of having them play Tennessee? (FSU and UT both had one loss, and it was to the same team, Florida. The difference was that the Volunteers were shut out at home. On the other hand the Seminoles lost by 3 points on the road in what is still called the best game ever played in The Swamp.^note (the nickname of Florida's home, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium))
• What if legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had accepted that job with the New England Patriots in 1972? The Nittany Lions might have never rose the to level of dominance they achieved in the 1980's, winning two national titles.
  • Three years earlier, JoePa was the first choice of the Rooney family to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers. When he said no, they went to Plan B: Baltimore Colts defensive coordinator Chuck Noll. Noll helped turn the Steelers from the NFL's Butt-Monkey to the dominant team of the 1970s. Would JoePa have had similar success? We'll never know.
  • Another Paterno-related situation, with maybe some broader implications: what if Jerry Sandusky had been hired as the head coach at Toledo in 1977? (He was one of the two finalists, but UT went with Michigan assistant Chuck Stobart instead.)
• This story from Sports Illustrated asks whether the massive NCAA Division I conference realignment of the 2010s, not to mention prior waves of conference expansion and realignment, would ever have happened if not for a seemingly minor change in a then-obscure piece of NCAA legislation passed in 1987. The rule allowed any NCAA football conference with at least 12 members to split into divisions and play a conference championship game between the division winners, with said game not counting against the limit of regular-season games for any team. The legislation was originally drafted by a Division II athletic director to benefit his conference, at the time the only conference in any NCAA division with 14 football members (no conference playing Division I-A, now FBS, football then had more than 10 members). Before the legislation was formally put up for a vote, a second Division II conference that had 12 football members offered to co-sponsor the legislation if the membership requirement were reduced to 12, and the drafter agreed to do so.
  • Postscript: Division I deregulated conference football championship games in two phases. Starting with the 2016 season, conferences no longer had to have 12 members, as long as the conference championship game involves (1) two division winners or (2) the top two teams in the conference standings after a full round-robin schedule. Shortly before the 2022 season, even those restrictions were lifted.
• In 2013, Southern California fired head coach Lane Kiffin after starting the season a disappointing 3-2. In fact, Kiffin was essentially fired at the airport after the team returned from a humiliating 62-41 loss at Arizona State. After the firing, USC named defensive coordinator Ed Orgeron as the interim head coach. Orgeron had already been a head coach at Ole Miss (where he coached Michael Oher of The Blind Side fame, and played himself in the film), and was very popular with the team. The Trojans went 6-2 the rest of the season under Orgeron. But the two losses were to USC's archrivals Notre Dame and UCLA. Still, there was plenty of support for making Orgeron the permanent head coach. But USC athletic director Pat Haden passed him over in favor of Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian. It was later revealed that one of Haden's concerns was Louisiana-native Orgeron's guttural, heavily Cajun-accented voice, part of an overall concern that he somehow didn't fit the image of a USC head coach. Here's what happened to the main players in the saga: Sarkisian—fired in the middle of his second season for drinking on the job. Haden—retired a few months later after a major outcry from the school's boosters. Orgeron—hired as an assistant coach at LSU, became the head coach in 2016, then guided the Tigers to the national championship in 2019. USC fans are still livid over the school letting a national championship-caliber coach slip away. Many of the reactions of USC fans online after LSU's win were profane missives directed to Pat Haden.
• Related to the above entry about Cooper Manning's Career-Ending Injury, his brother Peyton had originally planned on joining him at Ole Miss so they could play college football together and repeat the strong quarterback-receiver dynamic they had in high school. After Cooper's diagnosis and retirement, Peyton decided to explore other programs and wound up choosing the University of Tennessee.
• A lot of people wonder what the college football, if not the professional football landscape, would have looked like had Joe Roth of California not got stricken with melanoma. He was projected to win the Heisman and be the number one pick in the draft in 1977. He played through the pain and seen his numbers drop, but still managed a 9th-place finish in the Heisman voting for that season before succumbing to the disease at the age of 21.
• An episode that arguably changed the course of two college sports: In 1946, Bear Bryant was hired as head coach by Kentucky, at the time a middling program at best. In eight seasons, he went 60–23–5, leading the Wildcats to four bowl appearances, capped off by an SEC title and (retrospective) split national championship in 1950. After the 1953 season, he signed a 12-year contract extension at Kentucky, hoping to make football UK's main sport. Only one problem... UK was traditionally a basketball school, and during Bryant's tenure, Adolph Rupp had coached the Cats to three national titles. A window had opened, however, in 1951 when multiple former UK players were linked to a point shaving scandal. The investigation led to the NCAA's first official enforcement action, which forced UK to cancel its 1952–53 basketball season. During the negotiations for Bryant's contract extension, the university president had told Bryant that Rupp would be fired. But then Bryant got word that Rupp would receive his own contract extension. Feeling that he had been deceived, and that basketball would always have priority at UK, Bryant left for Texas A&M, eventually becoming a coaching legend at his alma mater of Alabama. But what if Rupp had been fired? Could we now be talking about Kentucky as a traditional football powerhouse with a once-storied basketball program?
• The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl began in 1997 (as the Humanitarian Bowl) to give the Big West Conference (back when it still sponsored football) a tie-in for its conference champion after UNLV moved to the Western Athletic Conference and took the Las Vegas Bowl with it. Before settling on a bowl in the unlikely location of Boise, Idaho, there had been talk of placing the new bowl in Reno, Nevada, which also has nasty December weather, but at least has gambling and nearby Lake Tahoe as attractions.

American Football - Professional

• The NFL started out in a lot of small towns in the industrial Northeast and Midwest regions of the US. The Other Wiki has a list of NFL teams that no longer exist properly, many of which involved teams that were from the 1920's & 1930's. For reference, only the Racine (Chicago) Cardinals (now Arizona Cardinals) and Decatur Staleys (now Chicago Bears) were the only two teams out of the initial 15 American Professional Football Association (APFA, the precursor of the NFL) teams to survive into the modern-day era. Furthermore, Green Bay, Wisconsin just so happens to be the only one of those small towns from that era that could hold on to its team, even with five of the former NFL teams being previous champions themselves. What if Green Bay too had lost its team? What if more towns had kept their teams beyond those early years? What if The Great Depression had not killed most small-town teams that were still around?
• In 1936, the NFL held their first ever player's draft. For the first ever NFL pick, the Philadelphia Eagles chose University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger due to how he was perceived as a "one-man football team" due to how he performed as a player for the Chicago Maroons college football team. To get an idea of how dominant he was as a player for the University of Chicago, he once gave future U.S. President Gerald Ford a distinctive scar on his left eye from a tackle he made in 1934. Not only that, but in his final collegiate year in 1935, he won the first ever Heisman Trophy with more votes for him than the rest of the competition for the award combined^*(for reference, Berwanger had 84 votes that year, while the other competitors for the award in junior Monk Meyer from the Army, senior William Shakespeare from Notre Dame, and senior Pepper Constable from Princeton had 29, 23, and 20 votes respectively for 72 total votes together), as well as earned the Big Ten's MVP award and was named a unanimous All-American football player that year. However, while the Eagles did want Berwanger for what he could have done for them, they traded him to the Chicago Bears for tackle Art Buss instead for fears of not meeting his reported salary demands of $1,000 per game (worth around $21,618 in today's money). Berwanger, however, did not want to sign up with them immediately due to him wanting to preserve his amateur status to have a chance to earn a spot for the US decathlon team for the 1936 Olympics in (Nazi) Germany. However, after he failed to make that team in that year's Olympics, he went back to discussions on what his contract with the Bears should be. Berwanger wanted to have a contract worth $15,000 (worth around $324,972 today), while Bears owner George Halas had a final deal worth $13,500 (worth around $292,475 today) in mind instead. Ultimately, Berwanger scoffed at the idea of joining the NFL altogether and instead went to work at a local rubber company, as well as became a part-time coach for his alma mater. However, Berwanger did later express regret on not taking on Halas' offer and later leaving his mark on NFL history in a better light than it was. As such, the scenario here is what if Berwanger had chosen to play for either Philadelphia or the Bears instead of try his hand at the Olympics first and then bet on himself afterward?
• The American Football League's (AFL) ten-year history was full of What Might Have Beens, starting literally before there was an AFL:
  • Related to the AFL: The last team ever to cease operations entirely (neither being relocated or "reactivated" later on) were the Dallas Texans in 1952. Would Dallas-based oil heir Lamar Hunt have felt the need (or ability) to buy and move a team to Dallas if there had already been a team there? Would he have been able to buy his way into the Dallas team? Would the "foolish club" have formed without Lamar Hunt and his deep pockets?
  • What would the NFL look like today if the owners had actually let Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams buy franchises? Would it have stayed the same "Three yards and a cloud of dust" conservative brand of football without the AFL to show that the fans would flock to a more wide-open style (both on and off the field)?
    • More pressingly: Would the NFL have continued to drag its feet on expansion and franchise movement, had the AFL not existed to provide a competitive reason?^note Within months of the AFL's formation, the NFL expanded to Dallas and Minneapolis and moved the Chicago Cardinals to St. Louis. All three cities were on the AFL's radar. Dallas actually had an AFL franchise, the Texans (now known as the Kansas City Chiefs and then owned by Hunt himself) and the group behind the Minneapolis team initially wanted in on the AFL but jumped ship after the NFL approached them.
  • For that matter, what would've become of the AFL if Hunt and Adams had accepted the NFL's offer of expansion teams if they backed out the new league?
    • Or if Joe Namath - the league's first true superstar - had signed with the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals instead of the AFL's New York Jets.
    • Rumor is that the Cardinals were merely a beard for the New York Giants. Joe had made it clear that he wanted to play in New York.
    • For that matter, what would the Super Bowl era have evolved into if Namath and the Jets had lost Super Bowl III? The NFL was already looking into altering the AFL vs NFL format, as they (the NFL) thought the AFL teams simply weren't up to par yet.
  • Without a $400K loan from Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson, the Oakland Raiders would've moved to Seattle or New Orleans after the 1963 season. He gave a similar, smaller loan to the Boston Patriots to keep them afloat.
  • Al Davis' merger plan was more along the lines of a Major League Baseball type setup: With the AFL continuing as a separate entity with its own rules, but with a combined NFL/AFL championship game and All-Star game. It's widely believed that much of Davis' iconoclastic behavior was partly fueled by a grudge against NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm and Lamar Hunt for going "behind his back" to hash out the eventual merger.
  • If the merger deal hadn't put a stop to the talent raids between AFL and NFL teams^note sparked by the NY Giants' signing of Buffalo Bills kicker Pete Gogolak, violating the unspoken agreement between the leagues not to sign players under contract to the other league, the Houston Oilers would've made San Francisco QB John Brodie pro sports' first $1 million man, and had him throwing passes to future Hall of Fame tight end Mike Ditka.
  • Had things gone according to plan, the original AFL cities would've been New York City, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Miami. The ownership group in Minneapolis accepted the NFL offer Adams and Hunt turned down, leading the AFL to switch to Plan B: Oakland. Ralph Wilson wanted to locate his franchise in Miami, but a lukewarm reception to the unproven league caused him to look elsewhere, eventually deciding on Buffalo, New York.
  • Had the AFL agreed to the NFL's original merger proposal, the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders would have relocated to other cities (Memphis and Portland, Oregon respectively) so the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers could keep their market exclusivity. Ironically, it was New York Giants owner Wellington Mara who convinced the league to drop this condition, as he knew how popular the crosstown Jets and Joe Namath were and feared the team having to move because of him and the Giants would result in a public relations nightmare.
• On December 19, 1976, unbeknownst to everyone at the time the Pittsburgh Steelers played a road game against the Baltimore Colts at Memorial Stadium, a private Piper Cherokee airplane owned by Donald Kroner ended up crashing into the stadium minutes after the playoff game ended that day. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt or was around the crash at the time, with the perpetrator also recovering from the incident himself and later being sent to prison for this incident, but one could genuinely wonder if things would have been so much worse had the Colts either won that game or the game itself was a close match either way instead. Secret Base made a video greater covering the unbelievable situation here in this video, with it also mentioning a potential parallel to a film released in 1977 called Black Sunday that revolved around a pilot crashing into an NFL stadium that was planned to be for the Super Bowl of that year.
• The United States Football League started off to rave reviews and a decent fan base. Instead of following the AFL model of building on that fan base and establishing franchise stability, the USFL (on Donald Trump's urging) instead went for immediate expansion (from 12 to 18 teams by year two) and later (again at Trump's urging) moving its season from the spring to the fall for a head-to-head battle with the larger, more established NFL. Who knows how long the league would've lasted had they stuck with being an alternative to the NFL for the spring instead of a direct competitor for the fall, considering the amount of talent they had already been able to buy away from the NFL in such a short time.
  • Trump quite simply had no comprehension of fan loyalty being something akin to family loyalty, in terms of head-to-head competition. Football fans that already rooted for a given NFL team had little reason to care about the USFL, while the NFL was playing. The same is just as true today, after the fall of two recent would-be "rivals", the original XFL (2001) and the Alliance of American Football (2019), and the COVID-induced hiatus of the revived XFL (didn't finish its first season in 2020 and didn't return until 2023). The USFL name would be revived in 2022 for a completely unrelated league (though they still hold the old USFL's trademarks); similar to the original XFL, they actually did manage to complete their first season, though the new USFL had to play their entire first season in Birmingham, Alabama for reasons that may or may not relate to COVID-19 concerns. Because Birmingham was hosting that year's World Games^note An Olympic-style multi-sport event featuring sports not included in the Olympic program, plus non-Olympic disciplines in Olympic sports. and using both of the USFL's stadiums for that event, the USFL moved its playoffs to the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. However, with ratings not being their best for their first season, we'll see if their success is more in line to the original USFL or the original XFL going forward.
  • Actually, in an interview he gave to Rick Reilly in his book Who's Your Caddy?, Trump stated that his plan was to use the USFL as a way to sue the NFL on antitrust laws, and he hoped to use the leverage of the court battle to force the NFL into acquiescing to give him a franchise, which the NFL had no interest in doing (and still doesn't, derailing his attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014).
  • Ultimately, the USFL won the case — but the jury ruled that the league's mismanagement, more than anti-trust violations, caused the USFL's problems, so the USFL were only awarded a figurehead sum of $3.^note As of 2021 that $3 check has never been cashed With much of its talent having moved to the NFL during the time spent in litigation, and the deep pockets of its franchise owners exhausted, the league folded soon after.
  • After the USFL's bankruptcy, Trump considered buying the New England Patriots from the Sullivan family in 1988; the Sullivans lost a lot of money promoting The Jacksons' Victory Tour during 1984 (see Troubled Production / Music). Trump declined to purchase the Patriots, saying that he didn't want to inherit the debt load. Earlier in 1981, Trump considered buying the Baltimore Colts. Trump would later try again in 2014, as he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills for $90 million, but was outbid by the Pegula family (who already owned the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL). His being outbid was a major factor in his choice to run for president in the 2016 election, which he wound up winning.
    • Also interested in purchasing the Bills was Jon Bon Jovi, who tried putting a group together to buy the team and move it to Toronto, despite the fact that the Bills games that were already being played in Toronto weren't selling out.^note There are plenty of Bills fans in the Toronto area (Toronto is about 100 miles away from Buffalo by car), but not quite enough to fill a 55,000 seat stadium, and many of the American fans saw the jacked-up ticket prices and the hassle of crossing the border and stayed home. This looked even worse on TV thanks to the terrible acoustics of the Rogers Centre, which is known as one of the worst stadiums in MLB. Cue jokes about Buffalo being behind the times as usual and hating Bon Jovi 20 years after it was cool.
  • The USFL's very existence had a massive disruptive effect on the 1984 NFL Draft. Lacking the NFL's rules on signing underclassmen, several players who would've been options for the #1 overall pick (like Steve Young, Reggie White and Herschel Walker) were already signed by and playing in the USFL. The Cincinnati Bengals traded out of the first pick, swapping with the New England Patriots. The Patriots, fearful of having their pick poached by the USFL, signed U. of Nebraska receiver Irving Fryar as the #1 pick three weeks before the draft was held. Those who were Bengals front office officials at the time have said that they would have taken Young with the #1 pick that year, and only traded out because all they would've considered at the spot were already in the USFL.
  • The USFL's most successful team, the Philadelphia Stars, were supposed to be the Stallions, after the Italian Stallion himself. However, the Birmingham franchise got the Stallions name first, so Philadelphia settled on the Stars moniker instead.
• In 1989, the Green Bay Packers drafted Tony Mandarich, who ended up a definite bust and being the only top 5 draftee of the 1989 draft who didn't make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the rest of the top 5 being Troy Aikman, Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion Sanders. Had they drafted either Barry or Deion Sanders or Thomas (Aikman was already gone at the #1 overall pick), the Packers likely would have ended up winning a few more games with them, so the Packers probably wouldn't get rid of HC Lindy Infante or GM Tom Braatz when they did. That in turn means that Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre don't get brought into the Packers, thus not leading to their third golden age. On the other hand, if they had taken one of those players but the rest of the events had still played out similarly to what they historically did, Packers and some other fans would have gotten to see either Brett Favre handing off to Barry Sanders, or Deion Sanders or Derrick Thomas playing alongside the great mid '90's Packers defenses with (among others) greats like Reggie White, Santana Dotson and LeRoy Butler — either of which would have not only been amazing to see, but also would likely have meant more than just one Super Bowl ring for the Packers in the Favre/Holmgren era.
• Speaking of the XFL, Vince McMahon's original plan was to buy out the Canadian Football League and move the clubs south!
  • Which, in true McMahon style, ignored the fact that the CFL itself tried an American expansion starting in 1995. It failed epically in three of the five cities of the CFL's "Southern Division" (Shreveport, Memphis and Birmingham, plus earlier failures in Sacramento and Las Vegas). Baltimore (who actually won the Grey Cup in '95) fled to Canada to become the current version of the Montreal Alouettes virtually the moment the NFL's Ravens arrived. The remaining American CFL franchise (San Antonio) disbanded immediately thereafter.
    • And there's another "what if" right there: Baltimore was the only place where the CFL in the U.S.A. really worked. The team, however, was moved out mostly because of the creation of the Ravens. What if the Browns had never been moved or if they had been moved to some entirely different place? Would we now talk about the CFL dynasty from Baltimore instead?
  • While the first incarnation of the league was an infamous flop, the second attempt in 2020 was actually going fairly well, learning from past mistakes and putting on a solid half-season of football before COVID-19 put the league on ice. This version did well enough for Dwayne Johnson to buy the intellectual rights and try again in a couple years, so maybe we'll get a functional long-term league after all.^note Oddly enough, Johnson and business partner/ex-wife Dany Garcia tried to negotiate a partnership between the XFL and CFL which ended up going nowhere (likely because the CFL remembered how well their previous American ventures went, see above). Shortly thereafter, the XFL announced that its return would be pushed back from 2022 to 2023.
• Want to infuriate a long-time New York Jets fan? Ask him "What Might Have Been" if the Jets had drafted Hall of Famer Warren Sapp in 1995 - as everyone expected (and whom they desperately needed as their defense at the time was horrid) instead of TE Kyle Brady? (To be fair, Brady had a good NFL career - most of it with the Jacksonville Jaguars.)
  • A collection of Jets draft blunders.
  • Pretty much every team in every major sports league in America (if not Earth) has at least one "Why did we pass on/cut that guy?" The more famous ones like Sapp could take up their own page.
  • This is why the "first round bust" exists.
  • Special mention must be made of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the late 50s, who drafted Johnny Unitas - considered the best quarterback of the pre-merger era and on the short list for best of all time - in 1955, and cut after stashing him on the practice squad for the entire season. Then they had both Len Dawson (another future Hall of Famer) and Jack Kemp (who won two championships and an MVP in the AFL) on their roster in 1957. To be fair, Dawson and Kemp were behind Earl Morrall (a future NFL MVP)... whom they traded in 1958 after trading for future Hall of Famer Bobby Layne. Layne retired after the 1962 season. With the exception of Kemp (who retired after the 1969 season to pursue a successful run for Congress), all of those previously mentioned played into the 1970s.
• Considering the Cleveland Browns already had the greatest NFL running back of all time on their roster, what would the Browns have been like had they had a backfield of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis (the latter of whom died from leukemia without playing a down in the NFL)?
  • Would Art Modell have had the need to move the team to Baltimore if either The Drive or The Fumble never happened?
  • The Browns came within a hair of that ultimate sacrilege—adding a logo to their helmet—in 1965. Pressured by the league to adopt a logo for TV and marketing purposes, Modell commissioned a helmet logo design, a stylized, intertwined "CB". A number of merchandise items from the period sport the logo, but for unclear reasons the Browns never used it on the field; evidence points to a backlash from the players after seeing the logo for the first time. Rumors have the Browns actually using the logo for a preseason game, but all surviving preseason game photos have the familiar blank helmets.
• The 1970 NFL draft. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears had to flip a coin to determine who got the #1 overall pick that year. The Steelers won the flip and chose Terry Bradshaw. The Bears ended up trading their #2 pick to the Packers and didn't choose a player until round 2. Bradshaw led the Steelers to four Super Bowl victories in the next ten years and the franchise went from joke to juggernaut. The Bears had to wait another sixteen years to get their first and only Super Bowl victory.
• In 1969, his one and only season as head coach of the Washington Redskins (now Commanders), the legendary Vince Lombardi snapped a streak of 14 consecutive losing seasons for the 'Skins, whipped notorious slacker Sonny Jurgensen into shape, instilled a winning attitude into the 'Skins (and the entire Washington DC sports world, really) that had been absent (not to mention switching the 'Skins logo to the stylish "Circle R" design they wore throughout The '70s). Despite the success his successor George Allen had, longtime 'Skins fans wonder how far Lombardi could've taken them had he not died of colon cancer.
• Super Bowl XXVII was originally set to take place in Tempe, Arizona, but the NFL decided to relocate the game to Los Angeles after Arizona's government refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a state holiday. They were eventually given their chance to host Super Bowl XXX.
  • Similarly, Super Bowl XXXIII was initially awarded to Candlestick Park in 1994 contingent on planned improvements to the stadium. However, when those improvements failed to materialize in 1996 the stadium was awarded to the runner-up city of Miami. The Bay Area would not be awarded another Super Bowl^note Nearby Stanford, CA hosted Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium until Super Bowl 50, held at the successor to Candlestick Park as the home stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, Levi's Stadium.
  • Also, in 2005 Kansas City was awarded Super Bowl XLIX (played in 2015; most Super Bowls are awarded to a stadium around 3-4 years in advance versus nearly 10 years in this case). As in the case of Super Bowl XXXIII initially being awarded to Candlestick Park; the NFL awarded this Super Bowl to Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium provided two sales taxes were approved by the city's residents to renovate the stadium (including a proposed retractable roof Arrowhead and neighboring Kauffman Stadium^note home of the Kansas City Royals). The first tax was approved, but a second that would have funded the rolling roof was narrowly defeated; forcing the Kansas City Super Bowl hosting committee to withdraw their bid. Super Bowl XLIX would eventually be awarded to the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona.
• An interesting NFL game example would be from the 1993 playoffs. The Houston Oilers were only 10–6 but well known for their explosive run-and-shoot offense. They were playing a team, the Buffalo Bills, that they had literally beaten the week before 27–3. The Oilers got out to a 35–3 lead in the third quarter and ended up losing the game 41–38 in overtime, mostly due to their poor defensive play and poor special teams play. Until the 2022 season, it was the largest comeback ever in NFL history, and it still is the largest comeback in playoff history to this day. Buffalo would eventually go on to lose their third of four straight Super Bowl appearances. Houston would hire defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, a vocal critic of the run-and-shoot offense, in 1993 where they would again lose in the playoffs. Midway through the 1994 season, Houston would fire head coach Jack Pardee and abandon the run-and-shoot offense (and eventually move to Tennessee to later become the Titans by the end of the decade), while Buffalo would mostly struggle to capture the glory they had in the early part of the decade.
  • If Houston had won, they would have likely gone on to play a Pittsburgh Steelers team that they had lost two games to by a combined 6 points during the season. Houston very well could have had a chance at going as far as the AFC Championship Game and maybe Buddy Ryan never would have been hired as their new defensive coordinator. This also may have resulted in Jeff Fisher never becoming the head coach of the Houston Oilers (and maybe even gone so far as to keep the team from moving to Tennessee to later become the Tennessee Titans).
  • If either of those scenarios had come to pass; there would have been no need for Oilers owner Bud Adams to threaten to break the team up (which after the 1993 season ended with a playoff loss to Kansas City and comeback specialist Joe Montana, Adams made good on).
• The 1958 NFL championship ("The Greatest Game Ever Played") put the NFL on the national map, with Baltimore QB Johnny Unitas running the 2-minute drill to perfection (before the term had even been coined, let alone codified as a strategy). But would the NFL have gained that boost if the New York Giants had stopped the Colts in regulation time? Or if the game hadn't had the extra drama of being the NFL's first ever sudden death overtime game? Or if that drama had not happened in the NFL's first nationwide (as in "Every station in NBC's network was getting this broadcast") telecast?
• One Yard Short. If it didn't happen, then Super Bowl XXXIV could have been the first Super Bowl to go to overtime (this would later happen with Super Bowl LI). And if the Tennessee Titans had pulled off the win after forcing overtime, how would that have changed the future of the franchise (which has still never won a Super Bowl as of 2020, either as the Titans or previously as the Houston Oilers) and coach Jeff Fisher (who also never won a Super Bowl as a coach^note he did win one as a player), the latter of whom ended up with a reputation as a losing coach by the time of his retirement.^note While he had an overall winning record, Fisher's 165 regular-season losses are the most in NFL history.
• The Buffalo Bills are known as the team that lost 4 Super Bowls in a row. The first of the loss was a very narrow loss by 1 point where Bills kicker Scott Norwood missed a last minute field goal that would've won the game for the Bills. However, what if the kick was good and the Bills won their first Super Bowl? Would the Bills make it back again and again for the next 3 seasons? If they did, would having a Super Bowl victory under their belt (and coming in as the reigning Super Bowl champions the first year) have changed their mindset to the point where they would have been able to put up a better fight in those subsequent games?
  • Similarly, would Super Bowl XXVII have been so lopsided if Bills star quarterback Jim Kelly hadn't gotten hurt in the second quarter? Could Kelly's presence have changed the course of the game enough to give the Bills a fighting chance?^note The Cowboys got a lot of their points and momentum in that game off of turnovers, so it's not as far-fetched as it sounds for the quarterback situation to have affected the outcome that dramatically.
  • The pick used by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2017 NFL Draft to select Patrick Mahomes originally belonged to the Bills, who traded it for KC's first round pick in that draft and the following draft^note Those picks ended up being CB Tre'Davious White and LB Tremaine Edmunds. Edmunds never made a huge impact and wasn't re-signed when his rookie contract expired, White is one of the best defensive backs in the league and while that's great he's still not a MVP winning quarterback. White would be released in 2024 after back-to-back major leg injuries, Mahomes is still with the Chiefs. This more or less worked out for the Bills in the end as they drafted QB Josh Allen 7th overall the following year^note not to be confused with the defensive end Josh Allen who went #7 overall in 2019, but still, what if they had taken Mahomes? Does he become a bust? (Mahomes was regarded as a "project quarterback" before the draft.) Do the Bills end up winning the Super Bowls the Chiefs won? What happens to Allen if the Bills don't draft him?
• How would the 2013 Super Bowl have turned out if the power hadn't gone out in the Superdome for 34 minutes after halftime? The Baltimore Ravens were on their way to a rout of the San Francisco 49ers, leading 21–6 at the half. The 49ers managed to rally to within a field goal of the Ravens by the end of the game (though they still lost). Would the 49ers have been able to rally even without the break in Baltimore's momentum?
• During the 2011 NBA lockout period, LeBron James was given offers to play in the NFL by both the Dallas Cowboys (which is Lebron's favorite team) and Seattle Seahawks for the 2011 NFL season. While that sounds unusual on the surface level, LeBron did play junior varsity football in high school as a wide receiver, being recruited by Division I programs like Notre Dame for football (not necessarily basketball) at the time and being named an All-State member by his sophomore year in high school. For reference, this is also while he was named Mr. Basketball for the state of Ohio in that same year. However, a wrist injury he had in a high school basketball game in his senior year prevented him from continuing with football there, which likely influenced his decision to go to the NBA directly out of high school in 2003 instead of go to college for basketball and/or football. Considering his old coaches gave him comparisons to Randy Moss for what he felt like in high school football games, it's not unreasonable to wonder if he might have made a difference for either team there, especially if the 2011 NBA lockout lasted as long as the 1998-99 NBA lockout.
• The 1942 Chicago Bears: 11–0 in the regular season, winning with an average score of 34–8, 10 All-Stars, led by future Hall of Fame QB Sid Luckman. Then coach George Halas left to serve in the Navy, and the Bears lost the championship game to Washington. Most NFL historians take it as fact that had Halas stayed to coach the championship game, the Bears complete the perfect season.
• Coming off a near-perfect 1985 season capped off by a blowout win in Super Bowl XX, the Chicago Bears were en route to making another run for the ages in 1986, but quarterback Jim McMahon suffered a season-ending shoulder injury after taking a (blatantly illegal) hit in Week 12. The Bears still finished 14-2 and made the playoffs, but without McMahon, they were unable to defeat the Washington Redskins in the divisional round of the playoffs, ending their hopes of becoming back-to-back Super Bowl champions. The Bears proved unable to rebound from this setback; since the heartbreak that was the 1986 season, the Bears have (as of 2020) appeared in only one Super Bowl (a loss) and three conference championships (two losses), compiled just six total playoff wins, had more losing seasons (17) than winning seasons (12), and become generally infamous for their inability to put together a championship-caliber team and for blowing the chances they do get to challenge for a title. Many Bears fans still believe that if the Bears had had McMahon for the playoffs, they could have gone on to win their second Super Bowl in as many years and potentially built on that to ascend to dynasty status; instead, they watched the team stall and then descend into mediocrity, all because of one dirty hit.
• The 2007 New England Patriots: Won all 16 of their regular-season games and went on to defeat the Jaguars and the Chargers in the playoffs. Only the New York Giants stood in their quest for a perfect season. With the Patriots ahead 14–10, the Giants faced 2nd and 5 on their 44-yard line with just over a minute left in the game. Eli Manning threw a pass that Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel nearly grabbed for an interception. On the next play, Manning completed the "Helmet Catch" to David Tyree and the Giants would eventually score a touchdown, winning Super Bowl XLII with a final score of 17–14. Fans are left wondering what would have happened if Samuel completed the interception and the Patriots achieved a perfect season (which has only been done once in NFL history, and has never happened since the regular season was expanded to 16 and then 17 games)...
  • The loss to the Giants also brings up more speculation: what would have happened if the Patriots won that game? Would Brady and/or Belichick feel that there was nothing left to conquer and retire early, or become complacent? The loss to the Giants haunted the team for a long time afterwards, and to some extent Brady built the entire second act of his career trying to make up for it. The win in Super Bowl XLIX had a special sense of urgency because the Dynasty seemed to be running out of time at that point in time.
  • If they had won that game, they would not have faced the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2008 season opener, thus Brady would not have been in the path of Bernard Pollard. That game derailed what was otherwise an encore with the 16-0 squad on a much easier schedule. Could they have done the unthinkable and done it again? They failed to make the playoffs at 11-5, the only time that has ever happened under the then current playoff format (the 1985 Denver Broncos also failed to make it at 11-5, back when their were only 3 divisions)^note this had almost happened again in 2020 had the league been one season slower to implement the current 14 team format; the Indanapolis Colts were the 7 seed in the AFC at 11-5, but with Brady at least some of those losses would have been wins. The league's reigning MVP being injured and taken out of the season prompted a rule change to prohibit quarterbacks from being targeted at the knees by downed defenders. What impact would the absence of these rules changes have on the league?
  • Matt Cassel's 2008 performance improved his trade value ahead of the 2009 Draft. He would, ironically, be traded to and become the starter for the Chiefs. The Patriots in turn acquired a second round pick which they used to acquire safety Patrick Chung. Of their league-leading 12 picks, the Patriots acquired only three players of value in a draft described as one of the worst in the NFL's history: Chung, Sebastian Vollmer, and Julian Edelman. All three have won multiple championships with the Pats and are members of their 2010s All-Decade Team. But Edelman was taken as a flyer in the 7th round, and without the high 2nd acquired in exchange for Cassel, the pick used to acquire him may have been used as capital to move up in the draft. Chung's selection in itself was a key pick-up that rebuilt the Patriots' battered and aging late 2000s defense.
• The infamous Herschel Walker trade, which helped the Dallas Cowboys snap out of an Audience-Alienating Era and win three championships in five years, was almost the "Michael Irvin trade". In 1989, Jimmy Johnson, newly-hired coach of the Cowboys, thought that the only way the Cowboys were going turn things around with any sort of speed would be to acquire all the draft picks he could, then either flip those for other players or higher picks or simply stockpile players and turn over the not-very-good roster that way. He only had two bankable assets to use as trade bait: Second-year receiver Irvin or two-time All-Pro halfback Walker. He offered Irvin to the Los Angeles Raiders and asked what they'd be willing to hand over for him. Raiders Owner/General Manager Al Davis talked Johnson out of the deal, pointing out that if he traded Irvin, newly-drafted QB Troy Aikman would have no one to throw to. Johnson took Davis' advice and offered Walker to the Minnesota Vikings. The rest is history. Though one wonders what could have been if Davis hadn't been feeling honorable that day, as Irvin could've been paired with fellow future Hall of Fame receiver Tim Brown and speedster Willie Gault. That trio could've terrorized the AFC for years. Davis' magnanimity was probably helped by the fact that the Raiders still had Marcus Allen and a healthy Bo Jackson at running back, so they really didn't need the extra firepower.
  • On the flip side of this scenario: What if Johnson and Jones had gone with conventional wisdom and tried to rebuild the Cowboys around Aikman and Walker? Without the bounty of draft picks, it probably would've been a longer path. And Walker's continued presence probably keeps Dallas from their 1-15 cratering in 1989, meaning lower draft position. It would almost certainly mean no Emmitt Smith.
  • The Cowboys went on to have two more WCHB draft moments, both torpedoed at the last moment by their player of choice getting sniped.
    • During the 1990 draft, the Cowboys had a deal in principle with the Kansas City Chiefs to trade up to the 13th pick, contingent on Baylor LB James Francis being available. Cincinnati nabbed him with the 12th pick - with Dallas GM Tex Schramm on the phone with Francis. Dallas then enacted a trade with Pittsburgh to move up to 17 and draft Plan B: Florida RB Emmitt Smith. Francis was a good-not-great player for the Bengals for nine seasons. Smith became the league's career leader in rushing yards, four-time All-Pro and league rushing leader, league MVP in 1993 and one of the most important players on three Super Bowl champion teams, culminating in Hall of Fame election in 2010. And even then, had Coach and de facto GM Jimmy Johnson not spent that draft's first rounder in the previous Supplemental Draft^note Johnson wasn't confident in quarterback Troy Aikman, then in his second season. So he used the 1990 first rounder - which would've been #1 overall - on his former college QB, U. of Miami's Steve Walsh. Walsh was unable to unseat Aikman as starter, and spent the rest of his career as a journeyman backup, the Cowboys still pass on Smith, likely drafting Johnson's most coveted player: USC linebacker (and fellow future Hall of Famer) Junior Seau.
    • During the 1994 draft, Dallas had a deal to trade disgruntled receiver Alvin Harper to the St. Louis Rams in exchange for the #5 overall pick. The deal was contingent on Dallas' target — USC linebacker Willie McGinest — being available. Otherwise the deal was off. McGinest was picked by the New England Patriots at #4, going on to two Pro Bowls and being one of the veteran leaders in the Patriots' first three championships under Bill Belichick. At their normal slot at #23, Dallas went on to draft Arizona State DE Shante Carver, who would prove to be a bust (lasting four seasons in the league and being most notable for his drug suspensions). The Rams traded out of the first round and addressed their receiver need in the second, taking Memphis' Issac Bruce, who went on to have the best career of the three, entering the Hall of Fame in 2020.
• Another NFL Draft related "WCHB" moment: In 1983; the then-Los Angeles Raiders entered discussions about a potential three-way trade with the then-Baltimore Colts and Chicago Bears in which the Colts would get underachieving quarterback Marc Wilson; the Raiders' top pick and the higher of Chicago's 2 first round picks (which the Raiders would get in exchange for trading defensive end Howie Long to the Windy City) and Los Angeles would get the #1 overall pick (with the consensus top player in the draft being Stanford quarterback John Elway). For unknown reasons^note Raiders owner Al Davis, naturally, accused NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle of killing the deal as payback for going around Rozelle when Davis moved the Raiders from Oakland. Outgoing Chicago Bears general manager Jim Finks, meanwhile, felt Davis got cold feet when it was determined the Raiders could not afford to lose Long.; the deal fell through^note Baltimore - despite Elway's repeated refusal to play for the Colts - drafted Elway, ultimately sending him to Denver in exchange for the Broncos' top pick, used on guard Chris Hinton along with Bronco quarterback Mark Herrmann and a 1984 draft pick used on guard Ron Solt. Chicago, still with 2 first-round picks, took offensive tackle Jimbo Covert with the pick that would have been surrendered for Howie Long (the other first-round pick was used on receiver Willie Gault). The "Silver and Black" kept Wilson, who stayed around until 1987 but was largely a disappointment, and used their top pick on center Don Mosebar, a solid contributor for the next decade.; though some still wonder what would have happened with John Elway as quarterback for the Raiders for the next decade or defensive end Howie Long teamed alongside Hall of Fame Bear defensive linemen Richard Dent and Dan Hampton.
• Colin Kaepernick, seemingly overnight, went from "Quarterback people weren't sure could play or not" to "political lightning rod", when he would turn his back during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (later modified to kneeling as a less-disrespectful compromise) morphed into a protest movement throughout the NFL and beyond. But would things have worked out that way in a different environment? During the 2016 offseason, Kaepernick vetoed a trade from San Francisco to Denver by refusing to take a pay cut. Kaepernick would've likely been the Broncos' starter that season, possibly beyond depending on his performance, with a much stronger offense than what he'd have in San Francisco. We'll never know how everything would've shaken out had he accepted the trade.
  • At Super Bowl XLVII, the San Francisco 49ers were trailing the Baltimore Ravens 21–6 at halftime when Kaepernick rallied the team to come back before narrowly losing 34–31 (though the second half was interrupted by a blackout for over 30 minutes). And the following year, Kaepernick once again led the team to the NFC Championship Game, where a last-minute interception against the Seattle Seahawks ended the Niners' hopes of another trip to the Super Bowl. What if he had successfully made the comeback and won Super Bowl XLVII (which would have happened had one controversial officiating call^note a Baltimore defender appeared to have illegally held a receiver, but the referee didn't throw a flag gone the other way)? What if he'd reached Super Bowl XLVIII and won that? How would that have affected how the events of 2016 and beyond played out? Would people have been able to brush off Kaepernick so easily if he'd been a Super Bowl-winning quarterback? Would some team have been willing to put the politics aside and sign him despite the controversy if he had been the quarterback who led a Super Bowl comeback for the ages (at the time, it would have been the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history) instead of being the quarterback who fell short of a title?
• Another trade WCHB: The 1999 trade that saw Mike Ditka and the New Orleans Saints trade their entire 1999 draft, plus the 2000 first rounder and picks in 2001, to Washington, for the chance to move up to the fifth pick and grab Texas running back Ricky Williams. However, Ditka first offered the deal to the Cincinnati Bengals for the #3 pick. The Bengals turned them down, coveting Oregon QB Akili Smith too strongly. Smith turned out to be the biggest bust of the entire class. Who knows if the Bengals would have broken out of their "Bungles" era struggles earlier if they had drafted someone other than Smith and would have had a bunch of other picks to utilize.
• Hall of Fame QB Dan Marino, widely considered the "best QB to never win a Super Bowl", was involved with two WCHB scenarios at both the very start and very end of his career which could have changed NFL history. To note:
  • At the start of his career, Marino, a Pittsburgh native and then-quarterback for the University of Pittsburgh, almost had his hometown Steelers draft him to replace the aging Terry Bradshaw. However, he was passed over for DT Gabriel Rivera, who the Steelers selected #21 overall. Rivera was one of the most athletic defensive linemen available in the draft, drawing a comparison from Steelers coach Chuck Noll to former Steeler "Mean Joe" Greene. Despite this, Steelers fans were torn on the pick, as they preferred the hometown hero Marino. Rivera played well, notching two sacks in his first six games, however, while driving drunk, he was involved in a car accident which left him paralyzed, ending his career. Marino, selected 27th by Miami, went on to a Hall of Fame career while the Steelers went into their longest period of decline since the merger, making the playoffs just three times over the next nine seasons until Noll's retirement. Years later, Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, who was an assistant on the Steelers at the time, stated that the team really did want Marino, but Noll wanted to avoid an awkward QB transition with Bradshaw still on the team and made the call to pass on him. The Steelers' regret from passing on Marino influenced their choice of selecting UPitt's Kenny Pickett as their new QB following Ben Roethlisberger's retirement in 2022.
    • And as a corollary to this...what if Rivera had done the responsible thing and called a cab that night? Would "Señor Sack" have become the next "Mean Joe" Greene like Noll was hoping, creating the nucleus of another dominant Steelers defense? Or would the Steelers have declined even with his services?
  • At the very end of his playing career, Marino received an offer from the Minnesota Vikings to be their starting quarterback. The Vikings were coming off of a playoff season and were not yet ready to give the starting job to the untested second-year Daunte Culpepper after losing former starter Jeff George in free agency. The Vikings at the time had future Hall of Fame receivers Cris Carter and Randy Moss, along with Pro Bowl running back Robert Smith which would give Marino some excellent weapons to work with. Marino seriously considered the offer, but turned it down citing injuries to his legs, along with his longtime loyalty to the Miami Dolphins and decided to retire as a Dolphin. Had he decided to take the offer, Marino would have had perhaps the best opportunity of his career to shed the infamous "best QB to never win a Super Bowl" title along with the Vikings their best shot of winning a Super Bowl.
• Tony Romo, holder of many of the Dallas Cowboys career passing records, including passing yards and passing touchdowns, originally signed with Dallas as an undrafted free agent out of the obscure Eastern Illinois University. He was recruited to Dallas where a fellow Eastern Illinois alum, Sean Payton, served as offensive coordinator. A few years later, Payton, upon becoming the head coach of the New Orleans Saints, attempted to trade for Romo. The Cowboys demanded greater compensation (a 2nd round pick) than what the Saints were offering (a 3rd round pick), so the Saints backed out. Had they traded for Romo, it's possible that they never would have signed Drew Brees, which would have not only changed the fortunes of both franchises, but quite possibly the entire league for the decade which followed. (Romo and the Cowboys would have some great seasons, but would always Fizzle Out in the postseason, while Brees would go on to become one of the NFL's all-time passing leaders in addition to winning Super Bowl XLIV.)
• Greg Cook was a star college QB drafted 5th overall by the Bengals in 1969, notable for his large size relative to the era (6'4", 220^*metric: 1.93 m, 100 kg) and his powerful arm. He set numerous rookie passing records, including a few which still stand to this day (including records for yards per attempt and yards per completion). However, he tore his rotator cuff and further damaged it by playing through the injury. A botched surgery ended his career, forcing the Bengals to turn to Virgil Carter, a middling career backup from BYU. Carter was much smaller (6'1", ~190^*metric: 1.85 m, 86 kg) and lacked Cook's arm strength, but was more mobile and an accurate passer. To compensate for Carter's differing skillset, the Bengals offensive coordinator devised a scheme based around a short, lateral passing attack, allowing receivers to pick up yards-after-catch and using Carter's mobility to roll out of the pocket for deeper pass attempts. That coordinator's name? Bill Walsh. The scheme he devised? The West Coast Offense. Walsh later expanded on this system as head coach of 49ers, led San Francisco to four Super Bowls, and created one of the most influential coaching trees in the history of football. With a healthy Cook, there would be much less need for a short passing game and NFL history would look much different.
• For Greg Cook, read Bert Jones. For three years Bert - the Ruston Rifle - posted excellent figures for the Baltimore Colts in the mid '70s. But he was always battling shoulder trouble, and surgery at that time only provided a temporary respite from pain and discomfort. Finally, he broke down completely, and had to retire young. But if surgery had been better and Jones had, for example, managed to post a Super Bowl in the early 80's, would then Robert Irsay have decamped with the U-Haul trucks to Indianapolis? More pertinently for Jones himself, would we now be toasting him as one of the best QB's of all time? ^note  To be totally fair, Bert did have a couple of half decent seasons after the injury, but he admitted that he was never quite right.
• The 1985 Draft made the Supplemental Draft (held since 1977 for players ineligible for various reasons for the regular draft) more important than it had been before or since. With the Buffalo Bills locked in on Virginia Tech defensive end Bruce Smith with the #1 pick, all eyes turned to the Houston Oilers at #2. It was assumed that the pick would be U. of Miami quarterback Bernie Kosar - whether Houston made the pick or traded it. But two weeks before draft there were two incompatible trades announced: Houston traded the #2 pick to the Minnesota Vikings. But the Cleveland Browns announced they had traded with Buffalo for the #1 pick in the supplemental draft, having convinced Kosar (a native of Youngstown, OH) to hold off on declaring for the draft enough to make him ineligible for the regular draft, but eligible for the Supplemental (held a month after the regular draft).^note Taking advantage of an NFL rule that stated a player could be eligible after two years in college, as long as they had graduated first When the Oilers and Vikings protested, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle left the choice to Kosar, who chose to go with the Supplemental draft. Without the eligibility loophole, the Oilers/Vikings trade likely goes through and Kosar ends up in Minnesota, likely spending that first season backing up veteran Tommy Kramer. The next year, the NFL changed the Supplemental Draft rules to the current half-blind auction/half-waiver claim system^note Teams now bid a draft pick from the subsequent year's draft to claim a player, higher round wins. If multiple teams bid the same value draft pick (if three teams all bid a second round pick for a player), the team with the worse record/better draft position won, making the Browns/Bills deal impossible going forward.
• After the Alliance of American Football (AAF) went under near the end of its only regular season, there was one question asked by some - what would have happened had it stayed afloat? Would it have possibly made for good competition against the incoming revival of the XFL in 2020 (or even the USFL in 2022)? Could it have been able to survive the COVID-19 Pandemic that was also going to come a year later? Like the USFL and the XFL (both (major) iterations of each league), the AAF did see initial success early on (including well received innovations like multiple camera angles to quickly review plays that needed to be reviewed, contrasting the NFL's method that took many minutes to complete properly with controversies sometimes involved anyway) to the point where they almost finished up their first regular season period. However, due to mixed ideas on where the AAF wanted to go with themselves (similar to the original USFL) combined with weird ownership problems, the AAF shut down operations two weeks before their regular season concluded.
• Winter 2020 saw the revival of the XFL, which saw some modest early success in attendance and ratings (especially with the St. Louis Battlehawks (who were considered the replacement of the Rams from the NFL for the people in St. Louis at the time) and Houston Roughnecks (who went undefeated in 2020) franchises) and some well received innovations such as its new and improved kickoff format. As the COVID-19 Pandemic grew worse in the winter and early spring of 2020, the league had its season cut short (cutting the season five weeks into the season by the pandemic as opposed to the AAF cutting things eight weeks in), ultimately suspending operations in April of that year. Much like the Alliance of American Football the year prior (who also saw promising success early on, especially with certain teams like the Orlando Apollos, San Antonio Commanders, Arizona Hotshots, and San Diego Fleet), this immediately sparked questions of what would have happened if the league had survived against it.^note Unlike the AAF, the XFL actually honored their contracts and paid everyone like they had finished the season. Contrast this to the AAF's implosion, which left players broke, stranded, and in debt. Reports of its demise proved premature, as shortly before the XFL was to have been auctioned off in bankruptcy, it was bought by a group led by none other than Dwayne Johnson himself, who revived the league in 2023 with the same number of teams (although three markets from the 2020 season were dropped, two of which were top markets in New York and Los Angeles; those three markets were replaced with markets with a team in Las Vegas and two places that held fan favorite success in the AAF that didn't also have NFL teams around in Orlando (replacing the location from nearby Tampa Bay) and San Antonio).
• A key component of the Dallas Cowboys' 1970s dynasty was their success in the NFL Draft. Hall of Fame General Manager Tex Schramm, Hall of Fame Head Coach Tom Landry, and Hall of Fame Chief Scout Gil Brandt pioneered an evaluation system that would soon after be adopted/adapted by most of the NFL (and even included a very early instance of using computer analytics to grade players). In this system, the players were ranked according to who the best players were, regardless of position. At the time, other teams would often remove players or move them down the board if they had no need for a player at that position. When the Cowboys pick came up, they were to take the player at the top of the board no matter what. During the 3rd round of the 1979 NFL Draft, this system was put to the test. The Cowboys, holding pick #76, had a quarterback at the top of their draft board. However, the team had no need for a QB at that time. They had future Hall of Famer Roger Staubach at the top of the depth chart, experienced backup Danny White behind him, and 1977 2nd round pick Glenn Carano who was considered a potential long-term replacement for Staubach. Landry made the call to pass on what would be a 4th-string quarterback and instead select TE Doug Cosbie. That QB would be selected six picks later at #82 overall by the San Francisco 49ers. His name? Joe Montana. What could have been if the Cowboys had stuck to their draft board and drafted Montana? It would most certainly mean no '80s Dynasty for the 49ers and a likely '80s Dynasty for the Cowboys (which would likely cause a massive domino effect where they don't trade Herschel Walker that jumpstarts their Dynasty in the '90s, nor likely draft Troy Aikman who would have likely replaced Montana at QB).
• Future Hall of Fame QB Drew Brees never played for the Miami Dolphins, but a pair of WCHB moments almost put him there. To note:
  • The Dolphins missed out on Brees the first time when they had the opportunity to draft him in 2001. Their own quarterback play was suspect at best after the retirement of the legendary Dan Marino (see above). Jay Fiedler, a journeyman backup was the starter and, though Miami had made the playoffs, this had more to do with their stout defense and running game. It was already apparent that Fiedler wasn't a long-term solution, but instead of taking Brees (to whom they had been heavily linked in the lead-up to the draft) at the end of the first round, they took Wisconsin cornerback Jamar Fletcher despite having two All-Pro corners on the roster already (Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain). Fletcher played in nickel and dime packages and on special teams, then was traded for a meager fifth round pick two years later as a draft bust. He would play for another five years, never becoming a starter or contributing to any team he played for in any meaningful way. Meanwhile Brees embarked on a Hall of Fame career.
  • In 2006, the Miami Dolphins under Nick Saban were coming off of a 9-7 season in which they just missed the playoffs by one game. Hoping to take the next step as a team, they decided to upgrade their QB situation where they had two main options: Sign former Chargers QB Drew Brees or trade for Vikings QB Daunte Culpepper. Both were former Pro Bowlers, but both were coming off of devastating injuries (a torn rotator cuff for Brees and multiple torn knee ligaments for Culpepper). The Dolphins medical staff evaluated both players and would not sign off on Brees, believing his injury to be career threatening. The Dolphins traded a 2nd round pick for Culpepper who was immediately inserted as the starter. However, Culpepper struggled and was benched after four games, then placed on IR due to complications from the knee injury. The Dolphins traded for Lions draft bust Joey Harrington, who wasn't much better, then ended the season with former 3rd stringer Cleo Lemon starting in mop-up duty. The Dolphins finished 6-10 and Saban quickly bailed to become the head coach at the University of Alabama, where he has to date won six national titles. Meanwhile, Drew Brees would sign with the Saints, showing that his shoulder was just fine by winning a Super Bowl and setting the NFL's all-time career passing yards record. It's quite fair to wonder WCHB if the Dolphins signed Brees instead. Would Brees have been just as effective in Miami as in New Orleans? If so, would Saban have stuck around? And how would that have changed the college football landscape in the decade-plus to follow?
• For Super Bowl XLIX, the game was considered one of the best Super Bowls ever, but it also contained one of the biggest WCHB moments one could possibly ask for. Near the end of the game, Jermaine Kearse of the Seattle Seahawks had one of the most improbable catches one could ever ask for with Patriots rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler deflecting the ball with one hand, only for Kearse to tip it to himself and then catch it while he was lying on his back. That play had them near their touchdown area with 1:05 left, with most people thinking the Seahawks were going to win it in the end. However, when the ball moved to their one-yard line with 26 left in the game, the Seahawks sought to win with a pass in the touchdown area to win... only for it to be intercepted by Malcolm Butler himself. Instead of Jermaine Kearse's play being considered one of the greatest plays of all time, it was Butler's interception that became that, with the Seahawks' pass being considered one of the worst Super Bowl plays of all time. While Seahawks fans did win their Super Bowl a year earlier by a massive blowout against Denver, many other fans still wonder how differently things would have been had Seattle just continued running the ball instead of decided to pass the ball like they did near the end of the game. If they won the game by running the ball, would Tom Brady and Bill Belichick still have managed to get the records that they got in the end for all-time Super Bowl achievements? Would the Seahawks and their Legion of Boom become the new dynasty of the NFL instead? On the other hand, if they ran the ball unsuccessfully and didn't get the touchdown (something which was more likely than many fans realize at the time), does that then have an impact on the future of the NFL? While the impact on the Patriots would probably be small (apart from the individual career of Malcolm Butler), what happens to Seattle? Does a more "heroic" defeat give the team a different outlook going into the subsequent season? Does the decision to take the ball out of Russell Wilson's hands cause the relationship between him and the team to break down that much sooner? Or does it all end up having little impact because the fact of the loss is more significant than the details in question? Any and all of these are possibilities.
• 28-3. That score has become the bane of Atlanta Falcons fans ever since Super Bowl LI came and went due to the infamy caused by it, with many other fans lamenting it for what it represents with Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the New England Patriots winning yet another Super Bowl in their names. However, one does wonder how much things would have changed if Atlanta either continued the aggressive way they played in the first half into the second half or at least managed to stop the Patriots from coming back sooner than they did and eventually winning the Super Bowl in overtime. Alternatively, similar to the 2022 AFC playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, how differently would the game have been if both teams had been given a chance to possess the ball in overtime (a rule change that was put in place for the postseason after the aforementioned 2022 game), rather than the existing system that gave one team (the Patriots, in this case) a massive advantage pretty much by random chance?
• During the 2018 offseason, Raiders pass rushing linebacker and former Defensive Player of the Year Khalil Mack was entering what would be the final year of his rookie contract and staged a holdout, seeking a new contract which would make him the highest paid defensive player in football. The Raiders were unwilling to offer him such a contract (and according to some sources, could not, as the team was cash-strapped after giving $100 million + deals to QB Derek Carr and head coach Jon Gruden). Reluctantly, the team listened to trade offers for Mack. Many teams were interested, but the two best offers reportedly came from the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers, two hated rivals in the NFC North division. The Bears offered two first round picks (2019 and 2020), a third round pick (2020), and a sixth round pick (2019). The Packers reportedly offered even more, but the Raiders decided to accept the Bears offer believing that the Bears first round picks would be higher (as the Bears had been a bottom 5-10 team in the league for several years prior while the Packers were a playoff contender). In large part thanks to Mack (who had a great year and placed 2nd in Defensive Player of the Year voting), the Bears went 12–4 and made the playoffs. The Packers meanwhile struggled, with QB Aaron Rodgers injuring his knee in the first game of the season (against the Bears) and having a down year while playing through the injury. The Packers also uncharacteristically fired their head coach in-season as well, finishing 6–9–1 (and a first round draft pick over 10 picks higher than the Bears). If the Raiders had accepted the Packers offer instead, how would the fortunes of all three teams have changed?
  • Ironically, a similar situation played out with two of the same teams to opposite effect in 2022 with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chase Claypool. Both Green Bay and Chicago offered a second-round pick for Claypool, but the Steelers chose the Bears' offer on the same theory (that it was likely to be higher). Unlike the Raiders, the Steelers ended up being right; Chicago couldn't get right and finished with the worst record in the league, making their pick #32 overall (due to the Miami Dolphins being stripped of their first-round pick for tampering), while the Packers had a late season surge and fell to the middle of the round, making their second-round pick #45. Claypool ended up being such a flop (and locker room problem) in Chicago that the Bears traded him away for a late-round pick swap less than a year later. On the other side of the coin, the Steelers used the #32 pick on standout corner (and Steelers legacy player) Joey Porter Jr.; the Packers, for their part, used the #45 pick to trade down and draft WR Jayden Reed, as well as picking up two additional picks that became WR Dontayvion Wicks and DE Karl Brooks, all three of whom ended up being near-instant impact players. While Steelers and Packers fans are thanking their lucky stars that this timeline will only ever be a hypothetical^note while it's possible that Claypool would have been more successful with the Packers (team factors do affect players' performances, after all), it's also equally possible that he would have still been a flop and the Packers would have ended up in the Bears' shoes of giving up a second-round pick with little to show for it, Bears fans are left to wonder what might have been had they not made the trade and held onto their second-round pick, giving them a chance to pick Porter or any of several other solid players who went early in the second, or, if they preferred, to make another lucrative trade to go with the one they made for the first overall pick and pick up even more picks (Pittsburgh reportedly had multiple offers to trade out of #32, but chose not to because they badly wanted Porter and feared he'd be gone if they waited).
• The 2020 and 2021 NFL Drafts were both impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic and likely would have been much different under normal circumstances. To note:
  • While the 2020 Draft itself was held virtually without significant issue after the original plan of hosting it in Las Vegas (in part to celebrate the Raiders moving from Oakland to Las Vegas at the time) was no longer seen as viable for the NFL (though they ultimately got their make-up date two years later), teams were unable to evaluate players during individual workouts, during on-premises interviews, and, perhaps most significantly, by their own team medical staffs. Players coming off of significant injuries, in general, fell further in the draft compared to historical draft classes. Would, for example, Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa (who was coming off a serious hip injury at the time) have been available to the Dolphins at the #5 pick if teams had been able to clear him medically before the draft? Meanwhile, Clemson WR Tee Higgins and Utah CB Jaylon Johnson (a future All-Pro) were both projected 1st round picks before undergoing offseason surgeries, later falling into the 2nd round (to the Bengals and Bears, respectively). Finally, many later round prospects were denied their usual chance to improve their draft stock with workouts and on-premises interviews. How would this draft class have differed under normal circumstances?
  • The 2021 Draft took place in Cleveland, but it was after a truncated FBS college football season in which many prospects "opted out" of playing. Even worse, the lower divisions, including the Ivy League and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), either canceled their 2020 seasons or postponed them into the spring of 2021. As such, outside of a few notable exceptions, far fewer small school players were selected than in a normal year. No Ivy League or HBCU players were selected at all, leading to some significant blowback from coaches, alums, and fans of the latter especially.
• During the 1991 NFL Draft, Jets assistant GM Ron Wolf was impressed with a little known quarterback from Southern Miss named Brett Favre. He convinced the team to draft select him with their second round pick, but they were beaten to the punch by the Atlanta Falcons who held the pick just before them. After Favre spent his first season with Atlanta clashing with the coaching staff (who did not see his potential), Wolf, now the GM for the Green Bay Packers, acquired him in a trade and Favre went on to have a Hall of Fame career. Would he have been able to do the same for the Jets had Atlanta not ruined their plan or Atlanta if they had given him a fair shot?
• Following the death of Chicago Bears founder and owner George "Papa Bear" Halas Sr. in 1983, the team was passed down to his daughter Virginia Halas McCaskey and her sons, who have been criticized for their leadership of the team. However, this was not George's original succession plan. He intended for the team to be passed down to his son George "Mugsy" Halas Jr., who he had been grooming to take over for decades and was well liked throughout the organization for his friendliness and strong football acumen. Tragically, Mugsy suffered a sudden heart attack and died in 1979, four years before his father's passing. As such, George Sr. had no choice but to give the team to his daughter as she was his only other child. Many Bears fans, former players, and employees believe that if George Jr. had lived to inherit the team, the team would have seen more modern-day success than they have in the recent decades of mismanagement by the McCaskeys.
• In the 2017 draft, the Chicago Bears traded up one spot to draft QB Mitchell Trubisky at #2 overall, eight picks before Patrick Mahomes was selected at #10 overall by the Kansas City Chiefs, which has led many a Bears fan to wonder what could have been if their team drafted Mahomes instead.^note Initially, a similar conversation was focused around Deshaun Watson, who was taken two picks after Mahomes, was nearly as good a player, and, as a more "pro-ready" player coming out of the draft, seemed to many to be a better fit for a Bears team that didn't have the infrastructure in place to develop a "project" QB; however, this has mostly died down due to Watson's off-the-field scandals, as it now seems Chicago probably dodged a bullet by not drafting him. On one hand, they could have been the ones to enjoy the success that Mahomes instead brought to the Chiefs; on the other hand, Mahomes was something of a raw, unpolished prospect coming out of college, and there's an argument to be made that the roles played by Andy Reid and Alex Smith were a key part of Mahomes' development, and if that's the case, then it's more likely than not that Mahomes would have failed to reach his ceiling in Chicago, rather than being the franchise-changing star some Bears fans imagine him being in that scenario.
  • Another potential scenario is that the Bears hold off on drafting a QB altogether in 2017 and instead wait to take a shot at one of the quarterbacks in the loaded 2018 draft — but while this could have landed them Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, it could also just as easily have resulted in them ending up with Sam Darnold or Josh Rosen, both of whom were even bigger busts than Trubisky.
• The Jimmy Garoppolo trade to the San Francisco 49ers is a big one for the New England Patriots, was almost the Tom Brady trade given that it was a pivotal decision where there were strong opinions on both sides. Garoppolo was drafted by the Patriots in the second round of the 2014 draft as the heir-apparent to Tom Brady, but ahead of the 2017 season (the final season of Garoppolo's rookie deal), Brady was showing no signs of slowing down, while Garoppolo made it clear he would not accept a contract extension that would keep him as an indefinite backup to Brady. The Patriots were then faced with a critical choice that would shape the future of the franchise: would they let Garoppolo go and keep Brady as the starter for the foreseeable future, or would they trade Brady after 2017 in order to hand the starting job to Garoppolo? Head coach Bill Belichick, who usually gets to make the calls in personnel decisions, wanted to do the latter (as later revealed in interviews, Belichick was willing to send Brady to his hometown 49ers to honor his lifelong dream of playing for them), believing that Garoppolo was good enough to take the reins and that the long-term stability that Garoppolo (nearly 15 years younger than Brady) offered was worth taking the risk, but team owner Robert Kraft overruled Belichick and subsequently forced him to trade Garoppolo to the 49ers as a further show of commitment to Brady (and because it allowed them to get something in return as opposed to losing him for nothing in free agency). Brady won one more Super Bowl with the Patriots, but ended up leaving the team just two years later to sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (where he would win his record 7th and final Super Bowl), which led to a dismal 2020 season and only middling success ever since for the Patriots; meanwhile, Garoppolo took the 49ers to Super Bowl LIV and the 2021 conference championship, but also missed significant time in 2018, 2020, and 2022 with injuries, leading to something of a roller-coaster trajectory for the 49ers, and this ultimately led to him being released ahead of the 2023 season, landing with the Las Vegas Raiders (also for one season, despite him signing a three-year deal) before the Raiders would cut him loose. In the years since, the hypothetical alternate reality where Belichick got his way in 2017 has been a topic of discussion among NFL fans. Would the Patriots still be an AFC powerhouse if they'd had the smoother transition, or would they have been the ones dealing with a perpetually-injured quarterback while watching Brady succeed with the 49ers? Keeping Garoppolo also likely means no Mac Jones (although the 49ers ironically drafted Garoppolo's intended successor, Trey Lance, in the same draft where the Patriots took Jones, so the possibility isn't completely nonexistent), but given his sharp decline after a solid rookie year, Patriots fans would probably be okay with that tradeoff. Meanwhile, assuming Brady did in fact end up with the 49ers, what happens with the 49ers if their quarterback is Brady rather than Garoppolo, and how does that impact other teams?
  • Of particular note as far as the impacts on other teams is the Kansas City Chiefs, as they have three straight years (2018-2020) where the outcome of their season was intertwined with some aspect of this hypothetical: they lost to Brady and the Patriots in the 2018 AFC Championship, beat the 49ers with Garoppolo in Super Bowl LIV, and then lost to Brady and the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. On one hand, they might not win their first Super Bowl in the modern era if Brady was under center for the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, but they also potentially make it to the Super Bowl a year sooner if the 2018 Patriots didn't have Brady in the AFC Championship (which the Chiefs only barely lost even with Brady on the other side). As for the 2020 season, Tampa Bay probably isn't in the Super Bowl in the first place if they don't have Brady, so the Chiefs would face some other team, with the Saints and Packers (both of whom were eliminated by the Buccaneers in the postseason) the most likely candidates — but then, if Brady is with the 49ers (and stays healthy like Garoppolo couldn't), the Brady-led 49ers are right in that mix as well.
  • The Miami Dolphins are another team that would likely feel the impact of this alternate history, as a 49ers team with Brady probably doesn't make the massive trade-up for Trey Lance in the 2021 draft, meaning the Dolphins don't get the haul of picks they've used to shape their roster in the years since.
  • Speaking of the 49ers, this wasn't the first nor the last time that they missed out on getting Brady. They had multiple chances to draft the hometown QB in either the first, second or third rounds of the 2000 NFL Draft, but made the mistake of passing up on him on all picks they had (since they still had an aging Steve Young at the time in which he was entering his final season before the infamous concussion that ended his career), before he would end up with the Patriots at pick 199. But what if the 49ers had drafted Brady earlier and had him learn from Steve Young (who had learned from Brady's idol Montana)? It would definitely mean no Patriots Dynasty, but a likely second 49ers Dynasty with Brady which would have had ripple effects across the NFL.
  • Shortly after his final retirement became official, the 49ers and head coach Kyle Shanahan weren't fully on board handing the QB keys over to the untested Brock Purdy just yet (who was the final pick of the 2022 Draft and was just coming off a surprise run to the NFC Championship game with Purdy after succeeding Brady's planned successor in Garoppolo), made a last ditch attempt to convince Brady to come out of retirement and play for his hometown team, while giving the promising young Purdy a mentor at QB. Brady turned them down, primarily to take a part-time ownership role with the 49ers' former Bay Area rivals Raiders (now residing in Las Vegas), while revealing that his football playing days were behind him. But what if Brady had decided that he still had it in him and to take one last shot at a record 8th Super Bowl with a stacked 49ers squad? The 49ers likely would have prevented the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes from winning their second consecutive Super Bowl and becoming a Dynasty, with Brady as the QB.
• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the German Football League, one of the top leagues of American football in Europe, delayed and ultimately canceled its 2020 season. Other leagues in Europe, including the Polish league, played a 2020 season. Part of the reason the GFL had to cancel the 2020 season was that German law only allowed professional leagues to play (without people in the stands) and American football failed to attain that designation for a long while. What if it had? And then after the 2020 not-season, which (due to the financial strain imposed on many teams) led to the withdrawal of several teams from the GFL1 Patrick Esume (of Ran NFL fame) and company announced a new competition for summer 2021, the "European League of Football". That league disrupted the landscape of football in Germany by poaching nigh-complete rosters in Frankfurt or Stuttgart (leading to disastrous 2021 GFL seasons for the respective teams), convincing serial Polish champion Wroclaw Panthers to jump ship to the new league and through the mere act of negotiating with the teams in Ingolstadt and Hildesheim forcing them to withdraw their teams from the 2021 GFL even though negotiations with the ELF fell thru. What if COVID-19 hadn't disrupted the 2020 GFL season? What if Ingolstadt and Hildesheim had become ELF members instead of their last second replacements? What if the initial Berlin-based ownership group around Roman Motzkus (another Ran NFL alum and former player for the Berlin Adler of the GFL) had managed to get an agreement with Esume and Co.? What if Esume's attempt had failed to get the favorable TV deal with his employer, Pro7/Sat1 Group? What if the attempt to buy the naming rights to the old NFL Europe teams (defunct since 2007) in Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin and Barcelona had not worked out?
  • On the GFL side, serial champion New Yorker Lions (a sponsorship name for the Braunschweig based team) had to contend with Lower Saxony's at the time pretty drastic COVID-19 restrictions and got the least amount of preseason practice being unable to assemble much of a team and get them to work coherently as a unit. As the season for the Lions started badly (they snapped an undefeated streak dating to 2018 early on and failed to win games that would have been considered sure things in other seasons) they also brought in a bunch of additional players halfway through the season which improved roster depth and quality at the expense of team cohesion. The Lions finished fourth in the regular season (the last time they hadn't won their division had been in 2012) and had to go on the road to Schwäbisch Hall (undefeated throughout the regular season) for the quarter final where they promptly lost due to an inconsistent offensive performance producing no less than five turnovers (the first a Pick Six for the opening points of the game in their first possession which had already begun with a sack). What if Braunschweig had had more opportunities to train together? What if team cohesion could have been established in some other way? What if despite the obstacles they had gotten a better day against Schwäbisch Hall and the QB hadn't thrown that many picks?
• During the 2003 offseason, the Pittsburgh Steelers reached a verbal agreement with free agent safety Dexter Jackson, who had just won MVP of Super Bowl XXXVII with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. However, Jackson reneged on the agreement and instead signed a deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Still seeking help at safety, the Steelers used their first round pick in the 2003 draft on future Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu. Jackson, meanwhile, was a free agent bust with the Cardinals and was released after a single season before returning to Tampa. What could have been if Jackson had signed with Pittsburgh instead?
• In one the craziest, most unlikely WCHB scenarios at hand, one notion stands firm with Chargers fans on January 9, 2022: what if the Chargers did not call a timeout with 38 seconds left in the game and just finished Week 18 with a tie? Unusual question, yes, but not without merit; both the Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens lost their Week 18 games (the former to the worst team of the league that season in the Jacksonville Jaguars) and the Pittsburgh Steelers won their Week 18 game (in overtime), meaning both teams would have been okay with playing for a tie in the end due to them holding tiebreakers over the Steelers (who tied a game earlier that season against Detroit) that season. While it looked like Las Vegas was going to run away with the final spot, the Chargers had a raging comeback in the fourth quarter to send the game into overtime, to the point where both teams would have been okay with accepting a tie in that very scenario. Unfortunately for Los Angeles Chargers fans, head coach Brandon Staley called a timeout near the end of the game due to a fear that the Raiders were going to run the ball instead of knell down and accept a tie for both teams like what Las Vegas initially planned on doing at that time. Once the timeout changed fate, Las Vegas went into prime position for a game-winning field goal that got them and the Steelers in the playoffs instead of them and the Chargers. While the blow got dampened a bit due to both the Raiders and the Steelers losing to the Bengals and the Chiefs respectively (with both teams eventually competing against each other in the AFC Championship), Chargers fans still wonder if they would have fared a lot better had they just accepted the tie like Las Vegas initially planned late in the game and not called that late timeout in overtime.
• The 1984 "NFL Draft of USFL and CFL Players" was a one-of-a-kind event where NFL teams could select players who would have been eligible for the 1984 NFL Draft but who had already signed contracts with the rivaling USFL and CFL (using the same order as the '84 draft). The goal was to prevent true free agency of the players and a bidding war among NFL teams should the USFL fold (which it did two years later in 1986). The top four picks in particular are a fascinating study for NFL fans when it comes to "WCHB" scenarios, as three had Hall of Fame NFL careers. To note:
  • The woeful Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected future Hall of Fame QB Steve Young #1 overall...who was a miserable 3-16 as starter with the Bucs and only played his best football once he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers. What if the Bucs had taken a different player? And if they did, what would have happened to Young if he had gone to one of the other teams holding high picks? Or what if the Bucs had stuck with Young even after his rookie struggles, instead of trading him? Would he have still developed into a star, or would the lack of talent around him in Tampa Bay have doomed him to mediocrity at best? And if he wasn't traded to the 49ers, who would've been Joe Montana's successor instead?
  • The Houston Oilers took former Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mike Rozier with the #2 overall pick, but he only made a single Pro Bowl in a rather lackluster career. What if they had taken someone else? Would Rozier have had greater NFL success with a different team as well?
  • The New York Giants held the #3 overall pick and selected future Hall of Fame guard Gary Zimmerman... who, like Young, only reached his full potential after he was traded to the Minnesota Vikings. The other player they were strongly considering with the pick was another Hall of Famer who went #4 overall to the rival Philadelphia Eagles - defensive lineman Reggie White. At the time, the Giants had Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor and the two are often considered the two greatest defensive players in NFL history. What would the next decade have looked like for the Giants, who won two Super Bowls even without White, if they had selected him to pair with Taylor instead?
  • White himself would launch a great career with the Eagles, but their lack of team success caused him to seek greener pastures elsewhere and became the biggest name to change teams when the league introduced free agency in 1993. White signed with the Green Bay Packers as part of the NFL's inaugural free agency class, helping them to a Super Bowl win three years later. Would the Packers, who were in their "NFL Siberia" period with only four winning seasons in the two decades prior, have still reached those levels of success without him?
    • For that matter, White himself was a major catalyst behind the introduction of free agency due to his desire to leave the struggling Eagles, as he actually sued the NFL to get control over his future. If he'd been on a successful Giants team with no desire to leave, he probably never takes up the cause, and then what happens to the future of NFL free agency in general? More likely than not, someone would have done what White did eventually, but who knows how much longer it would have been before that happened, and the impact that that would have on various teams?
• The 2003 NFL Draft is notable for having one of the biggest draft blunders in the history of the event. The Vikings, holding the #7 overall pick, were in discussion with the Ravens who were looking to trade up for Marshall QB Byron Leftwich. However, the discussion ran long and their time expired, allowing the teams picking after the Vikings to skip them. The Jaguars, holding the #8 pick, rushed up and selected Leftwich, killing the trade. The Panthers then picked future Pro Bowl OT Jordan Gross, with the Vikings finally selecting future Pro Bowl DT Kevin Williams with the now #9 pick. Leftwich had a promising start to his career in Jacksonville, achieving a winning record as starter, but injuries ultimately derailed his career. The Ravens, at pick #10, instead chose future Defensive Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, multi-time Pro Bowler and All-Pro, and winner of two Super Bowls DE Terrell Suggs. (The Ravens would use a later first round pick on notable draft bust QB Kyle Boller.) What would have happened to all of the franchises and players involved had the trade gone though? Would Leftwich have avoided the injuries in Baltimore? Would Suggs have still had a great career elsewhere?
• One immediate instance of this nearing the end of the 2022-23 season revolved around what happened on Week 17 between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals. Two Super Bowl contending teams were hoping to potentially compete for the #1 seed for the entire AFC that year instead had what was initially looking like a fun game verging on all-time classic (at least as far as the Bengals' lead of 7-3 at the time was concerned) immediately turn for the worst with Bills safety Damar Hamlin tackling Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins. After the tackle occurred with 5:58 left in the first quarter, Hamlin unexpectedly collapsed on the field and had to be given CPR, APD, and other similar treatments by Bills trainer Denny Kellington and other medical staff for nearly 10 straight minutes before being rushed to the nearby hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Hamlin would thankfully regain consciousness and not only leave the hospital alive a week later, but also received huge support for his toy drive campaign that he had initially began back in 2020 while he was out unconscious. However, the NFL initially wanted the Bills and Bengals to continue playing the game, to the point where they were willing to give both teams a five minute break before allowing the game to continue like nothing bad had happened, which was a tough sell to either team since they both worried that a player had unexpectedly died that night because of said game happening. Ultimately, the NFL eventually decided to postpone the game, later cancelling it outright without any planned rescheduling occurring for it due to it happening so late into the season (i.e., literally the last regular season game of the season if this were before 2020). This was the only time in modern-day NFL history that a game that was initially scheduled for play got cancelled without any rescheduling done.^note For reference, a scary concussion movement by Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (which was suggested to be the second concussion-related incident with him in a week's time) against the Cincinnati Bengals earlier in the season, oddly enough, still left the NFL continuing the game without any problems on their end (albeit with more criticisms toward the Dolphins for their treatment with Tua than toward the NFL in general in that case), although admittedly Tua's injury wasn't quite on the same level as Hamlin's. As such, this ultimately gave the Kansas City Chiefs the #1 seed due to the unfortunate circumstances at hand revolving around both teams not having a proper chance to prove they deserved the #1 seed in the end, primarily the Buffalo Bills since they would have regained the #1 seed had they won the Week 17 game against the Bengals. Admittedly, this situation did lead to a unique scenario where if the Bills met in the AFC championship game against the Chiefs, the NFL would schedule a neutral field of choice for the Bills & Chiefs to compete against each other for the right to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl that season. This was ultimately rendered irrelevant in the end as the Bills failed to advance past the divisional round (losing to, ironically enough, the Bengals) and the Chiefs won another Super Bowl, but one still has to wonder what might have been had this unfortunate incident with Damar Hamlin never happened in the first place (or at the very least happened earlier in the season than it did).
  • One also has to wonder if the trauma of the event affected the Bills, given the way in which the team unexpectedly unraveled in the divisional round and that some of the players later admitted they were emotionally drained and "out of gas" by the time the game came around due to not having a chance to really recover from the trauma of Hamlin's injury. If the Bills hadn't been battling the additional emotional weight on top of all the regular burdens of an NFL season, could they have beaten the Bengals in the divisional round and then the Chiefs in the AFC championship, thereby making it to their first Super Bowl in the 21st century? Could they have beaten the Eagles to finally win one for Buffalo?
  • Going along with the previous point, if Buffalo had won just one more game over the course of the season, it's likely that they would have been awarded the #1 seed and the first-round bye (Buffalo owned the head-to-head tiebreaker over Kansas City), which might have actually given them a chance to recover somewhat and regroup to attack the playoffs, rather than having to play on Wild Card Weekend. This in turn makes several moments earlier in the season WCHB moments in retrospect: in particular, the team's Week 4 game against the Miami Dolphins^note in which the Bills nearly got in position to kick a game-winning field goal but ended up losing due to clock mismanagement and their Week 10 game against the Minnesota Vikings^note in which they committed several errors at key moments that ultimately led to a loss in a very close game, as the Bills had solid chances to win both games but ultimately couldn't capitalize.
• During the 1966 offseason, the Cleveland Browns gave star player Jim Brown the green light to shoot a movie (The Dirty Dozen). When shooting ran long and threatened to keep Brown off the field at least through the preseason, team owner Art Modell threatened Brown with fines and suspensions if he didn't immediately leave the movie set and report to camp. Brown responded to this ultimatum by holding a press conference to announce his retirement from the NFL. If Modell had shown the patience a modern owner would have if a star player were shooting a movie, Brown plays the 1966 season (which he had previously stated might be his last). Who knows how the 1966 season would've gone for Cleveland if they had Brown (without him, they went 9-5, second in the NFL's Eastern division). Perhaps Brown could've been convinced to play beyond the 1966 season if Modell hadn't drawn such a hard line in the sand.
• Many wonder would have happened had the Miami Dolphins chosen to go to the newly created AFC South instead of Indianapolis Colts in the 2002 realignment. For starters, Manning vs. Brady would have been a divisional rivalry with more entries instead of just 17 times in almost 20 years.
  • This would also mean that the rivalry between the Patriots and the Dolphins never develops — a rivalry that proved surprisingly interesting as the Dolphins often seemed to have the Patriots' number even when, by all statistical measures, New England was the far better team, and it was this rivalry that ultimately spelled the end of the Patriots' dynasty when, in 2019, the four-win Dolphins handed the playoff-bound Patriots a shocking defeat in the final game of the regular season that ultimately cost New England a first-round bye. The Patriots would be eliminated in the first round in what would end up being Tom Brady's final game with the team. If Miami wasn't in their division, could the Patriots have had one more Super Bowl in the Brady era — or, even more significantly, is it possible Brady chooses to stay in New England if their season doesn't end in such miserable fashion?
• One that will long haunt Green Bay Packers fans: what if LT David Bakhtiari didn't blow out his knee in practice late in the 2020 season? Bakhtiari was putting together a first-team All-Pro season protecting league MVP Aaron Rodgers before going down with the injury, which not only ended his 2020 season but kept him out for nearly all of 2021 as well. The Packers won their first playoff game — a divisional round matchup against the LA Rams — despite missing Bakhtiari (albeit with DPOY Aaron Donald limited due to an injury of his own), but lost their next two playoff games (NFCCG vs. Buccaneers, 2021 Divisional vs. 49ers) without him, both one-score losses in games where Rodgers had pressure in his face throughout, suggesting the games would have been winnable if Rodgers had had better protection.^note This also leads to a secondary "what if" regarding the offensive line configuration, as there were some questionable decisions made in how they rearragned the line to make up for Bakhtiari's absence — but of course all of that would have been moot if he hadn't been absent to begin with. The 2020 loss is particularly painful because if the Packers had won, they would have punched their ticket to Super Bowl 55 where they would have faced an injury-decimated Kansas City Chiefs team (they only put up 9 points against Tampa Bay), giving them every chance in the world to win a Lombardi; even in 2021, they would have had a solid chance if they could have gotten past the 49ers, as the rest of the slate was a team they beat handily in the regular season (Rams) and a team with a major flaw that the Packers were primed to exploit (Bengals and their weak offensive line vs. the Packers stout front seven). Many Packers fans continue to believe that the Packers could have at least one, and possibly two, more Super Bowls in the Aaron Rodgers era if David Bakhtiari's knee had been intact.
  • This one is also a WCHB for Bakhtiari as a player. Before the injury, he was seemingly on his way to earning a place in the Hall of Fame and had just signed a contract to become the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL; since the injury, he's played just 13 games in three seasons, leading to him being released by the Packers, and his future is uncertain, as while he's still as good as he ever was when he's on the field, any team that adds him to their roster will have to weigh this against the question of how often he'll actually be on the field.
  • Speaking of the Packers' 2021 playoff defeat, what if the team had hired a better special teams coach before the season, rather than give the position to Maurice Drayton who proved to be woefully unqualified? While the sloppy offensive output didn't help matters, special teams mistakes (specifically in relation to blocking) were responsible for a 10-point swing in a 3-point game. Had they had a special teams unit that was even moderately competent, they probably win the game even with all the challenges on offense.
• From 1995 (when the Rams moved to St. Louis and the Raiders returned to Oakland) to 2016 (when the Rams moved back and the Chargers moved up from San Diego), the city of Los Angeles did not have an NFL team, and there were enough proposals and false starts for the NFL to come back for Wikipedia to have an entire article dedicated to it. Part of it is still up, but here's a brief summary:
  • To start, the entire 21 year dry spell could've been averted: after the Rams left, all the other NFL team owners voted to fund a new stadium for the Raiders in Inglewood next to The Forum so that the Raiders could move out of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (which had been damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake and was too big for games to be at capacity). But the league added a stipulation to the funding contract that the Raiders had to share a stadium with another team (either relocated from another city or an expansion team), and Raiders owner Al Davis wanted to keep the team's new stadium all to himself, so when the city of Oakland gave them a lucrative offer to move back, Davis left the city behind. Had Davis been more willing to accomadate another team in that stadium, we wouldn't even have this section. ^note In a bit of irony, the land where the Raiders' new stadium would've gone ended up being used for SoFi Stadium anyways!
  • In 1996, then Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring, after complaining about the team's home of the Kingdome attempted to start the process for moving the team to Los Angeles, moving his office to the Rams' former practice space in Anaheim and attempting to negotiate a deal to play in the Rose Bowl while a new stadium would be built. Behring's actions were not only completely unsanctioned by the NFL, but came hot off the heels of the extremely controversial relocations of the Browns and the Oilers, and the league wasn't willing to let Behring go through with the move. The league told him that unless he moved back to Seattle immediately, the league would force him to pay a $500,000 fine (nearly a million in today's money) for every day he was staying in California, and Behring chose to move back rather than pay. He would eventually sell the team to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen who kept the team in Seattle.
  • In 1998, the league announced that they would start voting on a new expansion franchise, and two seperate LA businessmen attempted to strike up new stadium deals. One team led by Creative Artists Agency founder Michael Ovitz made plans for a new stadium in the suburb of Carson (which has large acres of undeveloped land and was close to downtown), while another led by real estate mogul and Lakers co-owner Edward Roski (who had previously broke the deal to build the Staples Center) made plans to renovate the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. While the new expansion franchise was awarded to Los Angeles, neither team could come to an agreement, and the city's refusal to invest taxpayer money into the new stadium set back progress. Not only that, but Memorial Coliseum was already a protected landmark by both the state and federal governments, so any attempt at "fixing" it could've been stifled by bureaucracy. After years of bickering between Ovitz and Roski, the league announced that the new expansion franchise would no longer go to Los Angeles and would instead be awarded to Houston, creating the Houston Texans
  • After the expansion franchise failed, there were many attempts at creating a new stadium to get an NFL team since the Memorial Coliseum (a protected landmark that was too big for the NFL's draconian TV rules at the time) and the Rose Bowl (another protected landmark that was way out of the way and already had a lot of problems with parking). Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt expressed interest in building a football stadium near the baseball team's park, and for years it was rumored that the stadium's parking lot was the league's ideal place for an NFL stadium. Roski returned in 2008 with a proposed new "Los Angeles Stadium" in the City of Industry, a suburb in the San Gabriel Valley just 22 miles east of Downtown, and after his proposal gained approval from all regulatory authorities, he set his sights on finding a team, either the Minnesota Vikings (who had been undergoing problems with the aging Metrodome), Jacksonville Jaguars (who play in the league's smallest media market and were mostly a forgotten joke), or the Buffalo Bills (whose owner Ralph Wilson was the oldest owner and the league, and whose stadium is often considered the worst in the league). But the Vikings got a deal for a new stadium, the Bills were forced into an ironclad lease that stopped them from relocating, and Roski's attempt to buy the Jaguars outright was rejected by then-owner Wayne Weaver. Roski put the proposal on-hold in 2011 and cancelled it outright after the Rams moved back.
  • AEG, the company that operates the Staples Center, announced a new plan to build a stadium in Downtown LA on the former site of the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Of all the failed proposals, this one got far enough to get the approval of Los Angeles City Council, a naming rights deal from Farmers Insurance and an endorsement from Magic Johnson. But again, no team was willing to make a deal, and an executive shakeup at AEG led to the departure of company president and project leader Tim Leiweke.
  • The final proposal, which was announced the same year that Rams owner Stan Kroenke purchased the land that would become SoFi Stadium, was a joint bid in Carson from the Raiders and their long time rivals the Chargers in partnership with Disney CEO Bob Iger. The league almost went with this plan over Kroenke's proposal before being convinced by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones (who was actually born in Los Angeles) to let the Rams move back, leading to the Carson proposal being abandoned. The Chargers moved back to LA anyways to play at SoFi Stadium. The Raiders kept the design for the Carson stadium, with all the Chargers elements removed and the retractable roof replaced with a dome, and used it for Allegiant Stadium when they moved to Las Vegas.

Auto Racing

• In the IndyCar series, Dan Wheldon died in a crash in the last race of the year. Before the race, he was interviewed about having a full-time ride in 2013 (eventually revealed to be with Andretti Autosport). And this was after the season in which he won the Indy 500 for the second time.
• Also, Formula One champion Ayrton Senna, killed at roughly the peak of his career driving what was one of the best cars on the circuit. Meanwhile, the rising star Michael Schumacher started to win and ultimately became the most successful F1 driver of all time. One of the biggest regrets of this sport is the loss of the duel at the top for the championship between those two champions in the mid-90s.
  • A similar story happened in the 1960s with Stirling Moss' career ending in 1962, aged 32, after a severe crash. Though Moss survived, he retired - though he later wondered if he had prematurely written off his abilities and should have waited to heal longer. Had Moss returned he would have faced Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees, and Graham Hill and possibly denied them some of their titles.
• Ayrton Senna was already a recognized talent in lower categories and tested for Williams and McLaren in 1983. However they already had signed contracts for the 1984 season thus Senna instead accepted the offer from the humble Toleman, before switching for 3 years to Lotus. McLaren and Williams would have dominated all the subsequent years from 1984 to 1993. McLaren was precisely the team with which Senna won the driver championship in 1988, 1990 and 1991, and it had won in 1984 with Niki Lauda (already a McLaren driver) and in 1985 and 1986 with Alain Prost (hired after he resigned from Renault at the end of 1983). Had Senna joined McLaren in 1984 instead of Prost, who knows what would have happened.
  • On the other hand, Williams was starting its road that ultimately led to the world championship in 1987 (and probably even the 1986 if not because of lack of luck and both drivers hindering each other), mainly thanks to the performance of the Honda engines. In 1988, Honda left Williams and passed to McLaren because the latter hired Senna (whom became Honda's favorite in 1986 while at Lotus-Honda). Williams later returned dominating from 1992 thanks to its superior development in aerodynamics and electronic devices. Who knows if Senna could have won in 1986 or 1987, and if Honda would have stayed with Williams from 1988 onward instead of supplying McLaren.
• Gilles Villeneuve died in 1982, and was in break with his team Ferrari, while also it was reported that he had contacts with McLaren, which would have become the dominant team in the following years.
• His son Jacques Villeneuve too was contacted by McLaren, at the end of 1998 to replace Coulthard, but he decided instead to go to BAR-Honda. McLaren won the 1999 championship and competed to the end in 2000, while BAR struggled to even score points.
• In 1990, Jean Alesi, then a talented young driver, signed a pre-contract with Williams-Renault. Ferrari was interested too, seeking a replacement for Nigel Mansell (who was about to retire), and made an agreement with Williams: the driver in exchange for technical data about the semiautomatic change. In 1990, Ferrari was competing for the championship while Williams was the third force. From 1991 to 1995, Ferrari struggled with poor performances, only won two races in total (one being the only victory of Jean Alesi in 1995), while Williams became the dominant team, winning in 1992 (ironically with Mansell during his last year) and 1993 way before the end of the seasons (while also winning the 1994 constructors championship and losing the drivers one by a single point).
• In 1995, there were some meetings between Michael Schumacher and representatives of McLaren-Mercedes, because the German engine supplier wanted a German driver and he also was a world champion. However, Schumacher disliked Ron Dennis, McLaren's team principal, and talks about salary were unsuccessful. He instead joined Ferrari. Schumacher, along with all his trusted technicians that he brought with him from Benetton, was the main author of Ferrari's rebirth: the team returned to compete for the championship in 1997 and ultimately won from 2000 to 2004, even dominating and setting world records. McLaren won in 1998 and 1999, mainly thanks to its chief designer Adrian Newey (who also designed the dominating Williams-Renault of previous years), but then surrendered to its rivals. One could only imagine what would have resulted if the best driver and the best designer of these years joined in the same team, along with all the skilled technician (both those already in McLaren and those who Schumacher wanted with him like Ross Brawn).
• One of the most intriguing what-ifs in Formula One's history is the McLaren-Mercedes driver selection in 2007. Ron Dennis had two options: Lewis Hamilton (2006 GP2 champion) and Gary Paffett (2005 DTM champion with F1 test driver experience). McLaren finally decided to choose Lewis Hamilton. The rest is history.
• In MotoGP: What would happen if Daijiro Kato and/or Marco Simoncelli didn't die? How much their presence would shake up the competition if they were still alive?
• Monster Jam:
  • Dennis Anderson planned a Grave Digger monster tank during the late 80s monster tank fad named "Grave Digger Wild Trax". It was never built and only T-shirt art was created.
• IndyCar has the 1996 'Split', between the established CART organisation and the Indianapolis speedway's Indy Racing League, a disastrous civil war that massively damaged the prestige of American open-wheel formula racing, the Indy 500, and probably allowed NASCAR to become much more popular than it might have done otherwise.
  • As noted below, one factor behind the Split was Jeff Gordon, a rapidly rising star who was unable to secure a ride in CART due to both money issues and an influx of European drivers. Had he been able to join CART, does the Split still occur? Does NASCAR still experience the soar in popularity that it did?
• Canada's Greg Moore was only 24 when he died in a massive crash in the last race of the 1999 CART season. He crashed after starting from the back row having missed qualifying because he had fractured a bone in his hand when a car knocked him off his scooter in the garage area. Had he fallen harder he would have been ruled out of race entirely; without the incident he likely would have started near the front. Moore had already signed to drive for Penske Racing in 2000. The vacant seat went to Hélio Castroneves instead, who earned three of his four Indy 500 wins for the team. Had Moore survived he might also have gone to Penske's NASCAR team given his oval track prowess or even ended up in F1 as several teams had him on their radar.
• What if Danica Patrick stayed in open-wheel racing (Where she finished third at the 2009 Indy 500, the highest such finish for a woman), instead of jumping to stock car racing (where, due to her notoriety, she was pushed through to NASCAR after only a few races on the ARCA and Nationwide Series. Where she was considered an up-and-comer and future star for IndyCar or even possibly Formula One, she never finished higher than 10th in any stock car race, never finished in the top 20 in the Sprint Cup Championship and became far more known for her race-ending crashes than any successes. Even her harshest critics thought she would've done better in stock car racing had she brought up through the lower levels, rather than pushed to the top tier (Where she seemed to be in over her head).

NASCAR

• One has to wonder how much different mid-Sixties Grand National racing might have been if Curtis Turner, the legendary racer/bootlegger/timber speculator/party animal, hadn't been banned from the sport in 1961 for trying to unionize the NASCAR drivers.
• Jeff Gordon's 23 years as a Cup driver were made possible by a number of factors:
  • He had originally planned to race in the IndyCar Series.
  • Gordon originally broke onto the circuit in the Busch (now Xfinity) Series with Bill Davis Racing, and was even set to jump into the Winston Cup Series (now just the Cup Series) driving Davis' #22. However, after watching Gordon take a noticeably ill-handling car to Victory Lane at Atlanta in 1992, Rick Hendrick decided to do whatever he could in his power to sign Gordon for his team, which resulted in Gordon taking the 24 and Davis picking up Bobby Labonte to drive the 22 instead. For Gordon, of course, the rest is history. For Davis, although he later had a few solid years fielding the #22 for Ward Burton,^note Bobby Labonte would also find success, but only after joining Joe Gibbs Racing including a Daytona 500 win in 2002, he eventually fell well behind the big multi-car teams,^note repeated efforts to expand to two cars between 2001 and 2007 failed miserably, with the drivers involved in these expansion attempts (including Dave Blaney, who would later return and drive the #22 from 2006-08) generally lasting no more than a season and sold his team to Penske after the 2008 season (the owner points were assigned to the now-dormant #77 of Sam Hornish Jr., and Penske changed his second team's car number to #22 in 2011, which is now Joey Logano's car).
  • This NASCAR.com article, written shortly after Gordon's 700th start at Darlington in May 2013 (and his 300th top five, making him the fourth driver in Cup Series history to reach that mark; he passed David Pearson for third on that list later that season), details the string of chance encounters and fortuitous friendships which led to Rick Hendrick being able to contact Gordon and offer him the #24.
  • In January 2015, Ray Evernham revealed that Gordon was actually offered the #46^note In case you don't know about NASCAR, #46 is mostly an unused number in NASCAR, while the same number is mostly known for its usage by MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi. Like Gordon, Rossi uses the same number in every single season in his career, only to have that be stopped by licensing issues surrounding Days of Thunder (incidentally or not, the cars used in the movie were provided by Hendrick Motorsports). This article provides more details. There was at least one race where HMS ran a #46 car with DuPont colors, earlier in 1992 before Gordon's series debut. The #24, meanwhile, was chosen because it was of very little significance to NASCAR history at the time, having only been used regularly in the '70s by the unrelated Cecil Gordon, who had a handful of top ten points runs but never broke into victory lane.
  • Gordon's retirement announcement later that month brought forth two more - the first was the history of Gordon's iconic "Rainbow Warriors" paint scheme. Ray Evernham had commissioned famed NASCAR artist Sam Bass to do a program cover for Gordon's 21st birthday, which was delivered free of charge on the condition that Bass also be allowed a crack at designing the paint scheme for Gordon's future Cup car. Evernham eventually got approval for Bass to present three schemes to DuPont. The first two were done several days in advance of the meeting. The third was done on the fly the morning of the meeting, after Bass was inspired by DuPont's efforts to portray their automotive finish division as offering "a rainbow of colors". That third and last-minute scheme ended up being chosen ahead of Bass' two other submissions, and another forty from other artists, to be the official scheme of Gordon's car.
  • There was also the story, from Gordon's stepfather and former manager John Bickford, of the time Jack Roush tried to recruit Gordon to his team. This originated because Bill Davis had been fielding Fords for Gordon during his Busch tenure, and Ford's racing division was very interested in keeping him in house. They therefore referred Roush to Bickford to hammer out terms for Gordon to join Roush Racing. However, a phone call to set the initial terms stalled when Roush rejected Bickford's condition that he also recruit Evernham, with whom Gordon already had a very strong rapport, stating "My drivers don't pick their crew chiefs. I do that." Bickford promptly hung up the call, and when Roush called back and learned that the phone hadn't disconnected accidentally, he went on to explain that picking the crew chief gave him a degree of comfort in the potentially risky move of picking up a young, unproven talent. After Roush explained that he had no plans of making an exception for Gordon, or for any driver at any point, Bickford hung up again and officially ended the negotiation.
  • It was later revealed that Gordon had originally wanted to use the number #16 in the Cup Series, but that number was (and still is) in use with Roush Fenway Racing.
• Chase Elliott, son of the legendary Bill Elliott, and Jeff Gordon's tapped successor for the #24, already has a couple of his own.
  • One: What would have happened if Spingate hadn't occurred? Elliott's 2013 part-time runs in ARCA and the Trucks was sponsored by Aaron's, whom Hendrick was presumably trying to lure away from Michael Waltrip Racing. However, this was at the same time that Brian Vickers was in the middle of his second Career Resurrection, and after his win at New Hampshire that July, Aaron's decided to re-sign with Waltrip and Vickers for two more years, which also led to them canceling any plans they had to sponsor Elliott after 2013. Thus, Hendrick had no money to be able to run any significant program for him in 2014, until that January, when NAPA, who had dumped MWR and Martin Truex Jr. in the wake of Spingate, reversed course on their decision to abandon NASCAR completely, approached Dale Earnhardt Jr. and asked about renewing their association with him (as Dale Jr. had been paired with Waltrip on NAPA's ad campaigns at DEI in the early-to-mid-2000s). Dale Jr. agreed and NAPA thus sponsored a new entry in the Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series for Elliott. Elliott would go on to become the first driver to win a Championship in his Rookie year, which led Hendrick to officially declare him the benefactor to the #24 when Gordon announced his retirement in January 2015. NAPA continued their sponsorship of Chase through his Cup debut in 2015 as a part-time driver, then full-time from 2016 onwards.
  • Two: Elliott, like Gordon, might have been a Ford driver... had any Ford teams had shown interest in him. In 2010, Bill Elliott had been sending out feelers to various Ford teams concerning Chase, hoping to extend his association with the blue oval down to his son, but ultimately, no Ford team of any stature showed significant interest. Indeed, Rick Hendrick was the only owner of note in any camp who was interested in Chase, which led to Chase signing a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports in early 2011.
  • It wasn't until 2018 that Elliott was able to get his dad's iconic #9, due to a shakeup caused by Dale Earnhardt, Jr.'s retirement and Kasey Kahne's departure from Hendrick Motorsports, with the #24 team being renumbered as the #9 for ownership purposes, and the #5 becoming the #24 with William Byron.
• Tim Richmond won six races in 1986 driving for Rick Hendrick but contracted AIDS and fell ill and eventually died from complications of the disease in 1989. Richmond was notable for being an outsider to the then-prevalent Southern good-ol'-boy crowd, lived a playboy lifestyle and was considered a James Dean-like heartthrob figure who largely inspired the Cole Trickle character in Days of Thunder. Longtime fans speculate that Richmond could have had a great rivalry with Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace years before Jeff Gordon showed up and did the same thing, albeit without Richmond's charismatic personality.
• In the space of a few months in 1993 both the defending Winston Cup champion and the defending Daytona 500 winner both died in aviation incidents:
  • Alan Kulwicki died in April 1993 in a plane crash months after winning the Winston Cup championship in 1992. He was the last owner/driver to win a Cup championship until Tony Stewart in 2011, and his one-car team could have become much more powerful during the 1990s.
  • A few months after Kulwicki died, 1992 Daytona 500 winner Davey Allison, and son of Cup champion Bobby Allison, died after crashing his helicopter in the infield at Talladega. Allison had won 19 Cup races in his career and was only 32, and many believe that had he lived, he would've cut into Dale Earnhardt's and Jeff Gordon's win and championship totals.
• Ernie Irvan suffered a basilar skull fracture^*the same sort of injury that Dale Earnhardt died from in 2001 at Michigan in 1994, and as a result, sat out the rest of the 1994 season and missed most of the 1995 season. If Irvan hadn't suffered the injury, he could've won the title in 1994, as he was locked in a fierce battle with Earnhardt up to that point. After Irvan was injured, Robert Yates tapped Dale Jarrett to fill the ride, and he went on to great success with Yates, bringing Yates his only title in 1999.
  • On a related note, had Irvan not got hurt, then Jarrett might not have ended up at Robert Yates, and might have stayed at Joe Gibbs in the 18. If he had, would Bobby Labonte have found any success in the Cup Series?
• Adam Petty's death at Loudon in 2000 aged only 19 has echoes of that of Davey Allison as Petty was the next generation of a famous racing dynasty, although he had yet to begin his Cup-level career in earnest so his full potential will never be known. He only started one Cup race, the DirecTV 500, in which he finished 40th (and more people remember that race for being Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s first career Cup win, not for being Adam Petty's sole start).
• In a non-fatal example, many people wonder what David Pearson could have done in more seasons; Pearson never raced a full season except in the three years he won the championships but still won 105 races.
• There are websites that have analyzed the scoring point systems and calculated who would have been the NASCAR champion of the playoff (formerly Chase for the Cup) seasons (2004-present) had the playoff formula not been used. For instance, Jeff Gordon would have won the championships in 2004 and 2007 under the old points system (as he scored the most points overall, but struggles he had in the Chase, after the points reseeding, were what allowed Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson to take those trophies), while Carl Edwards would have won the titles in 2008 and 2011 (Chase reseeding and at least one DNF at Talladega caused him to lose to Jimmie Johnson in 2008, while the title in 2011 would not have been lost to Tony Stewart due to a points tie). Jimmie Johnson would have won regardless in 2006, 2009 and 2013, Tony Stewart would have won regardless in 2005, and Brad Keselowski would have won regardless in 2012. However, it should be noted that these sites are unable to take into account that without the playoff system, drivers' approach to these races would be much different due to the different stakes.
• Elliott Sadler was originally picked to drive the MWR #55 at Bristol in March 2012. However, because he drove for Richard Childress Racing in the Nationwide Series at the time, he was ultimately forced to back out of the car due to a conflict of interest between the manufacturers, leading Waltrip to pick Brian Vickers instead. Ironically, the next year, Sadler moved to Joe Gibbs Racing's Nationwide program, which not only put him in a Toyota, but also made him a teammate to Vickers after the latter was also picked up for Gibbs' Nationwide team.
• Kevin Harvick's career could've been a lot different if not for Dale Earnhardt's death on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Harvick debuted in the Busch Series in October 1999, then went on to drive the full Busch season in 2000 for Richard Childress Racing, winning Rookie of the Year honors there. For 2001, Richard Childress planned to run Harvick in the Busch Series full-time again, while developing him into the Winston Cup Series with up to seven races in the #30 AOL Chevrolet, then promote Harvick to a full-time Cup schedule in the #30 for 2002. After Earnhardt died, Childress decided to tap Harvick to drive Earnhardt's former #3 (now renumbered the #29) fulltime, alongside Harvick's Busch schedule. Harvick proved an instant success, winning two races (a memorable photo-finish at Atlanta^note Incidentally the very race that Childress had originally been planning for Harvick to make his Cup debut at over Jeff Gordon by inches; and the inaugural Chicagoland race), six Top 5 finishes, and 16 Top 10 finishes, the Rookie of the Year Award, and a ninth-place finish in the final points standings. He still won the Busch Series championship, becoming the first driver to win the Busch Series championship while also driving full-time in the Cup Series with a top 10 finish. He would stay in the #29 through 2013, after which he moved to Stewart-Haas Racing, where he won his first Cup Series championship in 2014.
• If Dale Earnhardt hadn't died, it's been noted by Dale Jr. and Richard Childress on Dale Jr.'s podcast that he would've retired once his contract with RCR was up at the end of 2003, as he wanted to race sports cars more often and focus on running DEI in a more hands-on role than he already had. When he and Jr. won the GT class at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in early February 2001, he and Kelly Collins, lead driver for team Corvette at the time, had started discussing plans for Le Mans and other races. Many believe he was planning to run a couple full IMSA seasons with Team Corvette, and he wanted Jeff Burton to replace him in the #3.^note Burton did eventually join RCR midway through the 2004 season, initially driving the #30 for the remainder of the season, and then the #31 from 2005 to 2013 That relationship with Corvette was how Dale Jr. got his ride with them at Sonoma in 2004, where he got burned in a grisly accident when the fuel tank exploded, leading to him having to be relieved by Martin Truex Jr. for a couple of Cup races.
  • Closely related to the above: Would Dale Earnhardt Inc. have grown to become a dominant team in NASCAR under the ownership of the Intimidator? During the period from 2000 to 2004, DEI was fast becoming exactly that, with a roster comprised of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in the #8, Michael Waltrip in the #15 and Steve Park in the #1. Unfortunately, by 2007 a combination of financial pressures and feuding between Dale Jr. and his stepmother (and Dale Sr.'s widow) Teresa Earnhardt led to Dale Jr. jumping ship after 2007 to Hendrick Motorsports while Michael Waltrip decided to start his own team and took the NAPA sponsorship with him. By 2009, DEI was no more, having been folded into Chip Ganassi Racing, with Teresa in particular being vilified by NASCAR fans.
  • Dale Earnhardt was all set to become a NASCAR owner in 1987. He was going to buy Jack Beebe's NASCAR team and had everything all ready. But not long after agreeing to buy the team, Jack Beebe sold it out from under Earnhardt to Cale Yarborough. If Earnhardt had bought it, he was supposedly going to give IndyCar star Al Unser Jr. a ride in the NASCAR Cup Series. One has to wonder what Earnhardt could've done with that team had Beebe not cheated him.
• Jamie McMurray was originally scheduled to drive a limited schedule for Chip Ganassi Racing in the #42 Dodge for 2002, in preparation for a full-time 2003 Rookie of the Year campaign in the #42 with new sponsors Texaco and Havoline. And ultimately, that did happen. But he had to start his Cup career early as Sterling Marlin fractured a vertebra in a crash at Kansas Speedway, causing Ganassi to immediately promote McMurray to the #40 Coors Light Dodge to replace Marlin, beginning at Talladega. One week later, at Charlotte, in just his second career Cup and first non-restrictor plate start, McMurray outraced the Joe Gibbs Racing Pontiac duo of Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart, in one of the biggest upsets in NASCAR history. He set a modern era record for fewest starts before a win (later tied by Trevor Bayne in the 2011 Daytona 500 and eventually broken by Shane van Gisbergen in 2023, who won his initial Cup Series start at the inaugural Chicago street race), and it was also the first time a driver won in their first start at a 1.5-mile track, the most common type of track used in the sport. McMurray drove for six of the remaining seven races, except for Martinsville, where Mike Bliss was already scheduled to drive the #40, which ostensibly helped McMurray win Rookie of the Year honors for 2003 for a full-time Cup schedule.
• Another example involving Alan Kulwicki. In 1990; iconic Cup Series driver-turned-owner Junior Johnson tried to coax Kulwicki to drive his #11 Budweiser Ford Thunderbird - with Kulwicki turning him down to stay as an owner-driver^note Geoff Bodine would replace Terry Labonte in the #11 from 1990-91. Where this comes into play is in 1991. Zerex antifreeze, Kulwicki's sponsor, ended their contract after the 1990 Winston Cup season; and Kulwicki turned down an offer of a million dollars from Johnson because he was working on a sponsorship deal with Maxwell House coffee. Around that time, Johnson decided to return to a two-car team^note the last year Johnson fielded more than one car was 1986; with a #12 car also sponsored by Budweiser. At the end of that season, both of Johnson's drivers - Darrell Waltrip in the #11 and Neil Bonnett in the #12 - left and Johnson shut down the #12 after 1987 with a second car numbered #22; and Johnson managed to pull the rug from underneath Kulwicki, bringing Maxwell House to the #22 car driven by Sterling Marlin, forcing Kulwicki to (after the Daytona 500 where he was one of five drivers with special paint schemes representing different branches of the United States Armed Forces; as this was toward the end of The Gulf War) drive an unsponsored car while paying team expenses out of pocket - potentially risking going bankrupt - until the spring race at Atlanta; where - after part-time driver Mark Stahl failed to make the field - Atlanta-based restaurant chain Hooters agreed to a one-race deal that was extended after Kulwicki finished 8th; with Hooters remaining as Kulwicki's sponsor from 1991 until his death in 1993; in the process resulting in Kulwicki getting cosmic payback when he edged out Bill Elliott (who had taken over Junior Johnson's #11 Budweiser Ford for 1992) for the 1992 Winston Cup Championship by 10 points; but what could have happened had either Kulwicki decided to take the easy money and race for Johnson in either 1990 or 1991; Johnson not cheated Kulwicki out of the Maxwell House sponsorship or had Mark Stahl made the spring race in Atlanta, would Kulwicki have been able to avoid going broke trying to keep his NASCAR dreams alive?

Baseball

• In the mid-1910's, back when both the National League and American League were considered legally separate entities that mainly competed in one Major League Baseball that we know today, a third professional baseball league was trying to interrupt both leagues' success in the process. The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs (later known as the Federal League) originally was just another minor league operation that the MLB had before a change of ownership after their first season led to them directly challenging the National League and American League by promoting themselves as a "third major league" operation for the U.S.A. to witness. While they originally started with only 6 teams as a minor league, when they operated as a major league, not only did the Federal League field a full 8 teams needed for healthy competition against both the National League and the American League (both of whom only really competed against each other during the World Series at the time), but they also behaved as an "outlaw league" of sorts by avoiding restrictions of the MLB's reserve clause and allowing players to sign deals that had their salaries skyrocket up against the competing major leagues at the time. However, swift action taken by both the National League and American League combined with judgment made by federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis brought the fletchling Federal League to a quick, stunning end early on after the 1915 season concluded before they could do further damage to the MLB at the time. That being said, one would wonder how differently things could have gone for the Federal League as a whole had their antitrust lawsuit succeeded like they had hoped it would have. Would the MLB have tried to experiment with a three-league or even four-league MLB if the Federal League got what they wanted out of their antitrust lawsuit? Would teams like the Chicago Whales, St. Louis Terriers, Pittsburgh Rebels, Kansas City Packers, Newark Peppers, Buffalo Blues, Brooklyn Tip-Tops, and Baltimore Terrapins have even managed to stay in their respective fields for the long-term, or would most, if not all of them be forced to move to different locations just to have a shot at survival?^note (The Chicago Cubs and current Baltimore Orioles (formerly the St. Louis Browns) could have also not survived if the lawsuit did not go the way it did since both franchises were struggling at the time and they were both saved by respective owners of the Federal League's Chicago and St. Louis teams accepting offers to own their respective options instead of sticking with their Federal League squads.) How would the World Series have worked out under that kind of setting? Would the World Series even continue to exist with three major leagues competing for one championship?
• Before the biggest controversy in baseball became the World Series championships won by the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox in 2017 & 2018 respectively due to the unique way they used sign stealing to their advantage (unfairly so in the sport), the biggest controversy in the sport came from the 1919 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White Sox (or what's better known to people as the "Black Sox Scandal"). That year's White Sox team featured some players that had despised team owner Charles Comiskey so much, they were willing to throw the World Series that year despite all of these same players also being on the 1917 World Series team that won that year. Eight players from that team (including the leading players of the group, Chick Gandil & Eddie Cicotte, as well as "Shoeless" Joe Jackson) had an involvement in the scandal that ranged from just listening in on it, though not actively participating in the scandal to being key leaders of the team to actively throw games away to Cincinnati as active pitchers in exchange for greater pay by a crime boss from the Jewish mafia (seriously). In the end, the White Sox lost the series 5-3^*(for a few years, especially from 1919-1921, the World Series expanded to nine games long for a best-of-five series instead of seven games long for a best-of-four series because they wanted to expand the popularity and profit margins of the sport), with the scandal being so great that many books and movies (including Eight Men Out) were released over the years talking about said scandal in greater detail. However, the main thing about it is the MLB eventually decided to get a commissioner for the sport for the first time ever, with Kenesaw Mountain Landis (the same person that ended the Federal League that was mentioned earlier on) later banning all eight players from playing professional baseball, including potential inductions for the Baseball Hall of Fame^note The MLB commissioner actually has no authority to ban players from the Baseball Hall of Fame (which didn't even exist until 18 years after Landis banned the Black Sox), as it's an independent institution that Major League Baseball has no jurisdiction over. However, the HOF has a policy that anyone on MLB's ineligible list can not be placed on the HOF ballot, meaning the commissioner can hand out de facto HOF bans., as a means to regain integrity for the sport, despite all eight player being acquitted by U.S. law for their actions. That being said, if Charles Comiskey had treated his players better than he did, would the White Sox have won that World Series that year fair and square, to the point of avoiding an 80+ year long curse that only a scant few teams have had in their lives? If the eight players never got involved with the scheme altogether, would sports leagues like the MLB have ever had the need to create a commissioner position for the league, or would it have been created eventually once the sport's popularity grew further and further still? In fact, while people talk about "Shoeless" Joe Jackson being the one guy from the group that should be potentially added into the Baseball Hall of Fame since he both had great statistics and was considered one of the few guys from that group to have little to no real involvement with participating in the scandal directly, it's also fair to inquire if the scandal never happened, how many of the eight "Black Sox" in question might have been added to the Hall of Fame had they played their careers as planned normally? The last point is especially interesting when noting a couple of the players that were involved only played for a few years before being banned from the sport.
• One of the greatest (and most tragic) what-ifs of sports history: What if the color barrier in Major League Baseball had been broken earlier than 1947 (when Jackie Robinson debuted)? Or even better, was never established at all? This was at least a theoretical possibility; in the immediate post-Civil War era of baseball, the early professional leagues were known to hire black players, especially at the minor-league level. It was only in the 1880s that moves started to be made towards segregation, especially in the South (i.e., states that fought for the Confederate States of America in The American Civil War) during the period in American history that saw the reversal of what happened in the "Reconstruction" period occur. Over time, various team owners and managers tried to break the color line, only to face resistance or be foiled (especially during the iron reign of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis). The tragic aspect comes from baseball fans wondering how Negro League legends like Josh Gibson (considered to be the "Black Babe Ruth" for the "Negro Major Leagues") and Satchel Paige (during his prime as opposed to when he finally did make the majors while in his late 40s) could have shone in the Majors, as well as how the integration of black ballplayers at an earlier stage could have affected the way the game was played. To say nothing of the ripple effect on race relations more generally. On a more positive note, the MLB announced in December 2020 that they will classify the seven "Negro Major Leagues" from 1920-1948^*(the first Negro National League from 1920-1931, the Eastern Colored League from 1923-1928, the American Negro League from 1929, the East-West League from 1932, the Negro Southern League from 1920-1936 (though the Southern League itself only officially considered the 1932 season their official major league season at the time, with every other season of theirs being designated as minor league seasons at the time), the second Negro National League from 1933-1948, and the Negro American League from 1937-1948, with the last league later being a barnstorming league for the Majors from around 1950-1962) as major leagues that recognized over 3,400 players from those leagues and their statistics from that period of time.
• The 1994-1995 MLB strike put a halt to baseball from August 12 till April 2. The strike not only canceled the World Series and prematurely ended the summers of many baseball fans, it also put a halt to some great seasons. Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants was on pace to break Roger Maris' single season home run record, Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres had a very real chance to be the first player to hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941, Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox and Jeff Bagwell of the Houston Astros had career years that they didn't get to finish, but the most tragic of all of these has to be the Montreal Expos. The Expos had the best record in baseball with a 74-40 record. They were favorites to win the World Series despite having a very low payroll. The strike put an end to all of this and is considered one of the main reasons why the Expos were never the same again and eventually moved down to Washington, D.C.
  • Also to mention when baseball resumed, it put a giant Reset Button on everything meaning that if you signed a free agent during that time period, the contract was void. For example, Red Sox GM Dan Duquette signed Kevin Appier, Sammy Sosa, and John Wetteland to play for the Red Sox. The strike wiped all of that away.
    • The fan revolt following the strike has become a non-issue in the United States, but in Canada, the game never recovered. Aside from the Expos fans walking away entirely, the average home game attendance of the Toronto Blue Jays (who, in 1992, became the first Canadian baseball team to win the World Series, then won it again in 1993) dropped sharply after 1994, and from 1998 on, the team didn't average above 30,000 again until 2013. While they averaged over 40,000 in 2016 and just below that in 2017, the Jays are still well below the numbers they drew immediately before the strike — 50,000-plus in 1993 and 1994.
    • Does it matter that the Blue Jays weren't contenders from 1993 until the mid-2010s?
    • No - the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs haven't been contenders for most of the last decade and still manage to get a pretty decent following, despite the fact that pound-for-pound in the last few years, the Blue Jays are the better team.
    • Also, when you're a smaller payroll team sharing a division with Boston, Tampa (who also has a very low payroll), and the Yankees, you've got your work cut out for you. 2010's season as a case in point: most teams with a record of 85-77 would finish higher than 4th out of 5 in their division.
  • The strike was also one of the reasons Michael Jordan went back to basketball with the Chicago Bulls. Imagine what could have happened.
• On that same vein, what if the Montreal Expos had moved to Washington a few years prior to 2005, while Vladimir Guerrero was still on the team?
  • Similarly, what would have happened if the Expos had moved to the other leading contender for relocation: Monterrey, Mexico?
  • Or what would happened if the Expos stayed in Montreal?
• What if Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti^note (if you're not a baseball fan but the name sounds vaguely familiar, he's Marcus and Paul Giamatti's dad) not died of a heart attack during his first year in office (and about a week after he banned Pete Rose for his gambling activities) in 1989? Could Giamatti had been able to successfully mediate between the owners and players union in light of the eventual 1994–95 strike? When Giamatti was first hired to be the President of the National League in 1986, his deft dealings with unions while at Yale had been cited as one of his strongest assets.
• The New York Yankees were actually Plan B for George Steinbrenner in the early 70s. He wanted to, and was rebuffed in his efforts to, buy his hometown team, the Cleveland Indians. Baseball in general and Indians fans in particular are left wondering if The Boss would've effected the dramatic reversal of fortune for Cleveland as he did with the Yankees.
• In 2003, we could have had a World Series featuring the Boston Red Sox and(/or) the Chicago Cubs. The Sox had not won a World Series in 85 years or even competed in 17 years (they would finally win it all the following year). The Cubs hadn't won it in 95 years (and wouldn't win it until 2016, ending their drought at 108 years, the longest in American sports history) and hadn't even reached the World Series in 58 years (this drought ended at 71 years, longer than many competing teams have been in existence). Both teams were involved in controversial Division Series.
  • The Sox had a pretty straightforward one. Extra innings in Game 7, with the New York Yankees firing off a solo home run in the 11th. Stung like a bitch to any diehard Sox fans hoping to see their first World Series appearance in almost two decades.
    • You can't talk about 2003 Game 7 without mentioning how they got into extra innings in the first place. Going into the 8th inning, the Red Sox were leading by 4 runs. Pedro Martínez had thrown impeccably well and had hit 100 pitches at the end of the 7th inning. Everybody knew he was done except for the one person who mattered — manager Grady Little. Pedro would be back out for the 8th inning and after one loud out, he unraveled just as predicted and the lead disintegrated.
  • The Cubs, however, were stuck with a wholly demoralizing Game 6, while leading the series 3-2. In the eighth inning, Luis Castillo fired off a long, foulwards shot should have been caught by left fielder Moisés Alou. If it weren't for spectator Steve Bartman, that is. Desperate for a foul ball to call his own, he reached into where Alou's glove was headed and screwed up catching it. For both him and Alou. The ball was ruled foul (what would have been a painfully easy catch, too). What followed was the Florida Marlins turning it around from losing 3-0 (in a game that would have taken them out of the series) to winning 8-3. That inning.
    • The kicker? Steve Bartman was a Cubs fan.
    • There's always 2015...
    • 2012?
    • 2012 turned out to be false, and in many ways, the exact opposite, with the Cubs suffering one of their worst seasons in years. 2015 went much better, with the Cubs having one of their best seasons in years and making it all the way to the National League Championship Series... where they proceeded to get utterly demolished by the New York Mets.
    • 2016 had the Cubs finishing with the best record in baseball, winning the NL pennant and advancing to the World Series... which they would go on to win. And the Cubs and Bartman buried the hatchet, with the team giving him his own specially designed World Series ring. Of course, now the Cleveland Indians (later known as Guardians by 2022) have the cursed distinction as the longest-running World Series championship drought with them losing to the Cubs that year.
• The Philadelphia Phillies are, statistically speaking, the worst franchise in the history of sports, with more losses than any other sports franchise and more last-place finishes than any other baseball team. According to master baseball showman Bill Veeck, he tried to buy the team in 1943, when the Phillies were at a nadir both financially and on the field. His intent, he said, was to replace the entire roster with Negro League stars and bust the color line years before Branch Rickey did. He claimed the baseball commissioner and league president heard of his plans and, wanting to keep the sport segregated, quickly arranged for a sale to another buyer. Veeck's story has been vehemently disputed by baseball historians, but if true and if it had come to pass, he not only would have revolutionized baseball, he would have changed the history of race relations in the U.S.
• The American League adopted the designated hitter in 1973 in a bid to increase offense after a pitcher-dominated 1960's; it proved so successful in terms of increasing attendance the National League took up a vote on whether to adopt it as well in 1980, pushed for by St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Clairborne. The measure needed a majority to pass, and Philadelphia Phillies vice president Bill Giles, unsure of what owner Ruly Carpenter wanted and unable to contact him because the latter was on a fishing trip, ended up abstaining from the vote. This caused the Pittsburgh Pirates to also abstain, as general manager Harding Peterson was instructed to follow the Phillies' lead. The final tally was four votes for, five votes against, and three abstentions; thus the measure failed due to the abstentions by the Phillies and Pirates as the vote would have been 6-5 in favor had they voted "yes" instead. Less than a week later Clairborne was fired and the idea lost steam. Years later it came to light that Carpenter was in favor of the DH — one can only wonder how pro baseball might have changed if Giles had been able to contact his boss in time and the NL had adopted the DH like their AL counterparts.
  • During the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season, one of the changes included to the game allowed for the National League to (temporarily) have themselves a designated hitter onto their rosters as a means to help make sure rosters for the teams there don't get decimated by the virus during the height of the pandemic. The NL eventually adopted the DH in 2022 on what appears to be a more permanent basis as a part of the settlement that ended the owners' lockout of the players in the 2021–22 offseason.
• On a more tragic note, while Roberto Clemente was well into his career and perhaps slightly past his prime at the age of 38, he was still an excellent player and his career seemed far from over. He had just become the 11th player in history to achieve 3,000 hits, and it was obvious that there were many more hits to come. Until he died in a plane crash while delivering relief supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.
• Likewise, Lou Gehrig was famed for his seemingly-unstoppable endurance, having played 2,130 straight games in a row without interruption. There was no reason to think his 17th season would be his last. Then he shocked the baseball world by pulling himself from the Yankees' May 2, 1939 game. On June 19 it was announced that he'd been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable muscle degeneration that became known in North America as "Lou Gehrig's disease". On July 4, 1939 he gave a farewell speech to the Yankees fans, already knowing he was dying he called himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" for experiencing such an amazing career. But how much more could he have done if not for the disease?
• For Marlins fans, the tragic death of José Fernández also counts as one for how far his greatness as a pitcher could have been in the Majors. Despite pitching for the Miami Marlins for only four years, Fernández was considered an amazing pitcher for the team, winning the National League's Rookie of the Year Award in 2013 and being named an All-Star in 2013 and 2016. However, days before his fourth season would have concluded, Fernández was tragically one of three victims of a high speed boating crash involving his boat, Naught Looking. Not only did the crash rob fans of one of the most dynamic pitchers of the 2010's who was about to enter his prime, but it also left fans wondering how much better their team could have been had Fernández not been involved with that fatal crash.
• A minor case was from the seventh game of the 2006 National League Championship Series, between the Cardinals and the Mets. During the sixth inning, Scott Rolen of the Cardinals hit what was most assuredly a home run, only for Endy Chávez to make a miraculous catch that turned that potential home run for the Cardinals into a double play for the Mets. If the Mets went on to win the game, that play would have lasted forever - every time from then on the Mets were in a big game, that clip would be played again and again. Instead, the Cardinals won, and that play made the rounds for a few days before being mostly forgotten.
• In 1967, Kansas City, Missouri and Seattle, Washington were granted American League expansion franchises. This was primarily to appease Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, who was angry that MLB didn't do more to stop the Kansas City Athletics from relocating to Oakland, CA and threatened to hold hearings into revoking MLB's anti-trust exemption.^note The exemption keeps the MLB from being subject to federal commerce laws and anti-monopoly legislation, saving them billions in taxes and fees every year. This exemption has always been controversial, since it was created by an Ass Pull of a Supreme Court ruling, and later reaffirmed by another Supreme Court decision on the basis that Congress hadn't passed any law to repeal an exemption that Congress never created in the first place. The Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots were due to start playing in 1971 - the delay was mostly to give Seattle time to either bring Sick's Stadium up to MLB standards or build a new stadium that met them. Symington again threatened anti-trust hearings if the Royals weren't allowed to start immediately. Rather than risk their exempt status and not wanting to play an "imbalanced" schedule with an odd number of teams, both teams debuted in 1969. Sick's Stadium - considered a dump even by minor league standards - proved to be such a detriment to attendance and on-field play that the Pilots filed for bankruptcy after one year. They were allowed to move to Milwaukee, where they became the second iteration of the Milwaukee Brewers.^note The original Brewers also left their original home after one season, becoming the St. Louis Browns, who later became the Baltimore Orioles. The King County government sued MLB for breach of contract (both for forcing the premature start and pulling out after one season), a suit which was eventually dropped when MLB promised them another expansion team (the Mariners, who started play in 1977). Who knows what the landscape of MLB would be, both in the standings and in the courts, had baseball stood up to Sen. Symington or simply lent the Pilots the capital to weather the early storm.
• The Steroid Era, as what can be described as a pivotal era for the sport in the late 1990s and 2000s, left a serious stain and black eye on the sport when it was all said and done. Superstars of the sport in that time like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Gary Sheffield were all players noted for steroid usage (or implied steroid/doping usage), which led to all of them either failing to make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame or currently struggling to make it in themselves. Despite their usage of drugs, these players still held significant impact on the sport in that time. Therefore, one wonders how things would have faired for them if any of them received vindication for their efforts on the sport instead of having their reputations tainted from steroid usage. Given that many of them were already elite players even before they went on the juice, one also has to wonder what their careers would've been like had they stayed clean.
  • On a similar note, one player from the 1990s and 2000s that has similarly held serious blacklisting from entering the Hall of Fame despite never being involved with the scandal whatsoever is pitcher Curt Schilling. On the surface, Schilling looks like he should be a clear cut case in favor of him being in the Baseball Hall of Fame: being an NLCS MVP in 1993 with the Phillies, a 2x NL strikeout leader in 1997 & 1998, an All-Star pitcher for three teams with honors for each of them in mind, a Roberto Clemente Award and a co-World Series MVP with Randy Johnson in 2001, a 2x MLB wins leader in 2001 and 2004 for World Series teams, winning three out of four World Series championships he appeared in (losing the first one in Philadelphia, but winning his rest in Arizona and Boston), and pitching over 3,000 strikeouts throughout his career. However, part of his problem relates to his controversies that revolved around him both during and especially after his playing career. During his playing career, he held multiple conflicts with different players, managers, and even media outlets that might have played an initial role in him not being voted in early on. However, years after his retirement, Schilling's more eccentric persona came out a lot more easily to the public eye due to not just his involvement with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and its aftermath, but in terms of his personal political beliefs (including being against LGBT marriage and vouching his support for controversial right-wing publisher Breitbart) and letting his beliefs overtake his professional status with ESPN back when he worked with them. As such, one may wonder if Schilling might have been able to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame at all had he been more willing to keep to himself instead of being as eccentric as he is as an individual.

Basketball

• The three-point line was first implemented in 1945 in a collegiate game between Columbia University and Fordham University as a line 21 feet from the (center of the) basket... but it was not kept as a rule for the sport by that time. The rule was implemented in college again in 1958 through a line 23 feet from the basket between St. Francis College and Siena College, though it was also considered experimental. However, it wasn't until 1961 where the three-point line gained traction for the sport by a combination of a collegiate game between Boston University and Dartmouth College officially counting three-pointers as three-point shots and with Abe Saperstein's American Basketball League (ABL) using a line 25 feet from the basket (with 22 feet being used for the corners) as their weapon against the NBA's popularity back when that league existed. When the ABL concluded its first season, the head coach for St. Francis College advocated for the permanent inclusion of the three-point line for shots going forward in the collegiate level, which wasn't made official for men's basketball until the Southern Conference first used it for their games starting in 1980 before the rest of the NCAA started using it by 1986. As for professional basketball leagues using it, the Eastern Professional Basketball League (EPBL) started using it in 1963 after the ABL shut down by New Year's Eve of 1962, continuing to use it until it shut down as the CBA in 2009. However, it most famously was used by the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1967-1976, with the ABA even utilizing the Three-Point Contest as an All-Star event alongside the Slam Dunk Contest before the NBA ever thought of doing it themselves.^note (It should be mentioned that the NBA also forbade slam dunks early on in their tenure also, though it was more because it was seen at the time as an unfair shot that only tall players could do.) As for the NBA, they waited until 1979 to start utilizing the three-point line, and even then, they thought it was a gimmick that wouldn't work in their first season of using it before permanently making it a thing from 1980 onward. Still, one does wonder what differences the sport would have had on itself had the line been introduced and kept permanently back in that real early period of time.
• The team known now as the Atlanta Hawks once were a struggling National Basketball League (NBL) team named the Buffalo Bisons. While they tried to gain a fanbase to break even for their first season, they instead struggled to gain even 1,000 fans per game in their home games. As a result, only 13 games into their sole season in Buffalo (being 5-8 at that time), they moved to Moline, Illinois (dubbed as a part of the Tri-Cities alongside Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa at the time) and changed their name to the Tri-Cities Blackhawks by Christmas of 1946, keeping the past record of the Bisons as a part of the Blackhawks' history for the season. Still, had the city of Buffalo been more interested in the sport at the time, it's possible the Bisons would have had a longer, historic stay in the city instead of changing places and team names until finding the right spot for them in Atlanta as the Hawks.
• Originally, before the NBA existed, there were two professional basketball leagues that eventually merged to become the NBA that we know today: the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL). While the BAA itself has the same history that the NBA has and thus doesn't have many what-if scenarios in play (outside of the survival of some of the original teams first made in its inaugural season like the Cleveland Rebels, Detroit Falcons, Pittsburgh Ironmen, and Toronto Huskies, as well as if they had included inaugural teams in Buffalo and Indianapolis), the NBL itself actually existed longer than the BAA did, with its roots first beginning in 1937 with teams also including promotions for their teams there (which explains why the Detroit Pistons used to be known as the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons at one point and why the Indianapolis Kautskys later became the Indianapolis Jets for their one season in the BAA) and having a higher amount of popularity early on than other competing leagues at the time. However, while the NBL started out with a greater advantage, one negative to starting out their league in the 1930's was the fact that professional basketball leagues in the U.S.A. were considered an equivalent of the "Wild West" in terms of there being many different leagues with viably competitive structures competing for general fan viewership in a time where college basketball was the most popular form of basketball out there.^note One example includes a former NBA team, the Baltimore Bullets (unfortunately not related to the current Washington Wizards), starting out in the original American Basketball League (ABL), which started out in 1925 before eventually being shut down by 1955 (last playing in 1953) partially due to the rise of the NBA and featured incentives for professional players to stay with their teams as opposed to continuing the practice of team jumping that was prevalent in basketball's early days. Another example is the fact that the NBL itself was a spiritual successor of the Midwest Basketball Conference (MBC), who shut down and rebranded to the NBL because of general confusion to the more popular college basketball leagues there at the time. What helped make the NBL stand out over other leagues was how they promoted themselves with multiple companies, most notably automotive suppliers (General Electric, Firestone, & Goodyear), promoting corporate-based teams playing with other independent teams located in mainly Great Lakes-based locations. What also likely hurt the NBL at the time, in spite of early growth there, was that the league first began two years before World War II first broke out (though the U.S.A. wasn't involved until December 1941), meaning some of the more athletic players early on left for the war, with some teams dissolving or otherwise leaving the NBL completely throughout that time. By the time the war ended, the NBL continued seeing serious competition with other leagues, with some game inconsistencies (including some teams having fewer games played than other teams or even games being played in either 4 10-minute quarters or 3 15-minute periods) and a limited playing scope (with one season during the war resorting to only four teams playing at one point) eventually catching up to them. While some teams like the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now Detroit Pistons), Minneapolis Lakers (now Los Angeles Lakers), Rochester Royals (now Sacramento Kings), and Indianapolis Kautskys (later Indianapolis Jets for one season) went the original ABL Baltimore Bullets' route and left the NBL early for the BAA, others either tried their luck with other professional basketball leagues of the time (such as the Chicago American Gears going to the short-lived Professional Basketball League of America (PBLA) in 1947) or simply dissolved their teams altogether (such as the Detroit Gems, who later became a sort of precursor to the modern Los Angeles Lakers). By 1949, only 9 teams remained from the NBL^*(the Anderson (Duffey) Packers, the original Denver Nuggets not relating to the current Denver Nuggets we know of today, the all-black Dayton Rens, the Hammond Calumet Buccaneers, the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Sheboygan Red Skins, the Syracuse Nationals, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Waterloo Hawks) (alongside a planned expansion team that eventually became the Indianapolis Olympians as a means to replace the Kautskys teams that became the Jets in the BAA) to go with the 11 officially planned BAA teams^*(the original Baltimore Bullets, the Boston Celtics, the Chicago Stags, the Fort Wayne Pistons (removing the Zollner due to the BAA/NBA not allowing companies in their team names), the Indianapolis Jets (who were planned to stay before being forced out and replaced by the Olympians), the Minneapolis Lakers, the New York Knickerbockers (or Knicks for short), the Philadelphia Warriors, the Rochester Royals, the St. Louis Bombers, and the Washington Capitols (no relation to the NHL's Washington Capitals), with the Providence Steamrollers folding afterward due to poor play) to merge as the NBA today. However, all three of the Dayton Rens, the Hammond Calumet Buccaneers, and the Oshkosh All-Stars (the last of whom tied with the Fort Wayne Pistons for all-time NBL championships) all ended up folding before being given the chance to survive in the new NBA, mainly due to insufficient funds on their ends combined with Oshkosh blaming the Lakers for being a troublemaking team for both leagues at the time. Had those three teams not ceased to be alongside the Providence Steamrollers and Indianapolis Jets, who knows how those teams might have operated there.
  • Additionally, votes were made in 1948 to also include the Toledo Jeeps (who would have required a rename to join the BAA) and Oshkosh All-Stars from the NBL into the BAA, as well as provide new teams for the likes of Buffalo, Louisville, and Wilkes-Barre (the last of whom potentially related to a move from the Wilkes-Barre Barons moving from the ABL to the BAA, as mentioned later on below). However, none of those plans ever came to fruition beyond the Fort Wayne Pistons, Indianapolis Jets, Minneapolis Lakers, and Rochester Royals joining the BAA for the 1948-49 season.
  • However, before the NBL & BAA actually merged operations to become the NBA today, an alternative version of the World Professional Basketball Tournament (an alternative tournament originally held in Chicago from 1939-1948 that mainly featured NBL teams) was planned in Indianapolis in 1949 by NBL President Ike Duffey for a "world pro" tournament that involved three of the best NBL teams, three of the best BAA teams, the best team of the ABL (which was in Wilkes-Barre), and an unknown best team from the south that looked to begin during the NBL's 1949 playoffs on April 6, 8, & 9. However, the BAA denied the NBL's interested plans from occurring in the end. Still, one does wonder if it did occur, how would things have ended up? Would the NBL have proven they were the dominant league in the U.S.A., or would the BAA hold that honor instead? Or would Wilkes-Barre or the unknown southern team proven their worth firsthand instead? Would the merger even been necessary anyway?
  • Relating to the main point, a few of the planned NBL teams for what can be considered the inaugural NBA season (even though they officially deem the 1946-47 BAA season as such, with only certain NBL history being relevant to the NBA) ended up lasting for only one season before simply dissolving or otherwise leaving the NBA altogether. What became originally 17 NBA teams for the 1949-50 season soon became 11 again by the start of the 1950-51 season, with the Chicago Stags and St. Louis Bombers of the original BAA simply folding altogether by that time. However, four of the new teams that originally played for the NBL (the Anderson Packers, the original Denver Nuggets, the Sheboygan Red Skins, and the Waterloo Hawks) all suddenly ended up leaving the NBA completely in an attempt to form a new league of their own to compete against the NBA: the National Professional Basketball League (NPBL). Part of the reasoning as to why those four teams in particular left was due to biases with locations either due to complaints from the more successful, larger teams in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia (especially from the Knicks' President Ned Irish) feeling places like Anderson, Sheboygan, and Waterloo were too small for their own good (i.e., considered "bush league" places to them) or were too far away in the case of Denver being so far West over the Mississippi River against the rest of the NBA in that time.^*(By 1950, commercial airlines weren't common then as they are nowadays, especially with trains being more prevalent at the time.) Not only did none of these locations end up surviving (with the NPBL itself dying after one season that never finished up properly), the snap decision might have also played a factor in the eventual dissolvements of the Washington Capitols, the Indianapolis Olympians, and the original Baltimore Bullets in later seasons, as well as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks later moving to Milwaukee (and later St. Louis and Atlanta) to become the new Hawks of the NBA since then. However, had at least most of those teams that left for the NPBL received proper support from the league at the time, it's possible that those teams might have not only survived beyond just the one season in the NBA and the failed NPBL attempt (both Anderson and Sheboygan in particular gained considerable fanbases in their times spent from the NBL to the NBA despite the smaller areas they were in, with the Nuggets being remembered just enough to gain a revival from the transition of the ABA's Denver Rockets in 1974 before soon going to the NBA), but also allowed for other NBA teams like the Bullets to survive also due to an increase in revenue with more teams playing.
    • The folding of the Stags also holds some interesting WCHB moments as well. Originally by June 1950, the Chicago Stags were purchased by Abe Saperstein, the founder and original owner of the world famous, independent Harlem Globetrotters (who also famously beat the BAA champion Minneapolis Lakers in 1948 back when sports were racially divided and had the color barrier up in the first place). Under Saperstein's plan for them, he tried to change their team name to the Chicago Bruins and implement them as a regional franchise for multiple areas nearby Chicago that had double-header matches that had the Harlem Globetrotters be considered the main event for games with them. In fact, the Stags' last ever game had them involved in a triple-header that also included the Globetrotters at hand. However, by September 1950, Saperstein wanted to withdraw from the deal and requested he gained back his $20,000 deposit for the Stags, which was half of their purchasing price, due to the claim that he "received nothing" from the club, the NBA, or the four Stags players that had defected to the failed NPBL at that time. Eventually, Saperstein foreclosed on the Stags franchise due to an inability to pay a $40,000 loan to officially finish their last season in the NBA in the first place, which resulted in the NBA doing a player dispersal draft for the Stags players that stayed with the team by that time. One of the players included there was Bob Cousy, a 1950 draft pick from the Tri-Cities Blackhawks that got sold to the Stags in a trade. Cousy ended up joining the Boston Celtics in the dispersal draft. While he once was considered a reluctant addition to the team by head coach Red Auerbach and owner Walter Brown, Cousy became a key part of eventually starting a Boston Celtics dynasty throughout the late 1950's and the majority of the 1960's. Had the sale gone through with Abe Saperstein, though, would the Stags turned Bruins have provided a different pathway for scheduling games in the NBA going forward? Would the Harlem Globetrotters been such a huge draw that they eventually got included in the NBA as well (or eventually replaced the Chicago Stags/Bruins altogether)? Would the Boston Celtics even have the dynasty that they had early on in the NBA had Bob Cousy not been included in the dispersal draft that year and instead stuck with the Tri-Cities Blackhawks by them giving him his $10,000 asking price instead of the $6,000 price the owner wanted him to take? And that's not even mentioning Abe's later attempt at competing against the NBA briefly in the early 1960's with the American Basketball League (not related to the original ABL mentioned earlier on and below here).
  • One more early what could have been case for NBA additions involves the idea of what if the NBA also looked into adding some more of the original ABL's teams like the Baltimore Bullets when that ABL lost ground in popularity to the NBA and eventually folded. While the ABL was the first ever attempt to create a professional basketball league either in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world back in 1925, with the first ever NFL owner creating the league from what was considered the best independent looking professional teams of the East and Midwestern regions of the nation, the league originally faced a shutdown in 1931 due to The Great Depression before reviving itself in 1933 with a focus on Eastern teams primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. While the league had its own issues as a (sort of) creation from the Great Depression, it had positive rules placed upon itself that not only are still used to this day, but are the basis that all professional basketball leagues go by for both promoting the idea of collegiate players continuing to play professionally at the time and avoiding the oversaturation problem that came up for the sport during the first half of the 20th century.^*These positive changes include paying a salary of $1,500 per month (around $23,400 or $31,500 per month going from as early as 1925 or 1933 to 2021 inflation salaries) to stay with the team they signed up for as opposed to an average salary of $15 per week (around $234 or $315 per week in that same period of time for 2021 inflation) at that time, as well as mandatory backboards, the use of a collegiate rule eliminating the double dribble penalty, and the implementation of new rules like three second lane violations and fouling out of the game. However, hints of its instability first grew by the time the Baltimore Bullets, who saw considerable success in the ABL, left it to play in what eventually became the modern-day NBA. While the ABL saw its usual changing of the guard in teams from one season to the next, often not seeing many teams staying in one spot or otherwise leaving the league completely for one reason or another (either by folding, going independent in the case of the (Original) New York Celtics, or going to the BAA in the case of the Baltimore Bullets), the talent pool of the league diluted itself into being more like a minor league in comparison to the eventual NBA. This led to some of the more prominent teams of the ABL to either dissolve altogether or try to find new existence elsewhere, such as with the Philadelphia Sphas being an independent team competing in exhibition games against the more well-known Harlem Globetrotters. By the time the league had its final season conclude in 1953 (though officially disbanding altogether in 1955), only six teams officially completed that season there: the Elmira Colonels, the Manchester British-Americans, the Middletown Guards, the Pawtucket Slaters, the Scranton Miners, and the Wilkes-Barre Barons, with a seventh based in Glens Falls-Saratoga folding by February 1953. While the Scranton Miners and Wilkes-Barre Barons eventually lasted longer than the ABL did by moving to what eventually became the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) professional league turned minor league before that eventually folded by 2009, one does wonder how some of these teams might fared had they decided to bite the bullet sooner and have some of their teams join the NBA like the Baltimore Bullets before them and tried to find success as professional NBA teams instead, even if they probably needed to move elsewhere to do so due to aforementioned complaints about certain locations from Ned Irish. Alternatively, as mentioned later on below, if Saperstein had lent some of his time and money to the ABL earlier than he did, it might have helped the league last longer than it actually did, to the point of being a serious competitor to the NBA.
• The breaking of the color barrier in the NBL in the 1940's and the NBA not long afterward didn't have the nation-altering drama of Jackie Robinson when the first few black players played professionally in the 1940's and then were drafted in 1950 (for several different reasons, perhaps the biggest being that basketball wasn't central to American life the way baseball was at the time), but the barrier was still there, as was the racism at the heart of it. Even after it was broken with a few black players first joining the NBA by that time, there was an unspoken quota that generally limited teams to three or four black players up until the mid-'60s (the league was still in its unstable infancy, with teams facing threats of folding frequently after seeing its last fold take place in 1954 during the 1954-55 season, and there was a perception that white fans would turn away from the sport if there were too many black players on their teams). A lot of skilled black players therefore never got a chance to play, or found their abilities hindered by the accepted style of the game (or even by their coaches, who sometimes pushed white players of inferior quality into starting or star roles) at the time.
• On November 22, 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Minneapolis Lakers played in the lowest-scoring NBA game of all-time, one that's viewed as a complete anomaly for the sport as we know it today: a 19-18 total score that Fort Wayne won in the end. The reason why it happened was because the Pistons' head coach knew they didn't have a roster that could contain George Mikan (who was considered the best player around at the time), so they had the idea to stall the game once they scored. While the Lakers tried to foul to get the ball back on occasions, the Pistons started out with a 8-7 lead by the end of the first quarter. Even when the Lakers did lead in the game, they eventually copied what the Pistons did back and not let them get the ball as best as they could. This resulted in the Lakers leading 13-11 at halftime (Mikan scoring 12 of the 13 points for the Lakers) and 17-16 by the end of the third quarter. It cumulated into an out of control fourth quarter that had both teams score only one free-throw each in the fourth quarter before rookie Larry Foust scored the game-winning basket over Mikan with 6 seconds left in the game, with the Lakers missing a buzzer-beating shot afterward. However, the aftermath of the game led to some serious damage to the sport, with Lakers coach John Kundla saying play like that will damage the sport's reputation and that he doesn't want another game like this one around in the NBA. While their rematch a day later resulted in much better result for the fans to enjoy (with the Pistons winning 73-63 that time), the only reason why no other teams attempted to try what the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers did that fateful night to win games themselves was because of the Critical Backlash involved with those results from the fans that saw that game live. Early changes were made to the game at the time, including doubling the size of the key from 6 feet to 12 feet, didn't help the problem. In fact, the actual solution to the problem, the advent of the 24-second shot clock, wasn't implemented properly until 1954, when the sport was facing serious dangers of going out of business altogether. Had the shot clock not been invented at all thanks to that game, the sport of basketball might not be as popular as it is now, only being a niche sport outside of college. However, it's also possible that if the shot clock was invented a lot sooner than it was, it could have also helped mitigate some of the damage that game caused, including some of the lost teams potentially surviving beyond the late 1940's and early 1950's. Regardless, there's a reason why this game is looked at as a piece of Old Shame on their history, with some sports websites completely leaving that game out altogether for low-scoring NBA games for one reason or another.
• In 1956, the top prize of the NBA Draft was 2x NCAA champion center Bill Russell from the University of San Francisco. However, the Boston Celtics already moved up to have a territorial pick^*(a special pick where a team forfeited its original first round pick in exchange to select a player that it highly valued who was also within a 50-mile radius of its home arena before the draft even began; the first player that wasn't selected through that measure was officially considered the #1 pick of the draft that year) in Bob Heinsohn, and they still felt a big guy that could grab rebounds for them was the key to make the Celtics true winners under Red Auerbach at long last. Problem was they were too low to consider drafting Bill Russell naturally, having already lost their first-round pick and not selecting again until the second-round^*(before the late 1980s changed how many rounds the NBA Draft had, the league operated the draft like how the MLB, NFL, & NHL did with many rounds involved lasting for multiple days instead of the two rounds for one day they have today). However, they did know the Rochester Royals already had their rebounding player filled up at that point in time with Maurice Stokes^*(One of two players that were the eponymous names for an award for the ideal teammate for a season in the Twyman–Stokes Teammate of the Year Award due to Jack Twyman helping Maurice Stokes after the latter was paralyzed from a seizure in 1958, the aftereffect of a severe head injury suffered in a playoff game several days earlier. Stokes eventually passed away by a heart attack in 1970 while under the care of Twyman as his legal guardian for the last twelve years of his life.), so they needed to help convince the Royals to skip Bill Russell (who would have required a $25,000 signing bonus to join the NBA, which the Royals could not afford) and select guard/forward Sihugo Green instead. Boston's special incentive to convince Rochester that it was the right move for them? Rochester gets guaranteed a performance of the Ice Capades in their city!^note (While it's unknown if that actually happened, Walter Brown was one of the key tenants that allowed for yearly Ice Capades showings at the time, and the Ice Capades did draw huge crowds early in its history, which does lend the story some credence.) Then when the St. Louis Hawks did select Bill Russell with the #2 pick, they allowed for the Celtics to get Bill Russell for themselves, but only if they got eventual 7x All-Star center Ed Macauley (who was born and raised in St. Louis) and forward Cliff Hagan (who also was an eventual multi-time All-Star himself). They accepted those terms after serious debate, and with the second-round selection of Russell's college teammate K.C. Jones, the Celtics not only got their first NBA Finals championship in the rookie seasons of Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, and Bob Heinsohn; they got themselves a dynasty that lasted from the late 1950's through the majority of the entire 1960's. And while the Hawks did get themselves a championship in 1958 with Macauley and Hagan, one does wonder how things would have significantly changed had the Rochester Royals decided to not only select Bill Russell, but paid him what he wanted there. Would the Royals have stayed in Rochester, or would his signing have helped accelerate their move to Cincinnati instead? And that's before talking about the other significant changes along the way.
• The basketball betting scandal masterminded by Jack Molinas^*(who was once considered a talented professional basketball player himself, but got banned for life in the 1950s after a season in the NBA due to pulling a Pete Rose before Pete Rose himself did it professionally and bet on his own team while playing in college) in the late 1950's and early 1960's led to the banning of over 50 players from 27 different colleges and universities, with probably the two most notable being Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown (neither of whom were ever proved of wrongdoing in that time). Both would eventually find some measure of redemption years later in the ABA. Hawkins originally won the only ABL MVP award given out from the early 1960s and played for the Harlem Globetrotters for a few years before eventually being the ABA's first ever MVP award winner, as well as lead the Pittsburgh Pipers to the first ever ABA championship before being allowed to play in the NBA through a coin flip won by the Phoenix Suns (as mentioned in a note below) to eventually become a four-time All-Star when the NBA lifted his ban. Meanwhile, Brown played his whole career in the ABA and was a key player in the Indiana Pacers' three ABA championships (winning the playoff MVP for the first one in 1970) before eventually retiring in 1975, one year before the Pacers and other surviving ABA teams migrated into the NBA. Both players also had their numbers retired by modern NBA teams to this day (Hawkins with the Suns, Brown with the Pacers) and eventually made it to the Basketball Hall of Fame for their overall careers. But if they had been able to develop their skills properly in college, and then play in their primes against some of the Sixties superstars of the NBA, there's no telling how high they might have truly risen in the basketball pantheon.
• Due to the NBA previously having many rounds for their draft (ranging from seven to twenty-one rounds in various years), some teams opted to make some very interesting selections that can warrant what might have been scenarios for some particularly special players at hand. Some players like Jim Brown in 1957, Frank Howard in 1958, Bubba Smith in 1967, Dave Winfield in 1973 (who actually was drafted in three other leagues that year in MLB, the NFL, and the rivaling ABA), and Tony Gwynn in 1981 chose to go play in MLB or the NFL and have success there instead of trying their luck with the NBA with the respective teams that drafted them. Others like Bob Beamon in 1969, Bruce Jenner in 1976, and Carl Lewis in 1984 were chosen for their personal successes in the Olympics in their respective years they competed in and felt like worthwhile enough gambles late in those draft years for their Olympic-ready bodies, even though none of them ever played basketball collegiately. Bruce & Carl were especially notable because of the former transitioning into a female in the 2010s (which would have made her the first player in league history to be transgendered) and the latter potentially being teammates with Michael Jordan himself on that same draft year! However, arguably the biggest what might have been cases relate to the selections of Lusia "Lucy" Harris in 1977 due to her being the only biological female in NBA history to officially be drafted into the NBA^*(Denise Long was also drafted into the NBA in 1969 by the San Francisco Warriors as their initial 13th round pick that year, but they admitted that they had no interest in having Long playing alongside the other men there whatsoever, which led to then-commissioner Walter Kennedy voiding their selection that year and thus making Long's draft selection unofficial.) and Yasutaka Okayama in 1981 potentially being the Japanese version of Yao Ming before Yao took his first steps^*(Yasutaka stood at 7'8" tall, which would have made him the tallest player in NBA history, even more than Manute Bol and Gheorghe Mureșan in later years; the reason why he did not go to the NBA was because of confusion in Japan to how the NBA's contracts and structuring of deals there worked, along the fact that the NBA didn't have a farm league at the time. As for Yao, he was born in September 1980, less than a year before Yasutaka was drafted.). Many of these cases could have led to interesting results with the sport had some of these players chose (or were allowed) to play in the NBA.
  • On a related note, from the 1950's to even now, certain nations like China, the former USSR, and especially North Korea nowadays were restricted access to allowing certain players of theirs to join professional sports leagues in the US due to the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 overseeing or otherwise restricting the US to trade with enemy nations of the time on certain goods and materials. For the NBA in particular, this led to certain great basketball talents from those nations like Mu Tiezhu from China and Ri Myung-Hun (who at one point was considered the tallest person in the world) from North Korea being forbidden from playing in the NBA due to American policies conflicting with Cold War behaviors in China and North Korea over anything else on their ends. Considering the amount of players from the former USSR and Yugoslavia in particular that eventually made it to the Basketball Hall of Fame in spite of those policies at hand, one can reasonably wonder how much interest for the sport itself would have grown in those nations worldwide had players like Mu and Ri ended up joining the NBA properly in spite of political conflicts of interest. Mu in particular gained such interest due to how his playing style compared to Yao Ming's in the NBA (which led to outlets considering him an honorary draftee had Mao Zedong's China not been so extreme through Mao's version of Communism at the time), while Ri gained national coverage for his height (being taller than both Manute Bol & Gheorghe Mureșan at around 7'9") and aforementioned interest in playing for the NBA in spite of Kim Jong-Il's nationalist dictatorship. Currently, the only nation that has such political restrictions is Cuba, who actually had two players from there playing in the NBA at one point in Andrés Guibert and Lazaro Borrell (the latter of whom defected from Cuba to live with the former at one point, interestingly enough), though Cuba has gained less interest because of the sport of basketball being less fond there when compared to baseball.
• Originally, Abe Saperstein was promised a team in Los Angeles that would be owned by him after failing to get the Chicago Stags in 1950. However, once the Minneapolis Lakers were granted permission to move to Los Angeles in 1960, he felt he was slighted by the NBA after years of early support by allowing the league to have doubleheaders early on in their history with the Harlem Globetrotters. As such, he started a collaboration with Paul Cohen (who owned the New York Tapers from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) at the time) and a young George Steinbrenner (who owned the National Industrial Basketball League (NIBL) and AAU-based Cleveland Pipers at the time) to take some of the best teams from both the AAU and the remaining NIBL (the latter composing of industrial workers that initially competed with the NBA's salary at the time) and having them compete in Saperstein's attempted revival at the ABL, which officially started in 1961. Unlike the original version of the ABL, Abe's version looked to compete with the NBA by not only having a 30-second shot clock, but also an 18-foot free-throw line as opposed to the then-standard 12-foot free-throw line (as well as implement the three-point line as mentioned above). While the three-point line and wider free-throw line eventually became successful additions for the modern-day sport (albeit implemented differently than what the ABL had at that time), the league failed to gain greater traction to compete against the NBA, eventually folding before the year 1963 came to be for the league's second season. However, a few moments from that league did stick out.
  • First, Saperstein almost didn't plan on doing it altogether, primarily had he got his way and had his own team in Los Angeles first. Had the Lakers stayed in Minneapolis, it's possible he might have backed out on creating his own league and focused on either making his Los Angeles-based team be competitive on its own or made both it and his Harlem Globetrotters become successful together. However, he did make arrangements for a competitive league to go against the NBA as early as 1959, meaning it might have been too late to change plans otherwise. Alternatively, had the operation been in place a few years earlier, it's also possible Abe might have had the tools to help save the original ABL from folding if he wanted to do so.
  • Abe also planned on having his own Los Angeles-based team, the Jets, compete against the Lakers for fanbase appeal. To do so, he had a few NBA caliber players like Larry Friend and future Hall of Famer George Yardley join the recently-implemented head coach Bill Sharman (who himself was a future Hall of Famer as both player and coach) to give them instant credibility as both a team and as a league. However, the team failed to garner significant interest in Los Angeles, sometimes reaching as low as only hundreds of fans, before folding during the first half of the league's only full season by January 1961.
  • While the ABL used the Harlem Globetrotters as doubleheader matches like the NBA did in their early days, the Globetrotters by the early 1960s weren't seen as the huge selling point for people to go to basketball games like they were in their early days (though they still maintained a huge fan presence and following years afterward). Combine that with no TV scheduling to help promote the league and low crowds for arguably even the most successful teams in places like Kansas City and Cleveland, and one can see where the writing was going to be pretty quickly.
  • One positive note in mind for the ABL in the early 1960s was that they held the first African-American coaches in professional basketball history, one of whom had previously been successful in college with Tennessee A&I (now Tennessee State). This would occur years before the NBA first implemented African-American coaches for their teams to use, like with Bill Russell, who became one of the last player-coaches in the history of the NBA during the waning years of the Boston Celtics' dynasty (and eventually a Hall of Famer as a coach as well as a player). Not only that, but they also helped players affected by the point shaving scandal of the early 1960s got a second chance in the ABL, most notably Connie Hawkins, as mentioned above.
  • While the ABL officially folded by New Year's Eve of 1962, Abe Saperstein and George Steinbrenner had one last gambit to gain some success from the league itself. George's team that he owned, the Cleveland Pipers, planned to sign star player Jerry Lucas away from the Cincinnati Royals due to the Pipers planning on giving Lucas greater personal interest towards himself beyond monetary gains, to the point of even shortening their second season for him. Meanwhile, Abe planned on having the Pipers merge with the Kansas City Steers to have that team go into the NBA as an expansion team there, to the point where the NBA initially printed out a schedule featuring the Pipers going up against the Knicks as their first opponent. However, due to a lawsuit by the ABL itself combined with the Royals forcing an increase in pay for the Pipers to join the NBA since they originally owned his player rights at the time as a Territorial pick, the Cleveland Pipers could not keep up monetarily, and they folded with Abe being in significant debt afterward. Had they kept up with payments and not gotten sued, who knows if George's success in baseball would have been met early on in the NBA or not.
• Before the modern-day Denver Nuggets came to be, they started out as the Denver Larks, changing to Rockets before playing their first ABA game and later changing their name to the Nuggets in 1974 as an incentive to go to the NBA. However, they had a different plan for their team altogether at the time. In fact, they originally intended to start out in Kansas City back in their planning stages. However, before even coming up with a team name, they found out there wasn't a venue big enough for their games, so they moved to Denver instead. Then, before playing a single game as the Larks, the original owners of the team turned out to be severely undercapitalized, to the point of not having the team at all before they sold a majority share to Bill Ringsby for $350,000, which led to his decision to rename the team to the Rockets. The Nuggets we know of today might not even be a thing at all had they either stayed in Kansas City, Missouri as planned or didn't sell their ownership share to later become the Rockets by the 11th hour.
• In 1967, the NCAA once banned the slam dunk as an official shot to the game due to growing concerns both inside and outside the NCAA (including the NBA early on) that the dunk was only a shot that advantaged the really tall players of the game (mainly power forwards and centers). While the shot arguably first became a thing during the 1936 Berlin Olympics by American Joe Fortenberry, it first showed up collegiately in 1944 by Bob Kurland, which led the NCAA to also briefly ban goaltending during his time in college due to his height. At the time, basketball purists like Kansas coach Phog Allen thought the dunk was something that did not take basketball skills whatsoever, with others claiming dunks from other players afterward broke an unwritten rule of the game. The banning of the slam dunk lasted until 1977, by which time the slam dunk was growing in popularity especially in the ABA, utilizing it as one of their special events for their All-Star Weekend back in 1976. While people nowadays can't imagine the sport without the slam dunk, people can likely say the sport would be less fun if that ban was still in place.
• For Phoenix Suns fans, it would be what if the coin flip ended up giving the Suns the number 1 draft pick in 1969? In 1969, both the Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks had the worst records in the NBA, and they decided on who gets pick #1 by a coin toss (the NBA's first ever coin toss for #1), and then-President Jerry Colangelo would decide on heads or tails. Unfortunately, he chose incorrectly, and the Suns had to get pick #2, which ended up being Florida center Neal Walk. The #1 pick of that year? A prospect known as Lew Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).^note Walk actually had some potential — in his best season he averaged 20 points and 12 rebounds a game — but he took up vegetarianism and lost a lot of weight, and his productivity plummeted in the process. However, they did get the aforementioned Connie Hawkins from a completely different coin flip against the Seattle SuperSonics later that same year. Unfortunately for Suns fans, the "what if" did not leave them by the time the 2021 NBA Finals (which had the Suns play against those same Milwaukee Bucks) concluded.
  • Another Alcindor story: The ABA, knowing he was the kind of player that could give their entire league legitimacy, was desperate to sign him, to the point that they hired private investigators to help them figure out the best way to approach him. Alcindor told both leagues that he wasn't interested in a lot of negotiating, so they should just present him with their best offer and he would make his decision. The ABA's research told them this was true, so they wrote a million-dollar check out to him to show how serious they were. But ABA commissioner George Mikan, for some reason, didn't give him the check and instead gave him a lower offer, believing he would come back after hearing Milwaukee's offer for further negotiating. He didn't. Some of the ABA guys actually chased Alcindor and his parents down at the airport to show him the check, but he had made his commitment to Milwaukee and wouldn't go back on his word (something else their research told them would be the case). The whole debacle was enough to finally convince the ABA owners that they needed to get rid of Mikan. The ABA probably still would have eventually been absorbed by the NBA (that was the ABA owners' goal from the start) anyway, but it's anyone's guess how different it might have been if Alcindor had gone with them.
  • One more story, this time relating to the slam dunk ban mentioned above. In Alcindor's first year at UCLA, he had a tendency to dunk the ball a lot in his first year there. There was even an outrageous sounding claim that 1,500 players got hurt around the basket that season, with some of the blame being placed on Alcindor in particular that season. Even so, many people (including some of the referees at the time) did think the banning of the slam dunk in the NCAA was placed because of Alcindor in particular, to the point where people dubbed it the "Lew Alcindor Rule". Alcindor himself even viewed it as discriminatory at the time due to the rise of African-American athletes in general, not just in the sport of basketball. Regardless, the rule did help him implement a new move called the skyhook shot that he utilized not just for the rest of his collegiate career, but the entirety of his professional career afterward. Had the ban not occur, who knows if his patented skyhook would have even happened at all, with him eventually being the all-time scoring leader for the NBA as of 2022.
• Believe it or not, the ABA and NBA actually entered merger negotiations all the way back in 1969 back when teams like the Houston Mavericks, Los Angeles Stars, New Orleans Buccaneers, Oakland Oaks (or Washington Caps), and the Minnesota (or Pittsburgh) Pipers first existed. Many of the original ABA team owners had going to the NBA become their main goal at hand. However, the NBA players union actually filed a suit to block the merger, since they saw the new league as a way for them to make more money and to force NBA owners to make concessions in the process. While the lawsuit ([Oscar] Robertson v. National Basketball Association) eventually led to the advent of NBA free agency, it actually ended up costing the players jobs in the short term, as the eventual merger involved only four teams, not the eleven that would've joined in 1970. Though later expansions would bring the total number of NBA teams close to what would've been, a 1970 merger would have placed NBA teams in Louisville, KY (Kentucky Colonels), Pittsburgh, PA (Pittsburgh Condors) and Richmond, VA (Virginia Squires), along with placing teams in Charlotte (Carolina Cougars), Dallas (Dallas Chaparrals), Memphis (Memphis Pros), Miami (Miami Floridians), and Salt Lake City (Utah Stars) years earlier than they would've gotten them otherwise. Even if they had settled in 1975 (one year earlier than they did) and done the merger by then, most of those same teams that dissolved by 1976 would have had a greater chance to survive better in the NBA, with San Diego (San Diego Conquistadors (or Sails)) and St. Louis (Spirits of St. Louis or potentially be renamed as the St. Louis Spirits) also getting included in that later expansion as well, even with no teams in Pittsburgh or Miami being included alongside the aforementioned Carolina Cougars being relocated to St. Louis as the Spirits and the Dallas Chaparrals still becoming the San Antonio Spurs by then (with the Denver Rockets also being the modern Denver Nuggets and the Memphis Sounds probably (not?) moving to Baltimore) instead.
• During the 1970 NBA Draft, the Atlanta Hawks drafted two of the first players to ever be selected from international (a.k.a., European-based) leagues to become potential NBA players. Both players taken were playing in the (Lega Basket) Serie A basketball league from Italy, with the Mexican-born Manuel Raga being taken first as the 167th pick (from the 10th round) of the draft and the Italian-born Dino Meneghin following suit in the 11th round as the 182nd pick of the draft. Unfortunately for both Raga and Meneghin, both players were taken late in the 1970 draft, and as such, had little chance on joining the Hawks properly. Not only that, but they didn't have the $35,000 extra for either player to be bought out of their European contracts at the time. What makes this more unfortunate for the Hawks, though, was the fact that both Raga and Meneghin have been considered some of the greatest EuroLeague players in history, with them both being named two of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors and entering the FIBA Hall of Fame long after retiring from basketball (with Meneghin also being in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame). This makes one wonder how long was European sports delayed from showing off their skills to the rest of the world had either one of those two ever played in the NBA at some point instead of continued playing in Europe years later, especially it'd be over a decade before NBA teams decided to draft players from other, international leagues and actually have them play in the NBA with the selection of Georgi Glouchkov in 1985 as opposed to those from American colleges and universities. For Raga especially, it makes one wonder if more Mexican players would have garnered interest in the NBA sooner than they did had they seen Raga succeed with the Hawks or elsewhere in the NBA.
• Returning to some more ABA craziness: After his junior year in college, Julius "Dr. J" Erving signed with the Virginia Squires of the ABA. He had a stellar rookie season before then signing with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. A couple of days later, he was actually drafted in the NBA by the Milwaukee Bucks. All three teams went to court to fight for his player rights. In the meantime, he went to the Hawks' training camp and even played a couple of exhibition games with the team... alongside "Pistol" Pete Maravich. It was eventually ruled that he had to return to the Squires (who ultimately traded him a year later to the New York Nets, who then sold him to the Philadelphia 76ers at the time of the NBA-ABA merger to raise the money to pay off the in-state rival Knicks (see below)), but it's mind-boggling to imagine what would have happened if he'd stayed with the Hawks with "Pistol" Pete (or for that matter, gone to Milwaukee, where he would have been playing with Kareem and Oscar Robertson instead).
  • And for even more craziness: When the New York Nets joined the NBA, they had to pay the entrance fee and pay a fine to the New York Knicks for invading their "territory". One of the Nets' proposals was to simply give Dr. J to the Knicks, but the Knicks rejected it. Thus, Dr. J went to the 76ers, who instantly became a title contender, while the Knicks, two-time champions in the 70s, descended into mediocrity, frequently missing the playoffs altogether and not making it past the second round until 1993 under the Patrick Ewing era. Furthermore, after moving to New Jersey a season after joining the NBA, the Nets returned to New York in 2012 anyway, albeit with Brooklyn being the specific hosts for them going forward. In retrospect, they should've taken Doc instead.
• For some more ABA-related situations at hand, when the Kentucky Colonels won their only ABA championship in 1975, the Colonels challenged the NBA Finals champions that year in the Golden State Warriors to what they considered as the "World Series of Basketball", similar to what the obvious World Series is to baseball or what the Super Bowl became for the NFL with two competing leagues going for the ultimate championship in the sport. For the Colonels, their challenge was to see if the Warriors could defeat them in the event (either in a winner takes all match like the Super Bowl or the actual World Series), and if they did, they'd get the $1,000,000 that would have been projected earnings through viewership at the time (if the Colonels won, they'd likely be named the ultimate champions for basketball and keep the money for themselves instead). Golden State ultimately declined, though the two did meet in the 1975 preseason, with Kentucky winning a close 93-90 match over the Warriors. Similarly, the New York Nets (the final champions of the ABA) wanted a similar situation to occur with the 1976 NBA Finals champions in the Boston Celtics, though just like Golden State before them, Boston declined the offer despite the proceeds going to benefit the 1976 U.S. Olympic team instead and CBS genuinely wanting the Super Ball idea to go down for their sake. Had the first attempt of a World Series or Super Bowl equivalent gone the way the Colonels hoped it would have, would the ABA not only have survived with the perceived viewership from the event, but could it have saved it to the point of the NBA having its own National Association and American Association representing a merger where all the ABA teams at the time would have gone to the NBA after plans initially stalled in 1970 and represented its own conference like the American League does for baseball and the AFC does as the spiritual representation of the American Football League rivaling the NFL back in the day? (It should be noted that in the years the NBA & ABA competed against each other in the preseason, the ABA actually won more of its games than the NBA did.) Matter of fact, would the success from that NBA-ABA championship match potentially resulted in the WHA for hockey trying to do something similar with the NHL as well (perhaps with the Stanley Cup?), thus probably making those special championships become the norm for all major professional sports leagues going forward?
• Even more ABA business: when the ABA/NBA merger was agreed to in 1976, the original four teams tabbed for the merger were the San Antonio Spurs (the ABA's attendance leader) and the ABA's strongest remaining teams: the Denver Nuggets, the New York Nets (both of whom tried to jump ship to the NBA early by the 1975 preseason)... and the Kentucky Colonels (the team that the Nuggets and Nets wanted to see join them in their early jump back in 1975, but didn't due to their loyalty to the ABA). The Chicago Bulls protested the possible inclusion of the Colonels; mostly because they coveted Kentucky's star player, center Artis Gilmore (whose NBA draft rights they owned). The NBA, not wanting a fight with one of its biggest franchises in that time (despite the Colonels being one of the most profitable franchises themselves in either league), chose the Indiana Pacers as the fourth team. (The only other surviving ABA team left over, the Spirits of St. Louis (who planned to be the Utah Rockies had they actually joined the other ABA teams that were planned to enter the NBA), were never seriously considered for the merger.^note [Though St. Louis' owners, Ozzie and Daniel Silna, cut a deal that would pay them 1/7th of the TV revenue earned by the four teams that did make it. A deal that, while appearing foolish at the time, paid them more than $300 million over the three-plus decades that followed. And would have paid them more, factoring in online and international revenue, had the NBA not bought out the deal for $500 million in 2013.])
  • Had the then-defunct Virginia Squires stayed solvent for just one more month (literally playing just one more regular season game before their season concluded and meeting at least one more ABA mandated financial assessment), the owners would've received one of the same buyout packages that both the Colonels and the Spirits got. Instead, they ultimately got nothing, just like the other owners of failed, dissolved ABA teams by that season in the Utah Stars^*(who played in 16 games for their final season before dissolving as a result of a failed attempt by the team's owner to become a governor of Colorado for some reason (yes, really)), the San Diego Sails^*(who played in 11 games before dissolving in their only season as the Sails (previously being named the San Diego Conquistadors earlier on) due to a combination of an unfavorable early schedule and the team owner hearing in advance that the Sails weren't going to be one of the teams included in the upcoming merger), and even the Baltimore Claws^*(the franchise that was originally the Memphis Sounds moved to Baltimore to first become the Baltimore Hustlers before playing a game and then became the Baltimore Claws for only three losing preseason games (including an NBA-ABA match between them and the Philadelphia 76ers) with low home attendance before dissolving completely by then through very poor new ownership).
  • On another note regarding the Kentucky Colonels, their team owner, John Y. Brown Jr.,^note later governor of Kentucky received $3 million to buy the upstart Buffalo Braves from Paul Snyder (later being joined by minority owner Harry Mangurian Jr. during the team's final season in Buffalo). However, due in part of pressures from then-Canisius College administrator James Demske and being third to date choosing behind the Buffalo Sabres (who Snyder had a feud with at the time due to his upstart nature) and Canisius' Griffins basketball team within the shared Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, Brown and Mangurian eventually had no choice but to force a decline in viewership within the auditorium in order to then swap team ownership rights with then-Boston Celtics owners Irv Levin, who had a desire to own a team in California, and Harold Lipton. That trade in ownership led to Brown selling his ownership share exclusively to Mangurian to become the full-time owner of the team during the early 1980s, jumpstarting a new era of Celtics championship basketball, while Levin & Lipton completed the move of the Buffalo Braves in 1978 to become the San Diego Clippers, who have their own crazy history down below. With Canisius College seeing a permanent decline in sports a few years later in the 1980s, Paul Snyder later admitted in 2016 had James Demske not held a major grudge against the Braves (or if Canisius' decline in the sports world been a lot sooner than it was), he would have helped keep the team in Buffalo, which meant a lot of their future problems they had from the 1980s onward (especially with ownership) probably would have never happened in the first place.
• Jerry Sloan, who'd retired as a player in 1976, was considered the heir apparent to Arad McCutchan, the longtime head coach at his alma mater the University of Evansville, who'd won five NCAA Division II championships, including back-to-back titles led by Sloan in 1964 and 1965. With Evansville moving to Division I for the 1977-78 season, McCutchan retired after the 1976-77 campaign and Sloan stepped in to take the job. However, Sloan immediately felt uneasy about the whole situation and decided he'd made a mistake, resigning from the job after just five days. Four games into the season, Evansville's plane crashed shortly after takeoff en route to a game at Middle Tennessee State, killing everyone on board, including Sloan's replacement Bobby Watson. One angle for the aftermath of this tragedy was that it hobbled Evansville's basketball program, which has had some modest success in D-I, but has only made the NCAA tournament five times since the move, with just one first round win. The other is the question of what would've happened on the NBA level with the Utah Jazz had Sloan perished in the crash, with Sloan having gone on to coach the team for 28 seasons, including NBA Finals appearances in 1997 and 1998.
• The 1979 NBA Draft and its prize player, Earvin "Magic" Johnson. From 1969 to 1984, the first pick was awarded via coin flip between the teams with the worst records in the Eastern and Western Conferences. The top pick would thus go to the East's Chicago Bulls or the West's Utah Jazz. The Jazz won the coin flip, but owed the pick to the Los Angeles Lakers via a compensatory deal for the Jazz' signing of free agent Gail Goodrich.^note Then, the free agency system was basically what would be considered restricted free agency now. So with a different choice or a different turn of a coin, Magic could have ended up a Bull or a member of the Jazz. Without Magic, the Lakers probably don't go on their dominant run in the 1980s. With Johnson on either the Bulls or Jazz, this creates a ripple effect putting in doubt whether either team would be in position to draft its signature players later on (Michael Jordan in 1984 for the Bulls, Karl Malone in 1984 and John Stockton in 1985 for the Jazz).
  • Though Magic himself has stated that if Chicago had gotten the first pick, he would have returned to Michigan State (he'd gotten a special "hardship" exemption to leave college early, which was necessary in that era, but he still had the option to pull out of the draft and go back to college). In that instance, who knows what dominoes would have fallen had Johnson stayed out of the 1979 draft and entered the 1980 draft instead?
  • Along the same lines, Larry Bird was (in)famously drafted by the Celtics in 1978 but decided to return to college for his senior year. It's hard to imagine what might have happened if he hadn't. Certainly the "Magic and Bird era" (which started in 1979 when they both entered the league, coming off their massively-hyped NCAA Championship game that year) would be perceived very differently, assuming it existed at all. If Bird had entered the league a year earlier it might also have thrown off the deal that landed the Celtics Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, who did nearly as much as Bird himself in solidifying the team's legacy in the 1980s.
• There are two other notable WCHB when it comes to Larry Bird:
  • Larry Bird actually started his college career at Indiana University under legendary coach Bob Knight at a time they were a National Powerhouse. But he only stayed on campus 24 days due to feeling overwhelmed by the “big city” of Bloomington^note  The population was about 60,000 at the time and the many middle and upper class kids he could not relate to since he grew up in poverty in the small town of French Lick. Worse yet he was bullied by many of the other players, most notably Kent Benson^note  Bird never forgot how Benson had treated him during his short stay at IU. Benson was the number one overall draft pick in 1977 but never lived up to the expectations a number one overall pick has. legendary trash talker Bird never let Benson forget that and every time the Celtics played Milwaukee, Detroit, or Utah Bird would spend the entire game making sure whomever Benson was guarding would get the ball constantly so they could rack up huge numbers and humiliate him even further. He literally hitchhiked back home having never played a game or even participated in an official practice at IU. He spent the remainder of the year working odd jobs for the city of French Lick and played for a local Community College. He stated that he was very happy back home and felt his family needed him there. However he drew the interest of an Assistant Coach named Bill Hodges at Indiana State University. Bird’s grandmother convinced him to give college another try. Bird was much more comfortable at the smaller Indiana State and when Bill Hodges eventually took the Head Coaching job he was smart enough to realize that he had a once in a lifetime talent so he just let him do his own thing. The rest is history.
  • However if Bird had stayed at IU^note  In fairness there was little reason at the time to believe that Larry Bird would become a Superstar. He was only 6-6 and skinny as a rail (he would eventually grow to 6-9 and add a lot of muscle). He was slow and could not jump well (that never changed). While his His High School numbers were very impressive, he played for a small school that only played other small schools and he faced very few individuals who would go on to play in college. By comparison the rest of the IU lineup featured first team all state players who had grown up playing for top programs and played against the best competition, as a Freshman he likely would’ve been a backup forward on the 1974-1975 team that seemed destined to win the National Championship with a perfect record. But late in the season star forward Scott May broke his arm and missed the rest of the season. Bird likely would have filled May’s spot. The team eventually lost in the Elite Eight finishing the season 31-1. The 1975-1976 team is to date the last NCAA DI men’s team to have a perfect season, but the 76-77 and 77-78 teams were both mediocre with the 76-77 team not even making the tournament. Those would have been Bird’s Junior and Senior years.
• After the 1979 draft concluded, the Indiana Pacers allowed for a woman named Ann Meyers (now Ann Meyers Drysdale) to sign a no-cut contract worth $50,000 for a shot to join the team. She actually competed for a spot on the team, but ultimately was not given one despite her talents at UCLA and the Olympics suggesting she could have earned a spot with the Pacers that season. What makes her notable was the fact that while Denise Long and Lucy Harris were both drafted by NBA teams, Ann Meyers was the first (and currently only) woman to ever actually tryout for a spot on an actual NBA team. While Meyers never got a shot to tryout for another NBA team again, she did end up playing for the New Jersey Gems in the short-lived Women's Professional Basketball League (which can be seen as a predecessor for the current WNBA) and got herself a long-standing career as a color analyst for the sport of basketball afterward, the latter of which wasn't seen often for women trying to enter that profession at the time. However, one does wonder how significantly different the NBA and women's basketball as a whole would have been had Ann Meyers (or even Denise Long or Lucy Harris) successfully joined the NBA.
• Shortly before starting his college career; Patrick Ewing was leaning toward signing with the University of North Carolina... until seeing a Ku Klux Klan rally not far from the hotel he was staying in; choosing instead to sign with Georgetown, and no doubt leaving plenty of what-ifs about a potential UNC Tar Heels team with Ewing playing alongside Michael Jordan and (during his freshman year) James Worthy.
• Donald Sterling had a friendship with Lakers owner Jerry Buss, to the point where both men were actually responsible for getting the other to own an NBA team around the greater Orange County area.^note Buss sold a portion of his apartments from Sterling to help purchase the Lakers, Kings, and the Los Angeles Forum from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979, while Buss persuaded Sterling back to purchase the San Diego Clippers from Irv Levin (who previously traded his ownership rights of the Boston Celtics with former Kentucky Colonels and then-current Buffalo Braves owner John Y. Brown Jr. to help move the team to San Diego and become the Clippers instead) for $12.5 million two years later. However, while Buss' ownership is seen with huge praise even after his death, Sterling's ownership was met with scorn almost immediately from most of the other team owners. Aside from his Blatant Lies on wanting to help the Clippers become immediate contenders and to become a team people (in San Diego) would be proud of, Sterling immediately tried to force a move of the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles back in 1982, a year after purchasing the team. However, an investigation on the Clippers led by a committee of six owners almost led to the early termination of Sterling as owner of the Clippers due to him being late for paying both his creditors and players, which would have been 32 years overdue considering the rest of their team's history before Sterling's eventual lifetime ban from the NBA in 2014 for blatant racism against African-Americans coming to his team's games, specifically toward Magic Johnson. Before he would have been removed by votes, Sterling initially agreed to actually sell the team, with the NBA even looking for new owners to keep them in San Diego going forward. However, the NBA's Vice President at the time, David Stern, suggested to let Alan Rothenberg become the team's president and oversee the operations duties of the franchise, but let Donald Sterling keep his ownership stake in exchange. While Stern later dubbed the Clippers as a "first-class" organization by February 1983 and withdrew Sterling's complete removal from the Clippers, the general counsel of the NBPA^*(the National Basketball Players Association, a labor union representing all NBA players) noted that Sterling caused so many difficulties with the players that it almost caused three different strikes with the NBA itself that season. Despite the multiple causes for concern, Sterling ended up forcing the Clippers to move to Los Angeles in 1984 as in-city rivals with the Lakers; while the NBA fined Sterling $25 million and even threatened to dissolve the organization completely if ownership did not comply with the NBA's demands to move them back to San Diego by a lawsuit, Sterling ended up filing his own antitrust lawsuit of $100 million with encouragement through seeing the results of the Oakland Raiders moving to Los Angeles with their own antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in 1984, which resulted in the NBA conceding to Sterling's wishes that year (though he still had to pay $6 million in fines in order to make their move to Los Angeles happen and for both sides to drop their lawsuits against each other). Had David Stern not allowed Donald Sterling a second chance at ownership with the Clippers, not only would the team likely have stayed in San Diego, but they probably would be a lot better respected now than they ever were throughout Sterling's ownership. It's also possible the NBA wouldn't have stopped the old coin flip method for the #1 pick as soon as they did that same year had Sterling not acted like he did in general.
• A little-known postscript of then-NAIA Chaminade University's landmark upset of #1-ranked Virginia in 1982 is that the NIT courted Chaminade for a possible bid, and Chaminade was considering it. They ultimately said no because the timing of the NIT would conflict with the NAIA national tournament (where Chaminade made the Final Four before losing to eventual champ College of Charleston). Chaminade's athletic director Mike Vasconcellos later said, in hindsight, he should've gone with the NIT bid. If they did, it would've given the NIT a David vs. Goliath storyline that undoubtedly would've generated extra interest in the tournament, during the era when it was rapidly turning into an afterthought as the NCAA tournament gained popularity.
• While many famous names of the 1984 NBA Draft come up to help represent its all-time greatness, one later selection that was had in the sixth round that year had no real bearings in NBA history, but plenty of greatness in international basketball. The man selected in that round was Oscar Schmidt, who was taken by the New Jersey Nets that year. Schmidt had already held greatness early on in his career, playing professionally a decade earlier as early as 1974 in his native Brazil back when he was 16 years old. However, he really gained interest by the Nets during his time in Italy, where he turned a 2nd Division Italian team into top tier, eventual champions in Italy. However, the Nets had serious interest in signing him, to the point where they offered him a fully guaranteed contract in the preseason. Despite the intent, Schmidt ultimately declined the Nets for two reasons: his pay was considered less than what he got in Italy at the time and he would have been barred from competing with Brazil in the Olympics at the time.^note (At the time, professional NBA players were barred from competing in the Olympics, though the same was not said for players in other professional leagues at the time. That ruling eventually changed in 1989 due to the Soviet Union circumventing the rules on amateur play as late as 1988.) Schmidt later became an all-time great throughout both Brazil and Europe, to the point where by the time he officially retired at 45 years old in 2003, his all-time scoring resulted in 42,044 points scored internationally with professional clubs played by that time, with the inclusion of Brazilian national team games played increasing the total to 49,737 career points scored altogether. For reference, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all-time scoring record in the NBA was 38,387 points (44,149 points including playoff games), with LeBron James only recently surpassing his regular season career record on February 7, 2023. However, had Oscar chosen to play in the NBA without monetary or Olympiad concerns, would Schmidt have continued to be great even in the NBA? Would he have been the first international player to become a star in the NBA, inspiring many more Brazilians to play in the NBA than what the nation already has?
• The NBA's first attempt with a draft lottery, the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery, is the one lottery event that has been met with the most controversy for them. The reason for that was that one of the envelopes picked from the lottery (the one that became the Knicks' envelope) was banged against the metal rod inside the ball that was thrown into itt (making it have a banged up corner to dent it up a bit) while every other envelope that got thrown in were left intact (as shown here). Furthermore, the envelope was below another envelope (this one held by the Kings, who recently moved out of Kansas City to play in Sacramento) that commissioner David Stern had picked up alongside the Knicks' envelope, but was moved around and dropped by Stern to declare the Knicks had the #1 pick that year. The guy selected? Patrick Ewing, a star-studded center from Georgetown who had his own moment mentioned above in college. Of course, Ewing also had great success in the NBA as well, with his time in New York helping the NBA out in getting newer, better deals to help it grow to greater levels than it ever had before. However, had this lottery not been considered rigged by people for one reason or another, would the NBA have had the greater deals they had to catapult the league to great success from the late 1980s and beyond that point? After all, this same system continued to be used until 1990, when they went with a more weighted lottery system for the top three (later four) picks over going through every lottery team one at a time from first to last. Matter of fact, would the Sacramento Kings have gotten Ewing a greater chance at winning the NBA Finals in his career than the Knicks did, just by the virtue of going to the Western Conference instead of the Eastern Conference for the majority of his career?
• One of the most tragic "what might have been" stories in sports is that of Len Bias. Drafted second overall in the 1986 NBA draft by the defending champion Boston Celtics (they got the number two selection due to a previous trade), Bias was considered a can't-miss prospect. He died of a cocaine overdose two days after the draft. Celtics fans point to Bias' death as the start of their decade-long descent into mediocrity (hitting rock bottom with another untimely death of a star player, this time Reggie Lewis, in 1993).
  • A clean and alive Len Bias on the Celtics quite possibly would've helped give the "Bad Boy" Detroit Pistons and the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls a run for their money. Bias was supposed to become the new focal point/franchise player/anchor of the Celtics once Larry Bird (who finally had to retire in 1992 due to back issues) finally stepped aside. Bias coming off the bench would've also helped lighten the load of the already battered and aging Celtics (like during the 1987 Finals against the Lakers).
  • Another tragic "what might have been" story involved a potential #1 pick in 1990: Hank Gathers of Loyola Marymount University. Despite Loyola Marymount never being considered a top basketball university, what made Gathers in particular stand out in that university was that in his 1988–89 junior season, he was only the second player in NCAA Division I men's history to lead D-I in both scoring and rebounds in the same season^*after Wichita State's Xavier McDaniel in 1984–85. He was projected to be the #1 pick by draft pundits until March 4, 1990, when Gathers collapsed on the floor during a West Coast Conference Tournament game against the University of Portland (future Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was playing point guard for Portland at the time of the collapse), then failed to start breathing again and was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital hours later via hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; Gathers had also collapsed in a game earlier in the season and was diagnosed with heart arrhythmia. The announcement of his sudden death led to not just the #1 pick being changed up to later become Derrick Coleman for that season, but also canceled the WCC Tournament, with the Lions earning the bid for the NCAA Tournament automatically due to them having the best record in their conference that season. LMU did go as far as the Elite Eight that season, losing to UNLV (the eventual champions that year) in a blowout manner, but one does wonder how far they could have truly gone had Hank not been dealing with such a serious condition to his body in his senior year. In fact, could they have been considered a top tier basketball university at one point had Hank not passed away, to the point of potentially winning the NCAA Tournament that season? Plus, seeing that LMU has been in the same conference as Gonzaga since the latter joined in 1979, could the Lions have snuffed out the Zags' meteoric rise (discussed later in this folder) before it ever had a chance to take place?
  • The most recent tragic case relating to potential drafting of a star-caliber player revolves around the case of Terrence Clarke, a five-star recruit that committed to the University of Kentucky in 2019, but played for them in their 2020–21 season. Unlike the other two tragic cases, though, Clarke only played in a limited amount of games with Kentucky in his sole season there due to a right leg injury during that season. Even so, Clarke had displayed plenty of talent during his time in high school and college. However, a day after agreeing to a deal with the Klutch Sports Group (a sports management group created by LeBron James and his friend Rich Paul for basketball players), Clarke was tragically killed in a car crash that also included his Kentucky teammate Brandon Boston Jr. seeing the crash as the car behind him. While we will never know if he could have improved his potential draft spot (he was still considered a first-round talent before his death) or if he would have been a star caliber player in the NBA, his family did receive a heartwarming moment in the 2021 NBA Draft, where after his eulogy was held in between the 14th and 15th selections of the event, the NBA honored him by selecting Clarke in his memory with his family accepting the honor. The moment was the second time in NBA history (at least under Adam Silver's tenure as commissioner) that a player was selected by the league itself after shocking news involving a player comes out to the public.^note The first moment of that came in 2014, when center Isaiah Austin was forced to withdraw from the NBA Draft that year due to his diagnosis of Marfan syndrome affecting his status as a basketball player, if only for a few years, though Austin was at least able to play again (in overseas leagues) by 2017.
• On Draft Day 1986, the 76ers traded away center Moses Malone and the #1 draft pick (which everyone agreed would be North Carolina center Brad Daugherty) in separate transactions. The players they got in exchange never amounted to much, particularly Jeff Ruland, who had been a powerful low-post player for the Washington Bullets but had played in just 67 games in the previous two years due to health problems. He would play only five games for the 76ers before injuries essentially ended his career. Charles Barkley, the Sixers' emerging star player, particularly lamented those trades, both because he lost Malone, his friend and mentor, and because a front-court of him, 3-time MVP Malone, and (eventual) 5-time All-Star Daugherty would have been a title contender for years to come in Philadelphia.
• In 1990, a special $1 million, one-on-one, winner-take-all game was proposed for Magic Johnson Vs. Michael Jordan. While initial interest was strong on both sides, the deal eventually fizzled out. One factor was Jordan cooling on the concept, saying (According to his agent, David Falk), "If I win, people will say, ’So, what do you expect? That’s what Michael is — he’s a one-on-one player.’ And if I lose, then I don’t have the rings or the title. So what’s the point of doing it?” Another was then-NBA commissioner David Stern being against the match, considering it a form of gambling.
  • Five years later, in 1995, a similar event for a similar monetary prize value nearly happened between the two competing centers of the 1995 NBA Finals, the Houston Rockets' Hakeem Olajuwon and the Orlando Magic's Shaquille O'Neal. A commercial made by Taco Bell featuring the two aired after the NBA Finals and the event was going to be hosted by Donald Trump at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and be sponsored by Taco Bell during the month of September. More info on the event was found here. However, on the day the event was going to happen, Olajuwon hurt his back and forced the event to be cancelled in the process. While we know that the Rockets and Olajuwon won the NBA Finals that year, we ultimately never knew if the same would have happened in a one-on-one setting in their primes because of Olajuwon's injury.
• When Magic Johnson announced he had HIV in 1991 and went into early retirement from it (only playing in the 1992 NBA All-Star Game by fan request and the 1992 U.S. Olympic team because of Michael Jordan eventually joining the team), the NBA world wondered what might have been for the rest of his career in terms of how long he could have lasted for the Lakers as a player and how much greater his legacy could have been had he not caught the sexually transmitted infection that sent the world into a frenzy at the time. It also didn't help that he was thinking of returning with the Lakers for the 1992-93 season and played with them in that preseason period before a cut he had in a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers gave people pause for concerns that his blood would give another player HIV as well, which forced Johnson to leave the team after that game. While Johnson eventually returned to play for the Lakers in 1996 (after briefly coaching for them in 1994), though being a few months shy from being teammates with Kobe Bryant in his rookie season, many fans knew he wasn't the same player by then, to the point where he ended his playing career first with the rebranded Magic M7 Borås (now Borås Basket) in Sweden for the 1999-2000 season and then in Denmark for the Magic Great Danes in 2000.
• Michael Jordan and Larry Bird both initially declined the offer to join the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics. Jordan wanted to spend his offseason relaxing and Bird didn't want to have to carry an Olympic team in the event the other All-Stars said no. Once Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, and others committed and coach Chuck Daly assured Jordan he'd schedule time for golf and relaxation, Jordan joined the team. Meanwhile, Bird had been suffering from numerous back injuries and felt that he wouldn't be able to contribute. He only changed his mind after his friend Johnson convinced him to say yes so that they could play on the same team together, which was something they were both denied in their time in college due to the 1980 Moscow boycott.
  • Dominique Wilkins almost certainly would have made the team as well, but in January 1992 he ruptured an Achilles tendon and couldn't recover in time for the Games.
  • Isiah Thomas was also considered a part of Team USA himself for that time, even mentioning he met the criteria to join the team that year. Yet due in part to Jordan's rivalry with the Pistons that started back in the late 1980s, Thomas was left off of the Dream Team, as noted in The Last Dance documentary.
  • 1992 was the first year that the Olympics allowed professional basketball players to participate in the Olympics, and it was decided that the Dream Team should still have one collegiate representative. The team considered players like Shaquille O'Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Harold Miner and Jimmy Jackson for that spot, but they ultimately chose Duke star Christian Laettner over all of them.
    • The selection committee initially had the idea to have an even split, six NBA players and six college players. But after they started brainstorming and came up with a list of about a dozen NBA guys, none of whom could be justified leaving off the team, the number of college players was whittled down until eventually they only took one.
• An injury story where the injury was the good part: The San Antonio Spurs' David Robinson missed virtually the entire 1996-1997 season with a back injury. Without Robinson the Spurs' record cratered to 20-62, third-worst in the league. They won the #1 pick in the subsequent draft lottery, which contained star Wake Forest center Tim Duncan. And the previous year's bad record spurred GM Gregg Popovich to fire head coach Bob Hill and take the reins of coaching himself. With Duncan and a healthy Robinson, the Spurs won the 1999 championship and 2003 championship with David before going on to win three more after Robinson's retirement due to drafting well during the years they had David Robinson around^*(selecting Manu Ginóbili as the penultimate pick of the 1999 NBA Draft and then Tony Parker as the unofficial last pick of the first round in 2001) and even a bit after that with them trading up for Kawhi Leonard in 2011. What would've happened had Robinson remained healthy and the Spurs hadn't had their massive shakeup?
• In the 1999 NCAA men's tournament, the Minnesota Golden Gophers, two years removed from a Final Four appearance, were drawn to play in the first round against a little-known team out of interior Washington, the Gonzaga Bulldogs (aka "Zags"), which had made their first NCAA tournament appearance only four years earlier.^note Even future NBA great and Hall of Famer John Stockton never made it to the Big Dance while with the Zags. Pretty much every observer heavily favored the Gophers... until the night before the tournament, when the Pioneer Press of St. Paul reported that a Minnesota athletic staffer had done coursework for at least 20 Gophers players since 1993, among them two starters and two reserves on the current team. All four players were suspended for that game, and the Zags scored the upset. They ultimately advanced to the regional final (one game shy of the Final Four), losing narrowly to eventual national champ UConn. But what if the story had broken even one day later than it did?
  • In the immediate aftermath of the scandal, Gophers head coach Clem Haskins was forced to resign, and they wound up hiring Dan Monson... from the very same Gonzaga team that had taken them down. Monson enjoyed only modest success at Minnesota, though he was initially hampered by NCAA sanctions stemming from the scandal and did receive credit for cleaning up the program's image. While this was going on, Monson's top assistant Mark Few took over the Zags, leading them to the next NCAA tournament. And the one after that. And to every tournament since then. Would Monson have been able to do what Few did to turn the former Cinderella into the major basketball power it now is? In fact, in this 2021 story, Monson himself doubted that he could have done this, marveling at how Gonzaga's administration consistently gave Few what he needed to elevate the Zags, adding, "I think if I would’ve stayed there, I’m not sure they would have recognized that."
  • The 1999 NCAA run came at the end of a decade of crisis for Gonzaga. Its undergraduate enrollment had dropped by 35% in that decade, and it had been operating at a deficit for several years. Some faculty called for the school to drop to Division II. Afterwards? Freshman enrollment, which was 569 in 1998, was at nearly 1,000 just three years later, and now stands at around 1,200. These days, Gonzaga is considered every bit as much a basketball blueblood as the Dukes, Kansases, Kentuckys, and North Carolinas of the world, with everything but a national title to show for it... and even then, they recently snagged the consensus #1 high-schooler in the country in 2021. However, if not for that run, would Gonzaga still be just another small, struggling Catholic school, and possibly not even a Division I member?
• With Minnesota Timberwolves fans, two names bring up scorn and indignation for not just causing them to ruin Kevin Garnett's prime with Minnesota (and later cause bad blood with the ownership there), but also jumpstarting their worst streak in franchise history that they still have a tough time escaping out of to this day: Joe Smith and former general manager David Kahn.
  • The case of Joe Smith was more innocuous on the surface, but left long-term implications that ruined their chances at success not just during the Kevin Garnett era, but also the years after it. Smith was considered a promising young player early on in his career, and while he never regained the results he had back when he played for Golden State, he was still a capable player that would have helped the Timberwolves out in Kevin Garnett's prime years. Instead of signing somewhere else with greater earnings immediately, Smith decided to sign with the Timberwolves for only the minimum salary allowed for his first few seasons there starting with the 1999 lockout season, with the plan of earning his Bird rights^*(the rights to sign that player over the salary cap limit the NBA imposes on teams, named after Larry Bird) after his third season to earn up to $86 million with Minnesota. However, before the team reached the key third and final year on that plan, an untimely lawsuit revealed to the NBA that the Timberwolves were scheming to acquire Smith's Bird rights through illicit means, which not only led to commissioner David Stern fining the team the same $3.5 million they had spent to try and get Smith in the first place, but also voided those three years of his contracts and his Bird rights and stripped Minnesota of five first-round picks from 2001-2005 (though they later regained first-round picks in 2003 & 2005 due to good behavior afterwards). While Joe Smith eventually returned to the Timberwolves after spending a year in Detroit and even helped them be one of the best teams in the NBA by 2004, they never could surpass powerhouses in the Lakers and Spurs by that time, which eventually led to Garnett wanting out of Minnesota, later winning a championship with Boston in 2008 a year after being traded to them.
  • Not to be outdone in terms of long-term impact, the Timberwolves hired David Kahn, former businessman associated with the Indiana Pacers, to be their new President of Basketball Operations in 2009. In that same draft year, Kahn drafted three different point guards with the three first-round selections they had that year, including back-to-back selections at picks #5 & #6^*(Ricky Rubio was selected 5th, while Jonny Flynn was their next selection at #6 and then later selected Ty Lawson (though traded him to Denver) at #18). While none of those three were ever considered All-Stars (with Ricky Rubio, the best player of the trio, being considered a decent/good, but not great player), the kicker is the guy that they missed out on that got selected one pick after Jonny Flynn... that was Stephen Curry. The Hasheem Thabeet bust note below will mention other All-Star caliber players taken afterward, so there's no further need to go into other players there. However, before Kahn decided to resign from the Timberwolves in 2013, Kahn made further selections that became busts in later years like Wesley Johnson, Luke Babbitt, Trevor Booker, and Lazar Hayward in 2010 and Derrick Williams in 2011. While future selections made have been a mixed bag after Kahn left the Timberwolves by the end of the 2012–13 season, those failed selections not only played a hand with them having a failed tenure when Kevin Love was their leading player for them (eventually being traded to later win a championship with Cleveland), but also having a dysfunctional team that led to Jimmy Butler leaving them after he helped get the Timberwolves to the Playoffs in 2018... after failing to get in the Playoffs since their Western Conference Finals appearance back in 2004.
• A momentous WCHB in women's basketball came in the year 2000. That March, Louisiana Tech's future Hall of Fame coach Leon Barmore announced he would retire after the season. He felt that he was holding back Kim Mulkey, who had played for him on two national championship teams, joined the Lady Techsters coaching staff immediately after her graduation, and had been on the bench with him for a third national title. On top of that, she had turned down three head coaching offers in recent years, believing that LA Tech would turn to her once Barmore stepped aside. But...
  • First, LA Tech delayed talking with her for several weeks. In the meantime, Baylor was showing great interest in her. Lady Bears head coach Sonja Hogg, who had previously been sole head coach and later co-head coach with Barmore at LA Tech, had announced her retirement, and strongly recommended Mulkey as her successor.
  • LA Tech finally talked with Mulkey after the Lady Techsters lost in that season's Elite Eight. By then, she had gotten an offer from Baylor. Mulkey still wanted to stay where she'd been for her entire adult life, but negotiations reached an impasse. She wanted a five-year contract; LA Tech's president refused anything longer than four. Tech later claimed that the impasse was over shoe contract money, which Mulkey said had never been discussed. She felt that Tech's refusal to budge from a four-year deal was a sign that her loyalty might not be reciprocated in the future. So, she left for Baylor. Initially, she agonized that she'd made a mistake.
  • Fast forward 20 years. LA Tech didn't immediately fall off the radar—Barmore came back to coach for two more seasons, including an Elite Eight run the season after Mulkey left. The Lady Techsters had three more Sweet Sixteen appearances under Kurt Budke. But the challenges of being a mid-major school trying to compete against richer schools that were paying more attention to women's basketball caught up with them. Tech missed the NCAA tournament for the first time in 2007, and made their last tournament appearance in 2011. And still later had another coach resign after being caught in an extramarital affair with a player. The season before Mulkey arrived at Baylor, the Lady Bears^*who dropped the "Lady" part right after Mulkey's departure for LSU in 2021 had finished last in the Big 12. Five years later, they had a national title—their first of three under Mulkey, who would herself enter the Hall of Fame alongside Barmore in 2020. This ESPN story acknowledged that it "would have been a challenge" for her to keep Tech relevant in the modern era of women's basketball, but concluded "if anyone could have done it, it was her."
• When the Vancouver Grizzlies moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 2001, Memphis-based FedEx offered $120 million to the NBA to grant them naming rights to the team itself. They planned to rename the Grizzlies, the "Memphis Express" and switch the team colors to FedEx's iconic white, purple and orange. The NBA rejected the proposal, and the team settled for a new Grizzlies logo and color scheme while giving FedEx naming rights to the new arena (now known as FedExForum).
• For Sacramento Kings fans, they now have two tragic WCHB moments to their name. First, in 2002, unbeknownst to not just the fans of the sport, but arguably the NBA itself at the time, two of the referees for Game 6 especially wanted to make sure that series went into 7 games instead of the Kings winning that series 4-2, according to disgraced ex-referee Tim Donaghy, who let other allegations of fixes in certain playoff matches outside of just his throughout his tenure come to light. While other games also had exciting moments in the last few seconds of at least 4 games, including an overtime period for Game 7, the note of Game 6 being fixed in particular with the Lakers getting an unusually high 18 more free throws than the Kings in the fourth quarter does make one wonder if the Kings would have not just won that series, but the NBA Finals against the New Jersey Nets that season (and made that a series) had the refs that series not try (and pretty much succeed) to fix that series for the Lakers to get a three-peat with an eventual sweep against the Nets.
  • While a lot more recent by comparison, the choice for the Kings to take Marvin Bagley III in the 2018 NBA Draft is already considered just as painful for Kings fans as 2002's potential fix was, only this one was worse due to it being self-inflicted this time around. By 2018, the franchise's glory days were long behind them, now holding the longest modern playoff drought in the NBA after the Minnesota Timberwolves barely made it to the playoffs after Jimmy Butler was (briefly) included onto their young roster. However, they did get rare luck yet again with moving up into the Top 2 for 2018 after being lucky to move up into the Top 5 for 2017 to select De'Aaron Fox that year. Despite that, Kings fans knew they had an easy choice in the matter; whoever wasn't selected between Deandre Ayton and Luka Dončić for the #1 pick by the Suns that year, the Kings should select the other guy available. Unfortunately, their general manager at the time, Vlade Divac (formerly the starting center from the same 2002 Kings squad), loved the idea of Ayton a lot, but did not like Luka's father. That led to them missing out on Dončić and instead taking Marvin Bagley III from their roster. While Marvin started out alright for the Kings early on (making the All-Rookie First Team that season despite coming off the bench there), his injury concerns have drawn parallels to Sam Bowie for some fans already. Even worse, like the 1984 NBA Draft, 2018 has seen talent parallels that compare well to that year, including the choices of Jaren Jackson Jr., Trae Young, Collin Sexton, Mikal Bridges, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Miles Bridges, Michael Porter Jr., Mitchell Robinson, and Gary Trent Jr. This eventually resulted in the Kings trading Bagley to Detroit in 2022, and then breaking the Buffalo Braves/San Diego Clippers/Los Angeles Clippers' record for the longest playoff drought in NBA history. On the bright side, they did finally break through into the playoffs very convincingly a season later after seeing the fruits of their trade of Tyrese Haliburton going to Indiana for Domantas Sabonis blossom through on their end.
  • On the note of Tim Donaghy, he became a prominent presence for NBA referees from 1994 up until he was caught gambling by fixing games he refereed in by 2007. Notably, fixes were primarily focused on games he was involved with from 2005-2007, including the controversial 2007 Western Conference Semifinals between the Phoenix Suns and eventual champion San Antonio Spurs that also warranted its own WCHB mention below here. However, other major games and series of games also experienced significant controversies that also warranted mentions because of the possibility of fixing games during his tenure in the NBA.
    • Before the 2002 Western Conference Finals, the biggest controversy in the Playoffs involved the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers. Milwaukee's problem at the time was, outside of Ray Allen, they had no one that was considered a part of the star echelon that Allen Iverson was for the 76ers at the time, as well as other talented players like Dikembe Mutombo and Aaron McKie and head coach Larry Brown aboard. Despite that, Milwaukee did make sure the series was competitive with the disadvantages in mind due to a team effort involving Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson Jr., Sam Cassell, and Scott Williams with George Karl's coaching in mind. However, in a tightly contested Game 5, the Bucks themselves noticed many noticeable fouls favoring the 76ers, with Ray Allen noting the discrepancies of the NBA favoring Philadelphia going to the NBA Finals that year over Milwaukee. The problem only exacerbated things even further with Scott Williams elbowing Allen Iverson during Game 6^note (Allen Iverson himself was out for Game 3 due to an injury), which led to him being suspended for a critical Game 7, which they lost by 10 points. Had his suspension not occurred, would the Bucks have made the NBA Finals a lot sooner than they did?
    • In 2003, Rasheed Wallace was suspended for seven games due to him throwing the basketball at another referee. The guy that called the technical foul that led to the rather long suspension? Tim Donaghy. Had Tim not been involved in that game, would Rasheed have been involved in such a long suspension for something like that?
    • The 2004 Malice at The Palace left many different WCHB scenarios at hand for both Detroit and Indiana (especially for the Pacers, since that was the last season with Reggie Miller playing in the NBA) due to it clearly affecting both teams throughout the entire season. However, one interesting tidbit involved from this game was that Tim Donaghy was one of the referees involved with that infamous game that officially ended with 47.9 seconds left in the game that night. Had he not been involved, would the infamous brawl that led to major changes in the league even have happened in the first place? Would Detroit or Indiana have won the NBA Finals that season instead had the players involved played longer with each other than they did?
    • With the 2006 NBA Finals, the NBA looked to have much better results than the 2005 series between the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons due to both Dallas and Miami being bigger markets with much bigger draws by comparison for the league. However, the last two games of the series saw controversies due to a botched final call for Game 5 combined with weird free-throw results with Dwyane Wade either matching or coming close to the entire Dallas Mavericks in Games 5 & 6 that led to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban claiming that the NBA itself was rigged, favoring the Heat due to Shaq & Dwyane Wade being bigger draws than Dirk Nowitzki. David Stern denied Mark Cuban's notion, but considering Tim Donaghy's involvement with fixing games himself a year later, Cuban might have had a case there. Unfortunately for him, he dropped his FBI investigation threat for fear of being banned for life as a team owner. However, Dallas did at least get revenge by 2011 as Donaghy was out of the League.
    • For the penultimate infamous series that featured Tim Donaghy, the 2007 Western Conference Semifinals series between the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs saw major controversies throughout the series both with and without Tim Donaghy around. According to Tim Donaghy, for that particular series, the head supervisor of that series, Tommy Nuñez, had a clear cut bias against Phoenix due to him favoring trips to San Antonio a lot more in comparison combined with a bias against Suns owner Robert Sarver (who was eventually revealed to be a Faux Affably Evil Slime Ball owner himself in 2021, but before that point, his biggest offense was being a massive cheapskate as an owner, according to fans of the team after losing out on Joe Johnson staying with the team as another WCHB moment for Suns fans in 2005). However, the series started out rather violently with the Spurs winning a close Game 1, but it also involved Tony Parker colliding with Steve Nash in a play, which led to Nash having a deep cut to his nose there. Game 2 went to Phoenix with the motivation of Nash's injury in mind, Game 3 went to San Antonio with the Spurs being motivated by Emanuel Ginóbili getting a bruised, black eye from a poke caused by Shawn Marion. However, while the Suns won Game 4, the way it ended led to controversy that ultimately affected the rest of the series from there. During the last minute of the game, Robert Horry pushed Steve Nash onto what's considered a soccer's table in the middle of the court, which led to Raja Bell failing to help Nash up by both the refs and other players, including the Suns' Boris Diaw and star forward/center Amar'e Stoudemire. Horry was suspended for two games for his shove, but David Stern also controversially suspended Stoudemire and Diaw for one game because they left the bench during the altercation, despite the fact that they were wanting to stop it, not escalate it even further. Unfortunately for the Suns, that sealed their fate that series, losing Game 5 after being up by a lot earlier on that game before pretty much giving up hope during Game 6 after being down by 20 at one point. However, had not only the refs been more critical against some of the rougher plays that came up that series, but commissioner David Stern also allowed Amar'e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw to play for Game 5, would the series have played out differently in the end? Would Mike D'Antoni also have remained as head coach beyond 2008, with Shawn Marion not being traded for Shaquille O'Neal a year later as well?
    • Finally, the last what could have been controversy from that time involved the actual 2007 NBA Finals series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Despite both teams featuring big draws in their favor (San Antonio with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginóbili; Cleveland with LeBron James), it was considered the worst rated NBA Finals up until the 2020 NBA Finals that occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic. For some fans, part of the reason came due to the previous controversy of the Suns-Spurs series earlier on catching up with the NBA that series. However, other fans blamed the fact that Cleveland and San Antonio are two smaller market locations that didn't receive big buzz outside of those two particular locations. Still, Rasheed Wallace claimed that instead of wanting a rematch of two teams that were considered "boring" to the NBA like the 2005 series between the Spurs and the Detroit Pistons were considered at the time, the NBA wanted LeBron in the hopes that he'd draw better buzz against the Spurs, despite the 2007 series ending in a sweep over the 2005 series being very competitive by comparison. Regardless, had the 2007 Playoffs not featured Tim Donaghy at all, would the 2007 NBA Finals received a better draw to fans by comparison to what the NBA actually got?
• Darko Miličić, like all famous draft busts, is another major WCHB story. He was selected as the 2nd overall pick in by the Detroit Pistons in 2003. The 1st pick having been LeBron James, obviously a tough act to follow. But it's not as if Detroit was lacking for other sure-fire stars they could've taken in 2003. The next 3 players picked in 2003 were Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Miličić warmed the bench during his 2 and a half seasons for the Pistons, and remained a mediocre backup player for his entire 11-year NBA career. The Pistons were still a very strong team even with that #2 draft pick being wasted on a benchwarmer (they'd gotten the #2 pick in 2003 not by having a bad season but as part of a trade 6 years earlier with the then-Vancouver Grizzlies), winning the NBA Championship in 2004, falling short of winning it again in 2005 (the San Antonio Spurs beat them 4 games to 3) and making the Eastern Conference Finals the next 3 years. After 2008, the team collapsed into irrelevance. But if they'd added Anthony (10-time All-Star), Bosh (11-time All-Star) or Wade (13-time All-Star and widely considered the 2nd best player of the 2003 draft after LeBron), they wouldn't have been just a strong team, but a new dynasty in the making, especially if they had drafted Wade as it would have set in motion for them to land Shaq in the famous trade from the Lakers. Not only would they likely have won the 2005 NBA Finals over San Antonio with both Wade and Shaq on the roster (in addition to stars Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace, and others), they would have repeated that success in 2006 over the Mavericks and beyond (possibly 5-peating during that time), it might well have been Detroit rather than Miami that ended up as LeBron James' destination when he left Cleveland in pursuit of a championship in 2010, alongside Bosh which would have extended the dynasty further.
• When the Charlotte Bobcats were first created in the early 2000s (following the Charlotte Hornets relocating to New Orleans), the runners-up for the team name were the "Charlotte Flight" and the "Charlotte Dragons". The "Charlotte Flight" was actually the most popular name in a poll given to Charlotte residents (due in part to the resonance of the Wright Brothers taking their first flight in North Carolina), but its results were disregarded by the original majority owner Bob Johnson, who may have liked the idea of naming the team after himself.^note  "Charlotte Dragons" was likely intended to match with the city's resident Minor League Baseball team, the Charlotte Knights. Although the whole thing was ultimately rendered moot when the Bobcats started calling themselves the Hornets again after the New Orleans Hornets changed their name to the New Orleans Pelicans, regaining the pre-relocation history of the original Charlotte Hornets in the process (with the New Orleans Pelicans' history now starting with the original Hornets' move to New Orleans).
• Greg Oden has basically been a "What Could Have Been" story since he went pro. Drafted first overall in 2007 (ahead of superstar phenom Kevin Durant), his career was one long string of injury problems and bench warming.
  • This is the fifth Portland Trail Blazers first-round pick WCHB, behind LaRue Martin (who was considered the worst #1 selected pick of all-time at the time, with Hall of Famers like Bob McAdoo, Julius "Dr. J" Erving, and Paul Westphal considered as much better options for them by comparison), Bill Walton (who at least got to showcase his talent for a few years before injuries set him down), Arvydas Sabonis (who took 10 years after the draft to finally get to the NBA, and played his entire Blazers career on destroyed knees^*so destroyed that before "Sabas" was signed, the Blazers' team doctor told the GM that his leg X-rays would qualify him for a handicapped parking space) and Sam Bowie. Billed as the 2nd-best big man in the draft behind Hakeem Olajuwon (then still known as "Akeem", who went first overall to the Houston Rockets), the Blazers picked Bowie number 2 overall. The Chicago Bulls drafted next and picked a guard from North Carolina named Michael Jordan. Would anyone be ridiculing the Blazers for that pick had Bowie been healthy enough to live up to his potential? (Especially since they passed on Jordan because they had drafted a pretty good 3-guard of their own in the previous year in Clyde Drexler.)
• The nature of the NBA draft lottery generates this on a yearly basis, particularly in years where only one or two players are "can't miss" prospects. Example: The Memphis Grizzlies had the second pick in the 2009 draft, needing scoring and/or front court size. Oklahoma's Blake Griffin was considered the only "can't miss" player on the board.^note he was drafted #1 overall by the L.A. Clippers and indeed proved to be a perennial All-Star that also helped change the Clippers' fortunes significantly from the 2010's onward, even before Donald Sterling's eventual removal, but there were several "lesser" prospects on the board for the Grizzlies, such as Arizona State's James Harden, Davidson's Stephen Curry, Southern Cal's DeMar DeRozan and local (U. of Memphis) favorite Tyreke Evans. The Grizzlies, instead, gambled on the biggest boom-or-bust prospect in the draft: UConn center Hasheem Thabeet. Many observers immediately derided this pick as "Darko 2.0" or "Black Darko", noting Thabeet's height (7'3") seemed to be his only selling point. Thabeet indeed proved to be one of the biggest busts of the draft lottery era, lasting only one and a half seasons with Memphis before being traded to Toronto, ultimately playing five sub-par seasons for five different teams (starting only 23 games for his career). It turned out the Darko Miličić comparisons were overly generous to Thabeet. In contrast, the other players mentioned previously played at least a decade in the NBA: Evans a solid role player, DeRozan a four-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA, Harden a seven-time All-NBA selection with one Sixth Man of the Year award and one league MVP, and Curry a six-time All-NBA selection and two-time league MVP. Either of those players could've taken the Grizzlies to greater heights, but would've probably precluded assembling the "core four" of Memphis' "Grit and Grind" era^note trading for power forward Zach Randolph and signing free agent small forward Tony Allen to go with point guard Mike Conley and center Marc Gasol, the last two of whom departed in 2019.
• One of the great missed opportunities of recent basketball history is that LeBron James and the late Kobe Bryant, probably the two most celebrated players of the post-Jordan era, never faced each other in the NBA Finals.^note The closest we would ever get to having one was in 2009, when both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers were in their respective conference finals. Cleveland lost to the Orlando Magic, who ended up facing the Lakers in the Finals, and the Lakers won in five games. By the time James won his first title — as a member of the Miami Heat in 2012 — the Lakers' latest (and most recent) dynasty had came to an end, and Bryant was in the twilight of his career. While James made several trips to the Finals, The Lakers never made the playoffs in Bryant's final three seasons in the league.
  • On a similar note, near the end of the 2011 NBA lockout, the New Orleans Hornets (owned directly by the NBA back then) initially agreed to a three-way deal with the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets that would have sent superstar point guard Chris Paul to the Lakers, 2x champion center Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets, and a package of 2x champion forward Lamar Odom from the Lakers and a combination of Goran Dragić, Kenyon Martin^*(who would have been stuck in China that season due to the CBA implementing a policy for that season only forbidding NBA players from returning to the league until the CBA's season concluded), Luis Scola, and the New York Knicks' 2012 first-round pick from the Rockets going to New Orleans. However, the trade was later vetoed after a hour of agreeing to the trade in principle, with the official reason for stopping the trade being "basketball reasons". Chris Paul was then traded to the in-city rivals with the Clippers days later, which left Lakers fans wondering if they would have won their 17th championship sooner than they did and won their sixth championship for Kobe to truly make comparisons of him to Michael Jordan feel even more legit than they already did. Or at least make the Lakers' eventual longest stretch of not even making it to the Playoffs not last as long as it did for them.
• After reaching the 2012 NBA Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder had a dilemma on what to do with an upcoming free agency period since both key young players Serge Ibaka and James Harden were entering the final year of their respective rookie deals and they both looked for major deals to stay with the Thunder. Serge signed his 4-year, $48 million contract extension in August 2012, which left the Thunder doubtful to re-sign Harden properly since he'd ask for a much bigger salary by comparison. When it came time for Sixth Man of the Year winner James Harden to get his deal, Oklahoma City wanted to re-sign him for about $5 million less than the maximum offer he would have gotten at the time for his own extension. However, Harden did not want that deal since he already felt he was sacrificing enough for the Thunder as it was by being the sixth man of the team, and with the Thunder not knowing that some time after Harden's extension came to pass, the team's salary cap problems would have been somewhat mitigated due to a future update on the NBA's national TV broadcasting duties creating a major boom on the salary cap during Harden's extension. Unfortunately, since the Thunder did not know about such a thing coming up at the time, they eventually settled for a trade with the Houston Rockets sending them Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, two future first-round picks (one of whom became Steven Adams), and a second-round pick in exchange for a package of Harden later getting his maximum deal of $16 million per year with the Rockets, Cole Aldrich, Daequan Cook, and Lazar Haywood. While no longer with the Thunder, Harden became a future MVP, a 10x All-Time, a multi-time All-NBA First Team (and earlier on, Third Team) talent, a 3x scoring leader and an eventual assists leader en route to an eventual NBA 75th Anniversary Team spot alongside former Thunder teammates and future MVPs Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Meanwhile, Ibaka continued to be a defensive presence for the Thunder throughout the time he played for them, but he never continued showcasing the same success he showed off in his earlier years with Oklahoma City, which eventually led to him being traded in 2016. As for the Thunder, they never could replicate the same success they showcased earlier on in 2012, with them ultimately failing to reach any further than the Western Conference Finals again in 2014 and 2016 (the latter year being more painful when noting that the Thunder were up 3-1 to potentially upset a 73-9 team early in the playoffs) when their star quartet dwindled down from a trio to a duo to just Russell Westbrook before being nothing but a team relying on a ton of draft picks again, akin to Sam Presti's final years with the Seattle SuperSonics getting him Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Serge Ibaka there in the first place. Meanwhile, the only players from that time that wound up getting their eventual NBA Finals championships were Kevin Durant in his controversial move to Golden State (which can be seen later on below) and, funnily enough, Serge Ibaka when he played for the Toronto Raptors in 2019 against Durant and the Warriors. This led to Thunder fans easily wondering whether things would have been different if either the Thunder decided to keep James Harden instead of Serge Ibaka or if they would have been more accepting of dealing with salary cap consequences for a better shot at potentially returning to the NBA Finals and maybe even winning it all with their core quartet intact.
• The Philadelphia 76ers also have a few WCHB moments of their own themselves after spending most of the 2010's working under "The Process", which was coined by then-general manager Sam Hinkie. One big one revolved around the fact that the NBA wanted to make sure teams tried to stay competitive throughout the decade, even when it felt very hard to do so with the super-team problem that started to snowball out of control once LeBron James and Chris Bosh took their talents to South Beach to join Dwyane Wade for the Miami Heat. Under Hinkie's tenure, the 76ers had the goal to "tank" as many games as they could for a few seasons to ultimately get greater talents to join their team after failing to get any success under the Billy King/Allen Iverson era with trades, notably with their trade for Andrew Bynum (who later failed to play for the 76ers altogether due to serious leg injuries) being the last straw. With Hinkie, though, the 76ers and their fans knew that losing for a few years was a small price to pay in order to "Trust the Process" that was had in mind, especially when looking at how far the Thunder above went with young draft talents and then the Golden State Warriors not long afterward. However, commissioner Adam Silver did not like how they not only circumvented the rules under Hinkie's tenure, but also encouraged other teams during the 2010's, like the Phoenix Suns, to try the same thing also. This led to Silver having an emergency hiring of former Suns owner and executive Jerry Colangelo as a team advisor during the 2015-16 season to force some changes onto the 76ers and end their losing ways whether Hinkie wanted it or not, which eventually forced Hinkie to resign as general manager before the end of that same season and then led to Jerry's son, Bryan Colangelo, to take over as general manager by the time they got back into the Playoffs. With 76ers fans, they're left wondering how different things really could have been had the NBA let Hinkie do his thing before the NBA forced change onto the team by themselves.
  • On that note, there were some questionable draft choices from that time that really came back to haunt the 76ers for one reason or another. While they saw some initial success with big man Nerlens Noel and Rookie of the Year winner Michael Carter-Williams in Hinkie's first season, neither player proved they could sustain their initial successes, which led to them trading both players away in later seasons. After getting success in 2014 with Joel Embiid and Dario Šarić (albeit with neither player being able to play immediately for the 76ers for one reason or another), 2015 saw a similar failing at hand with center Jahlil Okafor being selected back in 2015. While he saw great success in his first season to the point of being on the All-Rookie First Team that season, Okafor faced serious declines by his second season, to the point of being nowhere near the success stories that Kristaps Porziņģis or Devin Booker had in the NBA. Even with the lucky success of getting a #1 pick in 2016 to select Ben Simmons (a big guy with point guard capabilities), they did not have the same success at #1 a year later, trading up to get Boston's #1 pick to select point guard Markelle Fultz (who faced serious problems with injuries and mental stress early on in his career), when Boston ended up getting their superstar player in small forward Jayson Tatum at #3. Even worse for them, in 2018, they traded the #10 pick to the Phoenix Suns to select Zhaire Smith (who had serious allergy problems that Philadelphia did not pick up on earlier on) at #16, seeing him as just as good of an option as what they had at #10. Who did they get with that pick? None other than 2x NCAA champion small forward Mikal Bridges from Villanova, who also has a penchant for defense and not only lived in the same state as the 76ers, but also has a mother who actually worked with the 76ers at the time. While the 76ers did hit on some second round picks during that era, some of the top selections they made (as well as their development for some of them, including #1 picks Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz) does leave one wondering how far this team really could have gone through that period of time had they hit more on their selections and made the right choices on who to keep.
• Little did anyone at the time know, the 2016 NBA Finals became a WCHB moment for the Golden State Warriors for multiple reasons. First, the fact that they were one win away from taking away the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' distinction of the unanimous best team in NBA history, ending their season with a 73-9 record over the Bulls' 72-10 record that season. While that Bulls team won their championship without much issue, beating the Seattle SuperSonics 4-2 in their championship series, the Warriors faced an untimely Game 5 suspension by Draymond Green for a flagrant foul (his fourth in the playoffs) by hitting LeBron James's groin in Game 4. Combine that with a knee injury on Andrew Bogut during Game 5 and a back injury to the reigning NBA Finals MVP Andre Iguodala for Game 6, and one would think had Green not made that flagrant foul happen in the first place, the Warriors could have won that series instead of made their 3-1 Finals upset defeat to Cleveland feel memetic for NBA fans everywhere outside of the Golden State region. That being said, despite the Warriors coming back from a 3-1 deficit of their own against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals that same year, the Warriors' implosion in the NBA Finals likely played a huge part in the Thunder's biggest star player, Kevin Durant, joining that same Warriors team after the 2016 NBA Finals concluded. Had the Warriors beaten the Cleveland Cavaliers for the second straight year in a row, would Kevin Durant have gone to Golden State instead of either stay in Oklahoma City (where he was loved by fans) or go anywhere else besides the Warriors in the first place? Matter of fact, if the Cavaliers lost the NBA Finals that year, would they have ever beaten the Warriors or win the NBA Finals during LeBron's second tenure with Cleveland at all in the first place? The second question is especially prevalent since from 2015-2018 (which was when LeBron left Cleveland for a second time, this time in a more positive light), they played against the Warriors in the NBA Finals for every single year there.
• During the 2017-18 NCAA season, LiAngelo Ball (middle brother of current NBA players Lonzo & LaMelo Ball) and two other freshman players from UCLA^*(Cody Riley & Jalen Hill) were arrested in China during their brief preseason trip there for shoplifting and faced a potential 3-10 years in prison alongside a fine for stealing. However, the arrests were later made into an international incident, which allegedly led to President Donald Trump making a request with Xi Jinping to release the students for their crimes there (though an ESPN report later stated Trump had no involvement with letting the students out of China). Regardless, all three students were eventually suspended from the team that entire season, but LaVar Ball (LiAngelo's father) decided to pull both LiAngelo and LaMelo (who would have normally played in his junior year of high school at the time) from school to play internationally in Lithuania that season. However, after gaining mixed results from there (mainly with the failure of improving LiAngelo's draft stock), LaVar sought to create the Junior Basketball Association (JBA) as a league sought to help develop young collegiate or high school players into being paid professionals years before the NCAA was forced to eventually accept student-athletes getting paid while in that system and the NBA G League^*(the official developmental league for the NBA as of 2001 after previously going by the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) and the NBA Development League (known more colloquially as the D-League) before the rename in 2017 in partnership with Gatorade, hence the G there; players going there early joined a special team (that also paid them well) named the NBA G League Ignite as of their shortened 2020-21 season) and Overtime Elite^*(a league created by sports network Overtime (who focuses primarily on letting high school talents get known to the public eye online) that focuses more on helping promising, young high school and college-level players grow to either improve their skills more to eventually play in the NBA or gain equity in the Overtime company and become better businessmen in the event they did not want to play basketball professionally for some reason) were doing similar things themselves. Players there were either going to be developed to become future NBA-caliber players or gain future work with LaVar's Big Baller Brand business, depending on future outlooks. However, outside of the successes of the younger Ball brothers (LiAngelo finally playing in the NBA G League in Greensboro after years of unfortunate delay and LaMelo being successful in Charlotte) and a select few players later going overseas professionally^*(Other notable successful players from that league included Kezo Brown currently playing in the 2000's rendition of the ABA, Curtis Hollis later playing in Germany and even trying out with the Santa Cruz Warriors G League team, Deon Lyle playing overseas and nationally elsewhere, JaMichael Morgan most recently playing in Kosovo, Harrison Rieger currently playing in El Salvador, Jerell Springer playing in Europe's Georgia, and Nyang Wek recently playing for South Sudan's national team for FIBA's AfroBasket and South Sudan's Cobra Sport for the Basketball Africa League.), the JBA ultimately screwed multiple players from entering (bigger) colleges if they got waived (such was the case with Brandon Phillips) and failed to gain jobs in LaVar's Big Baller Brand (though a majority of that related to one of his business partners at the time, Alan Foster, eventually being found out as a scam artist that led to the Ball family briefly shutting down the brand, though later reviving the website properly in late 2020). As such, many questions could be asked from what might have happened with many people involved throughout this saga from the Ball brothers going to and staying in UCLA (if only for one year) like they initially planned on doing at the time to if the JBA might have had a shot at succeeding had things with it ran more like a planned business idea over a means of getting all of the Ball brothers in the NBA, and everything else in-between.
  • On a more tragic note, one of the other players involved with the international incident was Jalen Hill. After serving his suspension, Hill went from being another bench player to a more involved key member for UCLA with his rebounding and defensive presence entering 2021. However, in February of that year, Hill unexpectedly sat out of a February 6, 2021 game against USC before later announcing his retirement from playing college basketball altogether, citing depression and anxiety caused both by the international incident from years ago and the COVID-19 Pandemic affecting him personally. Hill's playing spot on the team was filled up by Mac Etienne, a freshman forward who enrolled onto the team in January 2021 after his prep season in high school was cancelled due to the pandemic, but his absence combined with the injury of leading player Johnny Juzang near the end of the regular season did harm UCLA's chances on ending their season on a high note. Despite that, the Bruins would not only defeat #11 seeded Michigan State (with Johnny Juzang returning by that match) in overtime during their First Four match in that year's NCAA Touranment, but they became the second First Four team to ever reach the Final Four (#11 Virginia Commonwealth University being the first in 2011) afterward, with their only match when they weren't considered underdogs at the time being a match against #14 seeded Abeleine Christian University. One can wonder if the Bruins could have led an upset all the way into the NCAA Championship match (or if they even would have gone that far at all) if Hill were still playing alongside Cody Riley (who himself made similarly good progress for UCLA as well after also being suspended for his initial freshman season) for the Bruins during that time. Sadly, while Hill was trying to fully recover from his anxiety and depression that occurred in early 2021, he unexpectedly went missing in Costa Rica and was unfortunately confirmed dead on September 21, 2022. As such, it's more fair to ask if he would have still been alive today, living a good life and still enjoying the sport he loved to play had his original freshman season not been derailed in China back in 2017 and the pandemic not followed suit years later.
• Tragically, one of the nine victims in the January 2020 helicopter crash that claimed the life of NBA legend Kobe Bryant was his 13-year-old daughter Gianna. Gianna was a standout AAU basketball player who had her sights set on playing for the UConn Huskies and the WNBA once she was older. Had she lived to adulthood, would she have built a great career and legacy of her own?
  • On a similar note, the unexpected tragedy of the event combined with it happening weeks before the 2020 All-Star Weekend led to not just certain events in it having last-minute changes, but also introduced more permanent changes to its All-Star format, which included not only the All-Star MVP Award being named after Kobe Bryant (and later an award given in honor of both Kobe and Gianna through the players that most help promote girls and women's basketball, including the WNBA), but also introduced a more permanent All-Star Game change where after playing the first three quarters of the game properly (with each team given money to the charity of their choosing for each quarter won, including any ties had), the first team to score a final 24 points in the fourth quarter (or equivalent to it if trailing) in memory of Kobe Bryant (who wore 24 around the second half of his career) would win the game instead. While introduced under tragedy, the All-Star Game itself received positive fanfare for the fourth quarter modification in that game, with fans saying it got players motivated for it and caring about defense there again. This change wouldn't last, as later ASGs proved to be just as unwatchable as those before COVID; this led the NBA to eliminate the Elam Ending^note named after its creator after the 2023 edition.
• When the COVID-19 Pandemic effectively suspended the 2019-20 NBA season (due in part to players like Jazz teammates Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell both contracting the virus (albeit at different times) and potentially leading to widespread infections there), the NBA initially had the choice of continuing their season in Las Vegas, Nevada instead of at Walt Disney World's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida. However, due to comments made by Las Vegas' mayor, Carolyn Goodwin, opposing the state of emergency order from Nevada governor Steve Sisolak in that time, the NBA ultimately decided to stay in Walt Disney World for what's considered the 2020 NBA Bubble period for the league's resumed season. Had Las Vegas' mayor not made those comments going against the state of emergency, who knows if the NBA Bubble would have been as successful in Las Vegas as it surprisingly was in Walt Disney World. Also, by extension, the existence of the 2020 NBA Bubble can be considered a WCHB moment in and of itself due to the method used there and the teams competing in said Bubble.
  • On a related note, before the pandemic started, both Gobert and Mitchell were considered cool with each other, to the point of being Utah's modern iteration of John Stockton and Karl Malone in the late 2010's and early 2020's. However, Rudy Gobert catching COVID-19 on March 11, 2020 (the precursor of what was to come upon the world outside of China) and Donovan Mitchell getting it a day later led to a major rift with the team that might have altered the team's course of history forever. Before the pandemic started, the Jazz not only were considered a Finals contender due to the dominance of Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, but both Rudy & Donovan were both cool with each other. However, Mitchell felt their relationship was completely irreparable once they both caught COVID-19 due to Gobert's stubborn ignorance on the situation at the time (including a now-infamous press conference on March 2020 where Gobert touched team microphones before leaving), while Gobert felt like a trade needed to happen with one of them at some point a couple of seasons later. And while the Jazz continued to try and work through their tense situation as best as they possibly could have, they never could get out of the second round together, which led to the Jazz trading Gobert in the summer of 2022 to the Timberwolves for what was considered a king's ransom of sorts in five different players (including Minnesota's 2022 first round pick Walker Kessler) and five upcoming first round picks (including a pick swap option in 2026) and then eventually trading Donovan Mitchell to the Cavaliers for similar-looking value near the fall of that same year also (albeit with star-quality players like Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton, as well as Cleveland's 2022 first round lottery pick Ochai Agbaji, being included for Mitchell). As such, one can fairly wonder how far the Jazz could have gone with their core intact had COVID-19 never reached U.S. shores in 2020. Though thanks to their newest entries acquired in September 2022, Utah did improve themselves unexpectedly like they first did with Donovan Mitchell's initial inclusion to the team... at least early on into the 2022-23 season. By the 2023 trade deadline, Utah eventually decided to make trades that were more in line to them hoping they could get a young star like Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson to join than they were to get an unexpected playoff push for that season.
  • Also related to before the pandemic, both the Los Angeles Lakers & Los Angeles Clippers (two teams that shared the same building as each other from 1999 until 2024 with the completion of the Intuit Dome in mind) were two teams that were considered championship contenders throughout the entire season due to each team making star-studded trades that resulted in them each getting a (super)star caliber player (Anthony Davis for the Lakers, Paul George for the Clippers) in exchange for young bunches of players to help appease superstar players of their own for varying reasons (LeBron James for avoiding another disappointing season with the Lakers and Kawhi Leonard needing that extra push to go with the Clippers instead of staying in Toronto, despite winning a championship with the Raptors in his sole season there). So much so, in fact, that it would have realistically marked the first time ever in the NBA's history that two teams in around the same city limits would have competed against each other while generally staying in the same city (in this case, Los Angeles) had this season remained on track as it was. However, we all know that the COVID-19 pandemic hit us on March 11, 2020 and halted potential plans at the time, including the possibility of a Lakers-Clippers playoff match by the Western Conference Finals (at the latest). While the 2020 NBA Bubble did make sure that season continued, both the Clippers & Lakers became the two teams in question that wanted to stop the season for good due to the shooting of Jacob Blake that occurred during that time. While the Lakers were ultimately able to get their acts together by the time the Bubble Playoffs continued, the Clippers ended up infamously blowing another 3-1 series lead in the second round of the playoffs that year (this time to the Denver Nuggets under Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray's leadership), thus ruining their best chance at a technical inner city playoff series while in the bubble. Ultimately, the Lakers won their 17th championship due to easy playoff series matches that led to people memeing that they won the Mickey Mouse Championship, but it does leave one wondering if the Lakers would have still remained champions that season had things played out normally. Would we have likely seen a Lakers-Clippers playoff series for the first time ever in that case? While the Clippers did go to the Western Conference Finals the following season afterward, could they have gone farther than that and potentially win the NBA Finals had the 2019-20 season gone without such issues near the end of that season?
• During the 2020-21 season, the Brooklyn Nets acquired James Harden from the Houston Rockets to give themselves a Big Three in Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Harden that could have competed among the best of the NBA to earn a championship. However, one season later, the Nets decided to trade Harden and fellow All-Star Paul Millsap to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for a malcontent Ben Simmons (who decided he was done with Philadelphia that season), Andre Drummond, Seth Curry, an unprotected 2022 first round pick, and a protected 2027 first round pick. What makes this one of the bigger WCHB scenarios in NBA history is that despite the trio being very competitive and the Nets looking to win their first ever NBA Finals with an All-Star studded roster that also included DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge (if only briefly in his first season in Brooklyn), and then Paul Millsap to replace Jordan, the main trio themselves only played a grand total of 16 games together! (For reference, Tom Brady and Antonio Brown played 19 games together in the crazy times they've had together in New England and Tampa Bay for the NFL.) During those games together, the Nets had a record of 13-3 together. Whether it was due to injuries, COVID-19 infections, getting back into proper game shape in the case of James Harden at first, or dealing with Kyrie Irving's anti-vaccine headache by the start of the 2021-22 season^*(the reason why this was brought up specifically was due to the mayor of New York not allowing for non-vaccinated people to go back to work with the COVID-19 Pandemic still going on by then; Irving would eventually receive permission to play for the Nets again, albeit for road games only, before getting a permit to play home games as well near the end of that season), the Nets never truly got their core group together long enough to really show off what they could do together. Even worse, despite that fact, the Nets were literally a few inches away from having the difference between winning the 2021 NBA Finals and being eliminated in the second round in an upset series loss over the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks!^note (The reason why those few inches were the separating factor was because of the fact that Kevin Durant's game-tying two-pointer late in the fourth quarter of Game 7 against the Bucks could have been a game-winning three-pointer instead had the foot that Durant inadvertently stepped on the three-point line for that shot was smaller instead.) The problem can be considered even worse when knowing that later that season, the Nets got swept by the eventual Eastern Conference Finals champion Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2022 NBA Playoffs (the only sweep in the entire playoffs that year, at that), with Ben Simmons never even playing for Brooklyn that season due to injuries and mental concerns relating to his time with Philadelphia earlier on.
  • That same year of 2022 also saw a potential problem with Kevin Durant & Kyrie Irving wanting to leave the Nets after that season ended, which eventually happened on February 2023 due to a sudden demand by Kyrie Irving wanting out in the middle of the 2022-23 season after previously looking like it was averted on August 23, 2022. First, Kyrie Irving (and Markieff Morris) got traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Dorian Finney-Smith and the return of fan-favorite guard Spencer Dinwiddie, as well as an unprotected 2029 first round pick and two second round picks in 2027 & 2029 on February 5, 2023 for what already felt like a wild trade that favored the Mavericks and looked to make the Nets much worse going forward. Then, in the late hours of February 8 (or the earliest hours of February 9 if you're in the East coast), Kevin Durant (and T.J. Warren) got traded to the Phoenix Suns (though in Warren's case, he was traded back to Phoenix) in what officially was announced as a four-team deal, but the basic exchange for the Suns acquiring Durant was fan-favorite forwards in Mikal Bridges & Cameron Johnson (and Jae Crowder, who went to Milwaukee afterward), as well as four unprotected first round picks in 2023, 2025, 2027, & 2029 and an option to swap first round picks in 2028. Thankfully with the last-minute additions for the Nets, they're looking to avert what happened years prior with the 2013 Kevin Garnett & Paul Pierce trade, if nothing else. Meanwhile, both the Suns & the Mavericks are looking to see if they can win a championship for their respective superstar-caliber players with Luka Dončić having Kyrie Irving and the duo of Chris Paul & Devin Booker getting Kevin Durant respectively.
• On June 2021, the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters made an open bid to demand entry into the NBA, despite the NBA not having an interest in expansion at the time of the team's bid announcement. In addition to places like Seattle and Vancouver having serious bids themselves in wanting new teams in their cities (or in Seattle's case, to revive the SuperSonics, who last played in 2008 before moving (by force to the eyes of Seattleites) to Oklahoma City to become the Thunder), other cities like Mexico City and Las Vegas have also garnered interest to the NBA as well, which makes the demands of the Globetrotters feel like a hard sell, especially during the crux of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• One problem that the 2021-22 Los Angeles Lakers dealt with (for a superteam that compared to the Brooklyn Nets that same season in terms of talents on paper) was that they as a team dealt with a lot of injuries together. Similar to the 2012-13 Lakers team that had Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, and Dwight Howard together, one wonders how differently the Lakers might have performed had players like LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and more star-caliber were not injured as often and as seriously as they were in that season. Of course, the following season afterward eventually led a majority of them leaving the Lakers to play elsewhere, with Russell Westbrook later being traded to the Utah Jazz in a three-way deal that included the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Hockey

• One of the NHL's first teams in its entire existence was the Montreal Wanderers, who were previously one of the most successful hockey teams in the sport's earliest moments in Canada. Being Stanley Cup winners from 1906-1908 and 1910, the Wanderers looked to continue as serious contenders in the NHL's first year of existence, looking to appeal to Montreal's English-speaking people as an alternative to the French-speaking people that the Canadiens had. However, they started out with a 1-3 season in the league's 1917-18 inaugural season before a fire at the Montreal Arena (their home arena) occurred on January 2, 1918. With the Montreal Arena burned down and no genuine help from the new NHL occurring, the Wanderers forfeited their next two matches that were set at home before folding altogether. Despite that, one does wonder how the Wanderers would have faired not just in that season, but beyond that had they gotten the help needed to rebuild their arena or have a proper, temporary home for the rest of that season (like sharing the Jubilee Arena with the Canadiens for the rest of the season or until further notice), especially since they had gotten Hall of Fame goalie Hap Holmes on board to try and help reverse their misfortunes earlier in the season.
• Aside from the entirety of the 2004-05 NHL season not being played at all due to a lockdown between the players and the league on salary cap issues, the only other time the Stanley Cup was not awarded at all in the National Hockey League's existence was in 1919 due to the timing of The Spanish Flu. Unlike the lockout season, however, the Stanley Cup Finals between the Montreal Canadiens and the Seattle Metropolitans of the then-rivaling Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) was actually played at first! The Stanley Cup Finals of that year were played with alternating rules between the PCHA and NHL for what was considered a best-of-five series. Seattle dominated the Canadiens for the games played in PCHA rules (winning 7-0 in Game 1 and 7-2 in Game 3), but the Canadiens were a lot more competitive in the NHL's rules for Game 2 (winning 4-2) before Game 4 was a fiercely competitive double-overtime game that ended in a 0-0 tie with both teams completely exhausted, the only time a Stanley Cup game ever ended in a tie like it used to in the regular season for the NHL. Game 5 was considered a replay of Game 4 due to the unique circumstances at hand, meaning it played under NHL rules; the Metropolitans led Game 5 with a 3-0 score entering the third period before the Canadiens scored three straight goals in the third period and finished with a goal in overtime to upset Seattle with a 4-3 win. When the final game was meant to be played on April 1 that year, both teams ended up being sick with the Spanish Flu virus, with Canadiens player Joe Hall dying from it four days later. The illness caused Game 6 to be cancelled five and a half hours before it was scheduled to be played, with the Metropolitans refusing a forfeiture from the Canadiens and even requesting players from the Victoria Aristocrats to play for the sick Canadiens for just one game, though the PCHA's president refused to allow that to happen. Due to the results of the championship series being a 2-2-1 tie and Seattle refusing a forfeiture from the Canadiens even after Hall's death, no championship was awarded to either team that year. However, had Game 4 ended with either team winning that match either in a regular manner or in that second overtime (with Game 5 continuing as planned with the PCHA's rules to conclude the series), it's likely the Stanley Cup would have been awarded to either the 3-1 (or 3-2) Metropolitans or the 3-2 Canadiens that year before the Spanish Flu forced the series' cancellation at hand. The same could also be said for if the Canadiens didn't score three unexpected goals in the third period and a goal in overtime to force Game 6 to even happen, though it would have ended with the Metropolitans winning 3-1 for sure that year. Or alternatively, had the Canadiens been allowed to have temporary players just for Game 6 or even if the Spanish Flu never happened to either team by the start of April, who knows how the series would have properly concluded.
• In the 1924-25 NHL season, the Hamilton Tigers looked to gain their first ever Stanley Cup championship under that name after previously winning two of them in 1912 and 1913 before the NHL first began existing as the Quebec Athletic Club (or Bulldogs, depending on who you ask). After years of struggling throughout their entire NHL history before this point, the Tigers had a surprising start under their belt with a 10-4-1 record halfway through that season (which already gave them more wins than at any other point in the NHL) before ultimately finishing the season in first place with a 19-10-1 record. However, the players for the Tigers did not receive an increase in pay due to the league expanding the number of games played this season from 24 to 30, which resulted in the Tigers' players demanding they each get an extra $200 (around $3,318 Canadian when adjusting for inflation in 2022) for the extra 6 games played that season or they would not even bother playing in both the NHL Championship and the Stanley Cup Championship that season. Instead of paying the players their necessary pay increase, team general manager Percy Thompson informed them that their contract went from the necessary December 1-March 30 scheduling that was already agreed upon earlier on, thus refusing to give them their extra payment, and that they needed to inform the NHL themselves on that issue instead. As the first players' strike for the NHL began due to that dispute, NHL President Frank Calder informed the Tigers' players that if they did not play while also holding their back-pay, the entire team would be suspended and potentially be replaced by the #4 seeded Ottawa Senators instead, all while the #2 seeded Toronto St. Patricks and #3 seeded Montreal Canadiens competed for the shot at the NHL's championship and the Stanley Cup. Unfortunately for the Tigers, their chance to play never came due to the refusal for proper payment to be had, thus leading to the Canadiens being named NHL champions by default after winning over Toronto and Montreal competing against the Victoria Cougars of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) for the Stanley Cup, with Victoria being the last non-NHL team to ever win the Stanley Cup in the process. One not only has to wonder if the players got their due compensation, would they have bested the Montreal Canadiens since Hamilton was under a bye at the time? If so, would Hamilton have beaten Victoria for the Stanley Cup that year? Finally, would the Hamilton Tigers still potentially exist beyond the 1924-25 season? That question is especially prevalent when knowing the Hamilton Tigers' entire roster got bought out by a new hockey team in New York at the time, briefly calling themselves the New York Hamilton Tigers due to the roster buyout before becoming the New York Americans going forward for just about the rest of their existence onward.
• Before the NHL settled for having the Original Six become the focus of their entire league from 1942-1967, they previously had enough teams to showcase respectable growth to the point of including divisions from 1926-1938 with teams like the original Ottawa Senators, Montreal Maroons, New York Americans, and the Pittsburgh Pirates (no relation to the MLB team) showcasing considerable success to make their stays feel sustainable early on, much like the rest of the NHL teams that eventually were considered the "Original Six" to long-time hockey fans. Unfortunately for the NHL, The Great Depression took effect throughout The '30s, meaning some of the once successful teams that felt like they could stay afloat without worries suddenly felt vulnerable to folding out altogether. The first victims of such a fate were the Pittsburgh Pirates, who intended to move to Philadelphia briefly to play as the Philadelphia Quakers for one season until they held a new, proper arena that would fit their increasing needs. Unfortunately for them, neither Pittsburgh nor Philadelphia had what they needed to give the team such desires, which led to them folding in 1931, though officially giving up their franchise ownership rights five years later. Then after that, the original Ottawa Senators suspended operations briefly for the 1931-32 season before restarting again for the 1932-33 season. Unfortunately, they had one more season in Ottawa before moving the team to St. Louis to become the St. Louis Eagles for a last-ditch desperation effort to succeed for the 1934-35 season. However, they also folded due to increased travel costs despite good attendance numbers under that name. After that, the Montreal Maroons (who looked to gain favor with the English-speaking fans in Montreal like the Wanderers before them) showed they were serious contenders in nearly every season they played in the NHL, but the constant struggles of the Great Depression led to things being too much for the Maroons to bear, which led to them ceasing operations in 1938 before ultimately giving up on a future return to the NHL by 1947. Finally, the New York Americans had ownership problems out the wazoo with Thomas Duggan dying early on in the Depression, bootlegger Bill Dwyer being too much of a gangster for his own good, and Red Dutton having his own issues struggling to keep the Americans afloat before the Depression was nearing its end; that led to the Americans struggling throughout the majority of their existence. Not only that, but with more and more of their players in particular signing up for World War II, their lack of preparation led to their move down to Manhattan as the Brooklyn Americans pretty much leaving any chance of survival being dead on arrival by the end of the 1941-42 season, even in spite of Dutton believing they could have come back once World War II ended. Due to that long period of struggles that both Americans and Canadians had to endure, one would have to wonder if the NHL would have been more accepting of allowing more teams to enter their league from the late 1940's until near the end of the 1960's had the struggles of the 1930's and early 1940's not occurred as they did, especially since every location outside of Montreal (though Quebec in its entirety eventually held a new team at one point) and maybe Brooklyn (if you don't count the New York Islanders briefly moving there for a few years) got themselves new teams in future seasons of the NHL (Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, New York Islanders).
• Similar to the ABA having merger talks with the NBA almost immediately after the ABA first existed for the basketball section, the WHA (World Hockey Association) almost immediately began talks on having their league merge with the NHL for many years after their inaugural season concluded. Akin to the ABA wanting to challenge preconceived notions to the NBA when beginning their merger talks, the WHA wanted to challenge certain notions the NHL had themselves, notably the reserve clause that players held while also acquiring the least amount of money from the big four leagues at the time, with the average NHL player salary being $25,000 (the same amount that a team had to submit to enter their franchise to the WHA at the time) back in 1972. Unfortunately for the WHA, they were perceived as a Butt-Monkey league due to certain locations that held WHA teams at the the time (such as the league's perceived flagship team, the New York Raiders(/Golden Blades), and the Toronto Toros) not seeing the WHA as a viable professional hockey league and deliberately made things harder on them to survive more than they should have been. Not only that, but four of the inaugural teams that were meant to have played in the WHA's debut season (the Calgary Broncos, Dayton Arrows, Miami Screaming Eagles, and San Francisco Sharks) never even debuted at all, meaning they were not only replaced by the teams that became the Cleveland Crusaders, Houston Aeros, Philadelphia Blazers, and Quebec Nordiques respectively, but the Los Angeles Aces resorted to changing their name to the Los Angeles Sharks immediately before the season began, which certainly caused some chaos within the league that season. Worse still, their initial WHA championship was not yet completed by the conclusion of the first season, meaning the New England Whalers had to resort to them holding up their division championship as the placeholder trophy for that season, thus further embarrassing the league. Still, had the WHA been taken more seriously and things were planned out better from their promotions to the talents they presented, it's possible more teams like the Chicago Cougars, Cleveland Crusaders, Houston Aeros, Los Angeles Sharks(/Michigan Stags/Baltimore Blades), Minnesota Fighting Saints, New York Raiders(/New York Golden Blades/Jersey Knights/San Diego Mariners), Ottawa Nationals(/Toronto Toros/Birmingham Bulls), and Philadelphia Blazers(/Vancouver Blazers/Calgary Cowboys) [or even teams that joined years later like the Cincinnati Stingers, Denver Spurs(/Ottawa Civics), Indianapolis Racers, and Phoenix Roadrunners] could have survived alongside the teams that ultimately made it to the NHL by 1979 instead of just the four that actually did. On the bright side, like the AFL did with the NFL and the ABA did with the NBA before them, the WHA did provide enough change to force the NHL to adapt their business strategies on certain things (i.e., showing hockey can work for southern markets, hiring European players (including Russians) on a regular basis, and giving more hockey people jobs with good pay) for decades to come.
• Two years before the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets moved from the defunct World Hockey Association to the NHL, there was a genuine proposal to move six of the eight WHA teams to the NHL: the eventual four teams, plus the Cincinnati Stingers and Houston Aeros. Cincinnati and Houston were left out mainly due to the WHA's insistence that the merger included all of their Canadian teams (New England being the strongest of the American WHA teams). Not only that, but both the Houston Aeros and Indianapolis Racers folded during the WHA's final season in part because of the information about the NHL not looking for any extra teams due to some of their current teams of the era like the Cleveland Barons and Minnesota North Stars struggling to stay afloat already, which led to the Aeros being the only WHA champion team to not make it to the NHL when it was all said and done. As for the final two WHA teams remaining (the Cincinnati Stingers and Birmingham Bulls), rather than let them join the other WHA teams to the NHL, they were bought out of their existence completely once the WHA folded for good. As such, only the Oilers remain as the original team from the WHA that's currently remained in their original location (or rather, staying in Edmonton after playing their only season in Alberta as a whole back in 1973) since the merger, with the Whalers immediately moving to Hartford once the merge was official before eventually going to North Carolina to become the Hurricanes, the Nordiques eventually moving to Colorado to become the Avalanche, and the (original) Jets moving to Phoenix, Arizona to become the Coyotes.^*The Jets did eventually return to Winnipeg, but it happened in a more awkward manner with the original team still staying in Arizona despite their constant troubles to the point of being forced to rename themselves as the Arizona Coyotes in 2014 as a stipulation for them to stay in Glendale, Arizona at the time, while the Atlanta Thrashers had a terrible situation on their front lead to the NHL being forced to accept Winnipeg's sole offer for the Thrashers as a means to bring back the Jets there.
• At the end of the 1977-78 NHL season, both the Cleveland Barons and Minnesota North Stars were both in serious financial troubles that looked to hurt the NHL as a whole through both teams potentially folding. Initially for the Barons, they sought to be bought out by Houston Aeros owner Kenneth Schnitzer and move to Houston as the new alternative option for Houston to have a professional hockey team in the city after ultimately being denied a spot to move the Aeros to the NHL that same season. However, that bid was ultimately denied due to the WHA still being competitive enough as a rivaling league at the time. Instead of moving the Barons, the NHL decided to merge the ownership rights of the Barons (held by Gordon Gund and George Gund III) with the team rights of the Minnesota North Stars remaining in Minnesota, which led to an amalgamation scenario where the North Stars survived through new ownership that the NHL put them through, but the Barons were forced to fold their team as a result of the weird merger at hand. To this day, the Cleveland Barons have been the last of the big four major leagues to have a team fold altogether, but one does wonder how the Barons and North Stars (now Dallas Stars) might have fared had the Barons been bought out and moved to Houston first instead.
• Wayne Gretzky started his career with the WHA's Indianapolis Racers in 1978.^note At the time, the NHL did not sign players under the age of 20. Gretzky was 18 when he joined the Racers. When the Racers were about to fold during Gretzky's rookie year, the Racers offered him to the defending league champion Winnipeg Jets. The Jets said no, feeling Gretzky was too young and not big enough to be worth it. Bear in mind Gretzky was a WHL All-Star already. The Edmonton Oilers disagreed, signing Gretzky and fellow Racer rookie Mark Messier. Those two formed the core of Edmonton's legendary championship run (1983-1990). Winnipeg, on the other hand, had their championship core stripped by the NHL reclamation draft^note When the four surviving WHA teams joined the NHL in 1979, NHL teams were allowed grab any player from the four teams that they owned the draft rights to., leading to finishing last in their division in their first NHL season. Though they would recover and see success, it was nothing like they saw in the WHA. Something that might have changed, had they accepted eventual nine-time MVP Gretzky.
  • Secondary WCHB: Under ordinary circumstances, Gretzky would've been stripped from the Oilers and placed into the 1979 NHL entry draft, since no team held his draft rights. But since Gretzky's contract was a personal services contract with Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, rather than a standard team contract, this rule didn't apply to him. He could've voided his contract and entered the draft, but the prospect of being signed by the last-place Colorado Rockies (who would become the New Jersey Devils in 1983), led Gretzky to refuse. After some negotiation, the Oilers were allowed to keep Gretzky, in exchange for picking last in each round of the upcoming draft. Who knows if Gretzky's presence would've been enough for the Rockies to remain in Denver (and by unintended extension, been enough for the Quebec Nordiques to remain in Quebec years later).
• George Pelawa, drafted early in the 1st round selections by the Calgary Flames, was considered to be a top notch player (with a very bright future in the league). A short time after the draft, he was killed in a car crash.
• In 1991, junior phenom Eric Lindros was drafted first overall, as everybody expected. Unfortunately, Lindros refused to report to the Quebec Nordiques, the team who drafted him, due to his nasty feud with Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut. The Nordiques eventualy traded Lindros to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for a large collection of players and draft picks. Several of those players and picks, most notably Peter Forsberg, became important pieces of a team that would eventually capture the Stanley Cup in 1996 and 2001. Unfortunately, the Nordiques moved to Colorado in 1995 and became the Avalanche. Had the Nordiques remained in Quebec City and won the Cup in 1996, they might have been the last Canadian team to win the Cup, rather than the Montreal Canadiens, who most recently won it in 1993, and assuming they won the Cup while based in Quebec City, they'd likely still be in Quebec City today ^note in a similar scenario to the New Jersey Devils, who were on the verge of relocating to Nashville prior to them winning the 1995 Stanley Cup which prevented the move from outright happening, coincidentally the Nords would move to Colorado the very same season New Jersey won the Cup.
• Before Mario Lemieux bought the Penguins to keep them in Pittsburgh, it was heavily rumored that billionaire Paul Allen was in the running to buy the then cash-strapped team and relocate them to Portland.
  • A side angle: The main reason Lemieux could buy the Pens was that the team owed him over $30 million in deferred money, making him its biggest single creditor. He was thus able to make a deal to give up most of his deferred money in exchange for a large enough stake in the team to give him control. What if he hadn't been owed those millions... or wasn't able to convince the other creditors and the league to sign off on the deal? Though Lemieux himself said that he would have put in a bid even if he hadn't been owed that money.
• After a round of expansion and franchise moves in the early 90s, the NHL was looking at unprecedented exposure and popularity. Then the league went through an ill-advised second round of expansion in the late '90s, expanding to the southern U.S. (Florida, Nashville, Atlanta), moving smaller franchises to the western U.S. (Quebec to Colorado, Minnesota to Dallas, Winnipeg to Phoenix), and creating newer teams that have often been left as ignored to most casual fans of hockey (i.e., the Nashville Predators, the Minnesota Wild, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Atlanta Thrashers). This is considered an ongoing disaster for the league, with them having to fight tooth and nail to keep the Phoenix Coyotes from not only shutting down via bankruptcy in the late 2000's and early 2010's (including briefly owning the team at one point themselves), but also moving back to Canada (or going elsewhere in the U.S.A.) from the late 2000's to even the early 2020's after being renamed the Arizona Coyotes and being the biggest example of the mostly apathetic fanbases the league expanded to since then. With the perception (in America) of a bloated, watered-down and lackluster product with no truly recognizable names in mind, the league has been at its lowest point in decades (part of the Stanley Cup finals have been broadcast on Versus, a second-tier cable sports net^note Which became NBC Sports Network in 2011 and NBCSN in 2013. And then became absolutely nothing in 2021 when NBC lost the TV rights to the NHL (to ESPN's parent company Disney and Turner (currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) for TNT) and shut it down in favor of its streaming service Peacock.). The cancellation of the entire 2004-2005 season due to labor strife did not help the cause of fan disillusionment whatsoever.
  • To expand further on this one, the sale of the Atlanta Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment and the subsequent relocation of the team to Winnipeg as the new Jets has shown clearly what the future is for those troubled franchises like the Coyotes. Even though Winnipeg lost its team 15 years previous due to economic conditions up north and the arena for the new Jets being the smallest permanent home arena in the league (with the Coyotes ironically having them beat in only a few upcoming seasons during the 2020's), the NHL had to swallow its pride and sell the team to the ONLY genuinely interested buyers available. With the Coyotes in such dire straits (the City of Glendale bailed them out until 2022, with the Coyotes resorting to the newly constructed 5,000 seat Mullett Arena out in Arizona State University that was initially meant for their hockey team and other viable ASU sports teams being their temporary new home, plans for a new arena entering development hell,^note The team owners originally planned to build a new arena in Tempe, but city voters overwhelmingly turned down the deal in May 2023. They're now exploring possibilities in Mesa (near the largest part of their season ticket base) and north Phoenix (near many of the region's wealthiest neighborhoods). and NO prospective owners looking to keep the team in the desert if their most recent attempt fails on them, the sale of the Thrashers has been seen as an omen for the Coyotes for well over a decade and a half.
    • To expand even further, the league had ANOTHER lockout that caused part of the 2012–13 season to be missed and threatened to wipe the entirety of THAT season out. This is after the NHL was finally recovering from the disillusionment from their last lockout in the 2000's and was finally getting back on national TV with its then-new deal with NBC. The implications could only be imagined, but the loss of another season might have only hastened the backpedaling of the league's 90s southern expansion with teams migrating north to places like Seattle, Quebec City, and Hamilton^note Seattle was awarded the 32nd NHL team and started play in 2021, while Quebec City's expansion bid was soundly rejected mainly due to the city's smaller market size and the pricing of the loonie, and any potential expansion/relocation to Hamilton would be blocked by the nearby Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres. Houston, Kansas City, and Portland would be the current favorites to get the Coyotes or another struggling team if failure continues from there., just to name a few examples in mind. So really, the big "what could have been" scenario here is what if the league was run by competent businessmen who allowed their on-ice product to flourish properly instead of shooting itself in the foot constantly.
• During what ultimately became a locked-out 2004-05 season, a revived version of the World Hockey Association sought to capitalize upon what eventually became a failed NHL season. While they first technically began existing in 2003, the new WHA sought to capitalize upon the NHL's upcoming failures from the 2004-05 lockout with them using the sport's big names like Bobby Hull, Ed Belfour, and Sidney Crosby and 8 planned locations in mind to debut as a means of bringing hockey to fans that were disillusioned by the NHL at the time, especially with the revived WHA promoting rules that favored more scoring by comparison. Six teams had planned names ready to use in the newer inaugural season via the Detroit Gladiators, the Dallas Americans (which planned to use Ed Belfour as a co-owner and their goalie), the Halifax IceBreakers, the Quebec Nordiks (basically a tweaked version of the fan favorite Quebec Nordiques team name), the Toronto Toros (a planned revival of the same team name from the original WHA that also held the draft rights to Sidney Crosby at the time), and the Vancouver Blazers (another planned revival for a same team name from the original WHA), with Hamilton and Miami also confirmed as locations for the planned WHA revival. Unfortunately for the league, starting with their inaugural draft being delayed from June 2 to July 18, 2004 (which coincidentally resulted in Crosby denying the WHA's 3-year offer worth $7.5 million), things started to unravel for it with many of its plans falling through by August 2004. Both the Quebec Nordiks and Toronto Toros folded in August, with the Florida-based team that initially planned to be in Miami before going to Jacksonville and then Orlando had its team rights expire that same month also. By September, only the Gladiators, Americans, IceBreakers, and Blazers looked to have teams ready in time to start out their planned season (which was pushed back to initially begin by November), before the Americans announced their plans to fold themselves by October. With that, the new WHA failed to provide a proper restructuring to their league going forward into the rest of their planned season. The WHA did have a second attempt to survive in the spring of 2005 after the NHL announced their 2004-05 was shut down for good by having the idea to host the "Bobby Hull Invitational Tournament", which had as many as 50 NHL players at the time show genuine interest in competing under that league's tournament, which was planned to be held by May 20, 2005 with the winning team gaining $2 million as their reward. However, that plan was also never held since it was dropped without any comment whatsoever. What once was seen as a friendly alternative to the NHL during a lockout season quickly fell apart to the point of the new WHA potentially restructuring themselves as a new junior minor league or a professional hockey league exclusive to the Pennsylvania-Midwest area before eventually shutting down completely, without warning, by 2008, with this new WHA never playing a single game whatsoever. Even worse, there was a World Hockey Association 2 minor league held entirely in southeastern U.S.A. that actually did play their sole season successfully enough around that same time. Oh, and to further complicate problems for the WHA, they also held two different failed junior hockey leagues as well; one that was abandoned without warning after the WHA Super Junior League in Florida was announced, and another that was unsanctioned and held in British Columbia as a Tier II league called the WHA Junior West Hockey League, though that league actually lasted from 2006 to 2008. Basically, the WCHB scenario here is what if the revived WHA was held by competent individuals that knew what they were doing at least a little bit, if not had viable back-up plans in mind that worked out better than they did.
  • Speaking of the 2004-05 NHL lockout wiping out the season, it also drastically changed certain outlooks of several teams forever, the most notable ones being the Pittsburgh Penguins (whom without the 04-05 season, were allowed to draft superstar Sidney Crosby, a move that outright saved Pittsburgh from losing their team as they were in serious financial trouble prior to the draft), the Anaheim Ducks (eventual Cup winners in 2007) with stars Paul Kariya (who would retire the year before Anaheim's championship season) and Temmu Selanne rehabbing their devastating injuries they had sustained during the 2003-04 season and the defending Stanley Cup champions Tampa Bay Lightning (who were fresh off from winning the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals over the Calgary Flames) having superstar players such as Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, Nikolai Khabibulin and Brad Richards in their primes and were likely another Dynasty in the making. But because of the lockout wiping out the entire season, meant that the Bolts would have to wait a whole year to properly defend their title, and because of the long layoff meant that Tampa Bay would be rusty and ill-equipped once the new season began. They would make the playoffs as the 7th seed and eventually lose in the first round of the 2006 playoffs to the Ottawa Senators, along with a few losing seasons and a disinterested ownership after that would eventually lead to the ownership to break the core team up by trading Brad Richards to the Stars (Khabibulin was already gone via free agency to Chicago), while the Pittsburgh Penguins would launch their own Dynasty behind Crosby. ^note Though the Lightning would eventually draft future stars Steven Stamkos (#1 in 08), Victor Hedman (#2 in 09), Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilvesky that would form the core of their Dynasty in The New '20s. But what if the NHL owners had come to an agreement and the 2004-05 season had never been cancelled and had been allowed to play as scheduled? Pittsburgh doesn't land Crosby and are forced to relocate elsewhere (Crosby who would have likely been drafted by one of the worse teams such as Vancouver or any of the New York teams), the Ducks don't win the 2007 championship because of Kariya and Selanne not having the time to fully heal (though this begs the question if the Ottawa Senators (the Ducks opponents in the Stanley Cup Finals that year) would have made the Finals in a lockout-less Era that year and if so, would have likely ended Canada's Cup drought) and Tampa Bay's core doesn't get broken up and would have likely gotten a better shot to defend their title if not ascend to Dynasty status (though Khabibulin still would have left for Chicago after the 03-04 season as his contract expired following the Cup win), meaning that they don't draft the players that forms their 2020 Dynasty.
• Despite the aforementioned issues with the now-renamed Arizona Coyotes, expansion talks resumed during 2015, with the NHL demanding a $500 million application fee for prospective buyers—excessive even by sports standards as this fee did not even guarantee a franchise would be ready and available for these locations. Only two applications were ever filed in that time, one being from Quebec City in a likely attempt to revive the Nordiques (the other being in Las Vegas) in what was intended to be a means of further expanding into new American markets. The league eventually chose Vegas with the creation of the Golden Knights set; the Quebec City bid was put on hold due to a major drop of the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart, and the NHL later killed it off entirely.^note The NHL requires that all player salaries be paid in US dollars so that payrolls won't fluctuate with exchange rates. Since Canadian teams collect their revenues in their own dollars, a more valuable Canadian dollar is, needless to say, very good for their bottom line. Earlier in the 2010s, the loonie was essentially at par with the US dollar, but the major drop of oil prices in late 2014 ended that. (The energy sector is a much larger part of the economy in Canada than in the States.) By the time the NHL greenlighted the Vegas franchise, the loonie was trading at about 75 U.S. cents, and hasn't even gotten to 85 U.S. cents since then.
  • And in December 2017, the NHL reopened expansion talks, this time inviting Seattle to submit a bid... for a cool $650 million. Seattle got its team in 2018, with play starting in the newly renovated Climate Pledge Arena (formerly known as the Key Arena for Seattle SuperSonics fans) in 2021.
• When the NHL postponed the rest of their 2019-20 season due to the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, instead of implementing a resumed regular season period of certain teams competing for a shot at the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NHL decided to end the regular season as it was by the March 12, 2020 date and have the Top 12 teams for the East & West compete in the Playoffs right there and then up in Canada, with teams 5-12 in each conference competing against each other in a Best of 5 qualifying round and the Top 4 teams for each conference being reseeded in a Round Robin format before continuing with the Playoffs as planned, with teams being reseeded from there for Best of 7 matches from the First Round onward. As a result, it's not only fair to wonder what might have been had the NHL continued their regular season like the NBA did (even in a Bubble type of setting out in Canada), but how differently the Playoffs might have been had the NHL not experimented like they did as a result of the pandemic.
  • By extension, the entire 2020-21 season had the NHL implement changes that were only held for this season due to COVID-19 still being a serious danger to both the United States of America and Canada. Due to border laws implemented around the start of the pandemic, the NHL allowed for teams to only compete in their proper divisions they got aligned in, with all seven of Canada's teams being one division in the North Division, while the rest of the teams in the U.S.A. either went to the West, Central, or East divisions, depending on where each team is placed at across the nation. Once the Playoffs were set that season, the NHL allowed for Canada's teams to compete as they did in Canada before being granted an exemption to allow American playoff teams like the Vegas Golden Knights and Tampa Bay Lightning to compete against Canada's winning playoff team that season (which became the Montreal Canadians, who were considered the weakest team in the Stanley Cup Playoffs that year due to them making it with a total of 59 points in their favor) in both Canada and the United States of America. While the 2021-22 season went back to its regular format going forward (though changing up division implementation yet again due to the addition of the Seattle Kraken expansion team starting in that season), it's fair to wonder how different the season would have been had serious border restrictions weren't implemented up in Canada at the time. Canadian fans of the league also wonder what the NHL would have been like going forward had that previous season's implementation of Canadian teams having their own division continued beyond that particular point in time as well.

Mixed Martial Arts

• The ill-fated International Fight League was actually Plan B for MyNetworkTV. They originally wanted to net the rights to UFC, but Zuffa decided to keep UFC on Spike TV. With the UFC appearing on other Fox channels as of 2012, there may be hope for the long-suffering MyNetworkTV to get some UFC action!
• Speaking of MMA, the career of Fedor Emelianenko is a big WCHB. In the years of PRIDE Fighting Championship he was undisputed #1 heavyweight in MMA and pound-for-pound leader. At the time UFC was going through a major Audience-Alienating Era and top heavyweights were all in PRIDE. After it fell apart and was bought out by UFC, Fedor decided to stay in Japan, before finally arriving in the USA to fight for Strikeforce. At the time UFC heavyweight division gained some steam thanks to Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar, which left fans clamoring for either one of them to fight Fedor. Contract disagreements prevented the dream match from happening and Fedor's career sharply declined (3 straight losses after a winning streak of over 30 fights). Fans still wonder how prime Fedor would have fared against UFC heavyweights.
  • Speaking of Lesnar. It's widely accepted that his athleticism alone made him a top contender. His late move to MMA and suffering from diverticulitis meant he was Unskilled, but Strong and ended up losing to more well-rounded fighters who could withstand his brute force. What if he went to MMA straight from college? His raw physicality combined with proper training would make for a VERY scary fighter.
    • At the very least, what if his UFC career wasn't stopped twice by diverticulitis.
  • Lesnar's MMA Arch-Enemy, Frank Mir, burst onto the scene in the early 2000s and in 2004 won the Heavyweight Championship from Tim Sylvia. Soon after that he was injured in a motorcycle accident which sidelined him for two years and led to middling performances for another two. In the meantime UFC Heavyweight division fell into an Audience-Alienating Era that lasted until 2007 (when PRIDE disbanded and Couture won the title). Could a healthy Mir keep the division interesting? Could UFC build it around him and steal some of PRIDE fighters?
  • In 2003 Chuck Liddell (arguably the biggest name in the UFC at the time) entered PRIDE middleweight Grand Prix in hopes of getting a dream match with WanderleiSilva. Unfortunately he was upset by Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson who knocked him out in the semifinal. Although the two finally met four years later in the UFC and had a Fight of the Year contender it's pretty clear that both were past their primes (notably it was Liddell's last win, he later retired after being KO'd in his three next fights). Fans still wonder how would their fight look when they were the two best 205-lb fighters on the planet.
• The nature of the sport, with its injuries, illnesses, failed drug tests, and contract disputes, results in many scheduled fights, low and high-profile, ultimately being modified, postponed, or outright cancelled.
  • UFC 221 was to be main-evented by UFC Middleweight Champion Robert Whittaker in his first title defense against former champion Luke Rockhold. Whittaker pulled out due to an undisclosed injury, and Rockhold would instead be booked in an interim title fight against Yoel Romero. Romero, however, missed weight by 2.7 lbs., and was thus ineligible to win the title. Even so, he defeated Rockhold via 3rd round KO, and was granted a title shot at UFC 225.
    • Interestingly, the UFC initially targeted a Middleweight title unification bout between Georges St-Pierre and then-interim champion Whittaker. GSP, however, announced that he'd be out of action indefinitely due to ulcerative colitis, and Whittaker was promoted to undisputed champion.
  • Max Holloway was originally scheduled to defend the Featherweight title against former Lightweight Champion Frankie Edgar in the main event of UFC 222. However, Holloway pulled out a month prior due to a leg injury. The UFC then targeted a rematch between Bantamweight Champion TJ Dillashaw and former champion Cody Garbrandt as the new headliner, but Dillashaw declined. Women's Featherweight Champion Cris Cyborg ultimately ended up main eventing 222 against Yana Kunitskaya. Edgar remained on the card, being finished for the first time in his professional career by future title challenger Brian Ortega.
  • UFC 223 saw two official changes to the main event. The original headliner was a bout between Interim Lightweight Champion Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov to crown an undisputed champion following the inactivity of Conor Mc Gregor. Ferguson would suffer a freak knee injury after tripping over a cable, and pulled out of the fight. He was replaced by Featherweight Champion Max Holloway, who sought to become (at the time) only the second man to hold two titles simultaneously after McGregor. On the day of weigh-ins, however, Holloway was deemed medically unfit to compete. Former Lightweight Champion Anthony Pettis was targeted as a replacement after his initial bout with Michael Chiesa was scrapped following the latter's injury due to the now-infamous bus attack by McGregor. Pettis weighed in at 155.2, just a hair above the 155-lb. championship weight limit. Despite being given extra time to make weight, he did not weigh in again and did not compete on the card. Paul Felder, having weighed in at 155 lbs., offered to step in, but the New York State Athletic Commission denied that offer due to Felder being unranked in the official Lightweight rankings. Al Iaquinta was ultimately chosen as Nurmagomedov's new opponent, but he too weighed in 0.2 lbs. over the championship limit. Even so, Dana White expressed that if he would have won the fight, he'd be considered the de facto champion and treated as such to the extent possible under regulations. Nurmagomedov ended up winning the bout and the undisputed title via unanimous decision.
  • UFC 226, taking place during International Fight Week, was originally to feature two title fights. The co-main event, Max Holloway vs. Brian Ortega for the Featherweight Championship, was cancelled following Holloway experiencing concussion-like symptoms, particularly noticeable during an interview on UFC Tonight in which Michael Bisping expressed concern to Holloway as the latter appeared lethargic. The fight was rescheduled for UFC 231, where Holloway was victorious.
  • The featured bout on the main card of UFC 227 was scheduled to be a fight between high-ranking Light Heavyweight contenders Alexander Gustafsson and Volkan Oezdemir. Both men pulled out injured, and that vacant spot on the card was filled by a middleweight fight between Thiago Santos and Kevin Holland.
  • UFC 228's co-main event was originally scheduled to feature inaugural Women's Flyweight Champion Nicco Montaño's first title defense against Valentina Shevchenko. However, Montaño pulled out due to health issues related to her weight cut, and the fight was cancelled. She was subsequently stripped of the title.
  • Many fans were left scratching their heads when it was announced that UFC 230, the company's third event held in legendary Madison Square Garden, would be headlined by a fight for the vacant Women's Flyweight Championship featuring Valentina Shevchenko and Sijara Eubanks. Shevchenko had originally been booked to fight for the title against Joanna Jędrzejczyk at UFC 231, but this new fight was booked due to 230 being in desperate need of a main event. However, this hardly seemed like a fight worthy of closing out any PPV, let alone one at MSG. While Shevchenko was an established fighter who had previously challenged for the Women's Bantamweight title in the main event of UFC 215, Eubanks only held a 3-2 record; Joe Rogan even noted on his podcast that he had no idea who Eubanks was. This lack of name recognition combined with Eubanks' history of missing weight resulted in a great deal of backlash which ultimately led the UFC to book a Heavyweight title fight between Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis as the new main event. While it was not quite the draw that that the two previous MSG main events (Alvarez/McGregor and Bisping/GSP) were, it was still a respectable headliner, especially coming off of Lewis' star-making knockout of Alexander Volkov and post-fight interview at UFC 229. Shevchenko was re-booked against Jędrzejczyk for 231, and Eubanks instead fought on the 230 prelims against Roxanne Modafferi. She missed weight by 1.2 pounds.
  • The main event of UFC 234 in Melbourne was supposed to be a Middleweight Championship fight featuring Australia's own Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum. However, just hours prior to the event, Whittaker pulled out due to a hernia and a twisted and collapsed bowel that required emergency surgery. The co-main event, a three-round fight between Israel Adesanya and Anderson Silva, became the new headliner. Following the event, an interim title fight between Gastelum and Adesanya was booked for UFC 236.

Other

• Originally, Chicago, Illinois was meant to host the 1904 Olympics after the modern era Olympics were first held in Athens, Greece in 1896 and Paris, France in 1900. However, St. Louis, Missouri was also hosting the World's Fair (dubbed officially as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition as a (late) celebration of the U.S.A.'s 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase), and they did not want competition of another international event being hosted at the same time at a different location. Eventually, after making threats of hosting another sporting event in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to try and eclipse the Olympics that year, the Olympic Committee conceded to move the Olympics that year from Chicago to St. Louis, lasting as a special sporting event (still being a few days long) that was also a part of a larger sports program there that lasted from July-November 1904 as a part of the exposition from April-December 1904. One wonders how things could have been had the events not overlap with each other the way they did, especially since Chicago still has not gained any new summer Olympic grounds to make up for their loss of 1904 as of at least 2036, if not 2040 at the earliest.
  • On the note regarding the 1904 Olympics, the marathon ran that year was infamous for many mishaps and insane stories that occurred throughout that period of time, with the purpose of many of them being experiments on how runners would do while dealing with such conditions at the time. In fact, so many stories were abounded in that event, many of them being negatives when looking back upon them, that this video better explains all the mishaps that went on with that particular event. Still, one wonders how much better the event would have been if #1.) the event was held in Chicago properly and #2.) the head of the event decided not to enforce his weird, forced dehydration experiment to occur during that event.
• We can also ask what might have been had the 1916 Berlin Olympics occurred without World War I existing, as well as had the 1940 Tokyo Olympics and 1944 London Olympics occurred without World War II existing in general. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics also has the question of what would have happened that year had the COVID-19 Pandemic never happened, though unlike the other events, it did at least happen (albeit in a compromised form) a year later (while also keeping the year 2020 as a part of its event name due to how expensive it would have been to change every marketing thing around it to 2021).
  • On a related note with Germany, the Olympic events they've hosted (or tried to host in the case of the 1916 Berlin Olympics) have led to unfortunate circumstances being involved with each event they've hosted (or tried to host) there. With the 1936 Olympics, Berlin had the unfortunate historic circumstances of the event being hosted by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. As for the 1972 Olympics, Munich in what was known as West Germany at the time wanted to host the event under what they called "The Cheerful Games" due to them looking optimistic under the democratic, optimistic Germany of the world at that time. Unfortunately for those games, any cheer there got overshadowed by the Arab–Israeli Conflict with the Black September militant group from Palestine kidnapping and then killing 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, with West German officers failing to rescue the innocent athletes and coaches in time.^*(One West German cop was also killed alongside five Black September militants during the failed rescue mission.) Basically, we might have to wonder what would have happened in these German Olympics had they been able to occur under proper circumstances instead of leaving one unfortunate circumstance after the next to occur through unintentional circumstances beyond their control.
• How many golds would the U.S.A. have won in Moscow back in 1980 had the Soviet-Afghan War not occur? For that matter, how many golds would Soviet Bloc countries have won in Los Angeles back in 1984?^note (Apart from Romania, which did go to L.A. that year alongside Yugoslavia due to them not joining the Bloc as their response back to the Americans.)
• In the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event (it airs on ESPN, it counts as a sport), a field of almost 6500 entrants was down to 26 when Phil Ivey, widely considered the greatest poker player in the world, mucked the winning hand after calling on the river and forfeited a pot of 2.18 million chips. Ivey was favored to win the event, which would have made him the first established pro to take the Main Event bracelet since the early 2000's poker boom, after which a string of previously unknown amateur players won the event. Ivey did make the final table, but it was ultimately another unknown, Joe Cada, who took the bracelet. Whether Ivey would have taken the bracelet, which would have been his first Main Event win, with the extra 2.18 million in his stack is something we'll never know.
• The second weekend of June 2012 had a pair of WCHBs:
  • In the month of May, the toast of America was the horse I'll Have Another. Having beaten well-heeled Bodemeister with well-timed charges on the homestretch, in both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, IHA was the favorite for the Belmont Stakes, the third and final leg of the Triple Crown. Sadly, however, he developed tendonitis and was scratched the day before the race, extending the 34-year-long drought since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978.
  • A quarter of the way around the globe, the Men's Finals of the French Open came down to defending Champion & King of Clay (#2) Rafael Nadal and #1 in the world Novak Djokovic, who was 1 match away from both a career Grand Slam and a non-calendar Grand Slam (with Maria Sharapova having gained the former the previous day). Nadal took a quick lead 6-4, 6-3, but started to become vulnerable, losing set 3 2-6.
    Then the rain came. Play was suspended with Nadal down in Set 4: 1-2. When play resumed the following afternoon, it's as though a Reset Button was hit for the match, with the Spaniard going 6-3 for the only set of the day (officially making the tally 7-5). Granted, Djokovic made quite a few unforced errors, including a double-fault on break-match-point in that fateful 4th set, but it makes one wonder: could Nadal have come back on his own in a 5th set had the rain never come to the plain? Alternatively, could the Serbian, Djokovic, have rallied mid-match under fair skies?
• While we're on the subject of Tennis, Juan Martín del Potro has both the honor of being the only man other than Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic who won a Grand Slam title from 2005 to 2011 (the 2009 US Open, to be exact) and the heartbreak of suffering a severe wrist injury shortly after that sidelined his career for two years. It's hard to not wonder if del Potro would have been able to turn the Big Two of tennis into a Big Three long before Djokovic did it in 2011 if he hadn't received that injury, especially considering that he won his lone Grand Slam title by legitimately beating both Federer and Nadal in head-to-head combat and has only recently managed to claw his way back to No. 8, four ranking spots below his 2010 best of No. 4.
  • An even more haunting "what if this tennis player hadn't been injured?" question hangs over the career of Monica Seles. She dethroned Steffi Graf as the World No. 1 and dominated the Grand Slams as a teenager for two years before she was stabbed by a crazed Graf fan, an incident that she never fully recovered from. Many people believe that if Seles hadn't been stabbed, she could have staked her claim as the greatest female tennis player of all time instead of Graf. Would she really have? Or would Graf have eventually figured out how to reclaim her No. 1 throne like she did in regards to Arantxa Sánchez Vicario?
  • An equally haunting "what-if" from the pre-Open era of tennis is the career and life of Maureen Connolly (in later life known by her married name of Brinker). Having won three Slams before turning 18 in 1952, she became the first woman ever to win the calendar-year Grand Slam the next year. Two weeks after she won her ninth Slam at Wimbledon in 1954, her right leg was crushed in a horseback riding accident, ending her playing career. Incidentally, she had intended to turn pro later that year. How differently might the fledgling women's pro tours have developed had they had a Grand Slam winner in her prime? And, in an even sadder development, by the time the Open Era came in 1968, she had been battling ovarian cancer for nearly two years, which eventually ended her life a couple of months before her 35th birthday in 1969. Could a fully healthy Brinker (no shattered leg, no cancer) have given players like Margaret Court and Billie Jean King a challenge at the dawn of the Open Era?^note It's not implausible that a healthy Brinker could have challenged for titles in that era—Roger Federer and Serena Williams won three singles Slams, and Novak Djokovic has won four, after surpassing Brinker's age at death.
• Probably the most foregone sports what-if, at least in horse racing-what if Samuel Riddle had not thought the first Saturday in May was too early for a colt to run a mile and a quarter and had entered Man o' War in the Kentucky Derby? (Notably, Riddle had changed his mind by the time Man o' War's best son War Admiral was a three-year-old...)
  • Would Barbaro had taken the Triple Crown had he not broken his leg in the Preakness?
• In the 2000 Olympics, at the women's gymnastics all-around final, what would have happened if someone hadn't made a critical mistake of setting the vaulting horse too low (5cm below regulation height)? While gymnasts did get a chance to redo their vault rotation after the mistake was discovered, one has to imagine that falling on the event likely shook them up and messed with their heads on other events that they didn't get a do-over on. The most prominent example is Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina, who was a favorite to win gold but a fall on the uneven bars took her out of medal contention; would she still have had that fall if the disastrous vault rotation hadn't been rattling around in her head?
  • In regards to the same event, there's also the question of what could have been had the officials in charge chosen to scrap the competition entirely and have a complete do-over, presumably on a later date (something which many people in the gymnastics world believe they should have done), rather than charge ahead with a competition that was already tainted. While the obvious impacts would have been comparable to the "what if it didn't happen in the first place" scenario, the greatest impact of all might have actually had to do with a gymnast who wasn't affected by the vaulting horse error — Romania's Andreea Raducan, who initially won the gold in the competition but was later disqualified for a drug violation as a team doctor had given her a cold medication that included a banned substance. Given that this only happened once and Raducan tested clean for other finals, it's likely that if the all-around competiton had been postponed, Raducan wouldn't have had the failed drug test and would have gotten to keep an AA medal had she won one... and Raducan's disqualification has often been cited as a likely contributing factor to the steep decline of the Romanian gymnastics program (which went from being a powerhouse in the early 2000s to not even qualifying a full team to the 2016 Olympics). As such, a more complete solution to the immediate problem at the 2000 all-around could have altered the future of the entire Romanian gymnastics program years and decades down the line.
• 2008 all-around gymnastics gold medalist Nastia Liukin was born in the Soviet Union to two well-known Soviet gymnasts. When Nastia was two, the family moved to the United States. However, if her family had stayed past the breakup of the USSR and Nastia was still interested in being a gymnast, she would have competed for Russia, which has a vastly different training style and system. Would she still have made it to the Olympics? What would her gymnastics have looked like?
• Speaking of 2008 gymnastics, what would have happened with the USA gymnastics team at those Olympics if Chellsie Memmel and Samantha Peszek (or even just one of the two) hadn't gotten injured? Specifically, what would have happened if Alicia Sacramone, who fell on her beam mount, had sat out the beam rotation in favor of Memmel or Peszek (both of whom routinely outscored Sacramone on beam) going up instead? If Sacramone hadn't had the beam fall hanging over her, could it have given her enough added confidence to avoid falling on floor in the next rotation? Could Team USA have won gold?^note China's margin of victory was more than the cost of Sacramone's falls, so that alone wouldn't give them the gold, but it's impossible to say what kind of ripple effects would have come just from having everyone healthy and therefore not having Sacramone, Liukin, and Shawn Johnson under the pressure of carrying so much of the team final.
• Rugby Union: Jonah Lomu, former New Zealand winger, suffered from a kidney disease which interfered with his performance throughout his career, and ultimately contributed to his premature death in 2015. Despite this, he is still considered one of the best rugby players of all time. Just how good would he have been without his condition? Would he have been able to help New Zealand to a World Cup victory in 1995?
  • The real question is whether he could have helped the All Blacks to World Cup victory in 1999, 2003, or 2007. His kidney condition hadn't yet seriously affected his performance in the 1995 World Cup, and wasn't diagnosed until later that year. However, the first signs of his illness-induced decline began to show by 1999; even though he was that edition's leading try scorer, he couldn't keep the All Blacks from being stunned in the semifinals by France. Lomu made his final appearance for the ABs in 2002, was forced to undergo dialysis a year later, and received a kidney transplant in 2004.
• Former Brazilian international Assis, as his career was winding down in the mid 90s, was playing in Portugal. He brought his 15-year-old little brother for a trial at small Portuguese club Estrela da Amadora. The club considered the youngster quite good, but not good enough to pay him the required salary of €750 per month. A pittance for any player, but something they considered excessive for a kid in the youth teams. Thirteen years later the club were languishing in the netherworld of the fourth tier while the youngster, now known as Ronaldinho, had starred for Grêmio, PSG and Barcelona and twice been named World Player of the Year.
• Augusta National Golf Club is the site of the Masters Tournament, the first major of the men's golf season. But one of its co-designers, the legendary Bobby Jones, pitched it to the United States Golf Association as a US Open venue. When the USGA rejected the pitch, Jones helped create a new event in its place, the Augusta National Invitational, which would be renamed the Masters Tournament after a few years. Since then, Augusta National has morphed into a wide-open, colorful and ultra-groomed course which often yields many dramatic birdies and eagles every year. On the other hand, the US Open and its venues are better known for thick, punishing rough with ragged bunkers and many winning scores at or over par.^note Another reason for the low scoring in the US Open is that the USGA typically sets up Open courses with a par of 70 (occasionally 71), while normal PGA Tour stops and the Masters are played at par 72. Only one US Open in the last 30 years has been played to a par of 72.
  • Actually, Augusta National was intended to be more similar to venues of The Open Championship (also known as the British Open). Jones and his co-designer Alister MacKenzie were heavily influenced by the most famous Open Championship venue, the Old Course at St Andrews, and sought to emphasize the ground game (approaching the green with low-trajectory shots, often running along the ground for considerable distance). However, Augusta National chairman Clifford Roberts didn't like the ground game, and sought to make changes to minimize it almost from the course's opening. MacKenzie died a year after the club opened, and Jones went into inactivity, first due to World War II and then to a crippling neurological condition. Roberts would then get his changes—but with the ground game gone, the course became highly vulnerable to changing golf technology, bringing about countless changes from at least 15 designers. This piece argues that the course would have been better off if Roberts hadn't gotten his hands on it.
• What if Elena Mukhina, the Russian gymnast who was the 1978 World AA Champion, hadn't endured the severe leg fracture that kept her out of the 1979 World Championships, or if it had healed properly right off the bat (the fracture initially healed badly, requiring intervention and an extended recovery time), or even if her coaches had just kept the focus once she came back on getting her skills and routines ready for the Olympics rather than obsessing about getting her down to her pre-injury weight? It's entirely possible that without the trauma of multiple surgeries, a brutal, rushed recovery, and having to do additional weight loss workouts on top of her already rigorous training, she might not have sustained the catastrophic injury that ended her career just before the 1980 Olympic Games — and who knows what she might have accomplished in Moscow?
  • Alternatively, what if her coaches had recognized how dangerous the skill she was injured on was and had decided that the risk of injury was too great (if for no other reason than because they didn't want to chance her missing competitions due to injury)? While she might not have been at a hundred percent for the Olympics due to dealing with the effects of the leg injury and everything that happened after, she would have still been there and had her shot. On the flip side, this would have likely delayed the ban on these types of skills, meaning that it's likely that some other gymnast would have ended up getting injured (and becoming the "poster child" for banning the skill) in her place.
• As a result of his refusal to be drafted into military service, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title and effectively banned from the sport from March 1967 to October 1970. That was three and a half years in the prime of Ali's career wasted. In Ali's absence, other heavyweights came to prominence, most notably Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Ken Norton. With Ali's return, the four fighters formed the core of what came to be known as the Golden Age for the heavyweight division. If Ali had not been unfairly stripped of his title, who knows how things would've shaken out. The "Golden Age" may have started four years earlier or Ali could've snuffed the three others before they could develop into the formidable champions they became.

Soccer

• Perhaps the biggest and most neglected one: Back in The Roaring '20s, soccer was raging in popularity and steadily rising to actually become a serious contender for one of the "Big 3" team sports of America. Or, arguably, become part of the "Big Two". Baseball was unquestionably the most popular team sport at the time, and college football was a strong second to baseball among team sports. However, the other three leagues that would eventually become America's major professional leagues were either in their infancy or didn't even exist. The NFL had only started in 1920 while under a different name and was dramatically different from what the sport is now, basketball (which had only been invented in 1891) was still decades away from becoming a major sport (with professional leagues for it being considered a wild time for competition against one another in the first place), and the NHL didn't even have any American teams until 1924, with it still being a largely regional sport even after a major expansion into the U.S. later in that decade.^note Apart from baseball and college football, the most popular spectator sports at that time were boxing and horse racing. However ineffectiveness in business practices and league management as well as the 1930's bringing a somewhat isolationist attitude in America due to The Great Depression is believed to have killed the sport at a professional level. Eventually that led to dominoes which led to soccer declining in popularity in the mainstream. The death blow for soccer came when the nascent international organization of the sport and the US national federation colluded to kneecap the country's top professional league - something which was seen as a sacrilege by many US sports fans and which none of the other sports popular in the US at the time had to deal with. Now that soccer has risen so big in popularity again that it's practically sponsored by every school and its numbers are rising enough to contend with the big 3's or big 4's, one can't help but wonder how different the soccer world would be if it rose to the levels of popularity that baseball and other traditional American sports enjoyed back in the 1920's (or at least maintained its fandom).
• What would have happened if the heavily favored Hungary had beaten (West) Germany in the final of the 1954 FIFA World Cup? That World Cup was the first one anybody in Europe took seriously and it is the Trope Codifier of many things still associated with that competition. Afterwards, (West) Germany went from "that crappy team everybody beats in the preliminary round" to "Holy freakin' cow, we have to play (West) Germany" while Hungary went from "undefeated in four years" to "wait, Hungary has a soccer team?" in almost no time. Many Hungarian players either dared not return to Hungary or were disgraced as losers upon coming back. Thus what could have been a generation of successful Hungarian football (with the best players becoming coaches and scouts or role models for the next generation) turned into one of the great what ifs of the sport. All that despite the fact that in the 1920s, Hungarian coaches were sought after in Germany and German club teams regularly got beatdowns from the best in Hungarian soccer. To say nothing of the political implications - many Germans today consider the 1954 world cup triumph one of the most important events in the 1950s. Just how dominant had that Hungary squad been until their upset defeat? The List of men's soccer players with more than 50 goals in national team games has only 68 names on it - two of them Hungarian players active in the 1954 squad. Ferenc Puskás is still on number four of that list and Sándor Kocsis had more goals than games played for the national team. Mind you, back in those days the national team had far fewer matches than today and matches where the result was widely seen as a Foregone Conclusion (such as - say - Brazil v Liechtenstein) were not even scheduled, because, why bother? Puskás, who had left for Spain after the 1954 defeat, won the European Cup of National Champions three times with Real Madrid in a career spanning into the sixties (his national team career for Hungary ended in 1956). When Hungary came to play England on their home turf, the English press and sports establishment widely dismissed them as they had beaten continental opposition, but the real test would come playing the inventor of the sport at Wembley - well, they did and Hungary won 6-3 leading to England hiring a Head Coach in the modern sense for their team for the first time. The Shocking Defeat Legacy was something Hungarian soccer never recovered from - especially after the 1956 uprising was crushed giving even more sportsmen good reason to try and emigrate.
• Manchester United's "Busby Babes" were regarded as one of the most promising sides in European football in the 1950s, having won three English league titles and reached two consecutive European Cup semi-finals.^note The competition itself was only formed in 1955, England didn't send an entrant until 1956. Stopping over at Munich from a quarter-final tie at Red Star Belgrade in 1958, the plane carrying the team failed to take off and crashed into a building at the end of the runway, killing eight players and forcing two more into retirement. It took 10 years for United to eventually win the European Cup and they did not repeat the feat until 1999.
• The same happened in Italy for the Torino Football Club, nicknamed "Grande Torino" (Great Turin), which was the dominating team in the later 40s but was cut off with the tragedy of Superga in 1949, when 18 players (not counting the coach, assistants and some managers) died in a plane crash. Torino FC never recovered, only winning the championship once since (in 1976) and for most of its post-war existence struggling in lower divisions. The disaster also robbed the Italian national team of many of the players who potentially could have given the Azzurri a third World Cup win in 1950^note Consecutive, in a manner of speaking, since Italy was also the winner of the 1934 and 1938 World Cups and the 1942 and 1946 World Cups were never held due to a little thing called World War II and allowed them to take home the Jules Rimet Cup.
• What could have happened during the editions of the Olympic Games and The World Cup that World War II cancelled in the 1940s? (Further asking on the latter note, the champion of 34-38, Italy, could have won its third title and bring home the Jules Rimet Cup^note which eventually went to Brazil in 1970... over Italy!)
• There are several examples in the Danish Superliga:
  • Odense Boldklub were scouting a 19-year-old striker from Poland, and thought he would never break through in Denmark. His name: Robert Lewandowski.
  • FC Midtjylland had, at different times, Edin Džeko and Michael Essien on trials. Neither got to play for the Danish club.
  • Brøndby IF was offered Luka Modrić for €1.3M, when he played in Croatia. They said no thanks.
    • Which was the second time Brøndby was offered Modrić. In his youth years, he was offered to Odense, Midtjylland and Brøndby, and none could use him.
  • And a subversion: Danish international handball goalkeeper Jannick Green was the reserve center back for FC Midtjylland at youth level, and decided to go for a career in handball. His rivals: Winston Reid and Simon Kjær.
• Perhaps the most pivotal year in the history of the Bundesliga was 1969. In that year, reigning champions 1. FC Nürnberg (after just winning their record ninth championship the season prior) were relegated and FC Bayern München won their second championship overall and first since 1932. Ever since, Bayern has been the dominant force in German soccer with other top teams usually referred to as "Bayern-Jäger" (Bayern hunters). Not only was the 1969 collapse of Nuremberg precipitated by some truly stupid roster moves (trading the league leading scorer Franz Brungs against his wishes for instance) they - along with the best team in Munich at the time 1860 München - passed over a small stout goalgetter by the name of Gerd Müller, who instead went to Bayern and is without a shred of a doubt one of the most pivotal players in both their 1970s dynasty and the dominant German national team of that era. Müller still holds a number of what are considered unbreakable records, including 365 goals in the Bundesliga in 427 matches played and scored almost as many goals for the national team as current record holder Miroslav Klose in half as many games and 14 goals in just two World Cups, which makes him the third-most proficient scorer in (men's) soccer World Cups.^note Klose 16 goals, Ronaldo (the one from Brazil) 15, Müller 14. On the women's side, Marta leads with 17, with Birgit Prinz and Abby Wambach at 14.
• In regards of Leicester's shock title win in the 2015/16 season, what would have happened had Claudio Ranieri and N'Golo Kanté not joined Leicester? Would their lack of presence have made them a mid-table or a relegation-battling team instead of a surprise championship contender and eventual champion? And for Kanté, would another team have spotted his immense talent and given him the career-making move that Leicester gave to him?^PostscriptAfter the Premier League-winning season, Chelsea paid Leicester £32 million to secure Kanté's services during the summer 2016 transfer window, then went on to win the league the following season.
• A major reason why the United States was awarded the 1994 World Cup was because Brazil, the initial favorite, was hit hard by the 1987 recession and was nearly $10 billion in debt to U.S. banks, which prevented them from building the required infrastructure. Considering the event was a Genre Turning Point for the sport in the U.S., what would the current landscape of the sport in the country be had Brazil been able to host?
• In 2021, several Euro Footy clubs announced the formation of the European Super League, an annual club football competition to be contested by an exclusive group of top European football clubs^{Full List} Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Tottenham Hotspur from the English Premier League; AC Milan, Inter Milan, and Juventus from Italy's Serie A; and Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atlético Madrid from Spain's La Liga. (a.k.a. the ones with the most money). Notably, rather than using the traditional promotion/relegation model, all of the founding clubs would be guaranteed a spot in the competition. This led to immediate backlash by fans, players, managers, domestic leagues, UEFA, and FIFA as it was decried as a blatant attempt by wealthy clubs with little recent on-field success like Arsenal, Spurs, and Milan to guarantee themselves revenue on par with that of the UEFA Champions League without having to field a quality team that has to qualify by winning matches. Within 48 hours of the backlash, Chelsea and Manchester City both pulled out, leading to the other English clubs doing the same and effectively killing the league.
  • On the same note, three of the proposed club spots were meant to go to Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund from Bundesliga in Germany and Paris Saint-Germain from Ligue 1 in France. All three declined the offer.
• The 2000 European Championship is widely seen as a Shocking Defeat Legacy for Germany. Entering as defending champion, no less and led by 39-year old soccer legend Lothar Matthäus, Germany scored only a single goal (in their 1-1 draw against Romania, the opening match for them), then lost to England and ultimately lost to the already advancing Portugal who were fielding only their second best players in the last match. Had Germany somehow won their last match against Portugal (in true German soccer "muddling thru" fashion) they would've advanced to the quarter-finals due to England losing the parallel match against Romania. After the humiliating defeat, Germany sacked their unpopular head coach Erich Ribeck, Lother Matthäus finally retired after 150 games played for the national team and Germany seriously revamped their soccer youth program, which until then had basically consisted in "just pick up whoever is good at kicking a can down the street and hope for the best", and turned it into a world class system of academies and boarding schools which emphasized both the non-sports education of the young people (the vast majority of youth prospects never earn enough money as pros to retire on once their "career" fizzles out, so having a "backup" is immensely important) and their development as soccer players. While one could be excused for overlooking the long term impact on the German team, given that under Rudi Völler, Germany somehow lucked into the 2002 World Cup final^note Notably German sports media at the time claimed there was an ongoing streak of Germany failing to win against "soccer greats" like Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Spain and so on - that streak endured throughout the 2002 World Cup (mostly on the strength of Goal Keeper Oliver Kahn) losing to Brazil, but by the 2004 Euro, Germany fizzled out in the first round again, again failing to win the last game against a team that had already qualified for the quarter final and fielded their second string. What would have happened, had Germany won that game against Portugal? Had the urge to build the youth system been as strong? Would Jürgen Klinsmann, who instilled an offensive style not seen in the German national team since the 1970s have been hired without 2000 & 2004 making it clear to the DFB bosses that change was necessary? Most of the German players who won the World Cup in 2014, anyway, were graduates of exactly those sports academies set up after 2000. Among other things, this had the side benefit that the better-educated soccer players were now able to give interviews at a slightly less cringeworthy level.
• For that matter, the 2002 Soccer World Cup itself - the event was notable for highly rated teams fizzling out early, in part due to controversial officiating decisions. Germany, whose striker Miroslav Klose scored five goals for Germany - all of them in the group stage - in the ensuing knockout stages, Germany had opposition widely seen as sub-par (Paraguay, the U.S.A., and South Korea) and knocked them all out in the similar fashion of "solid defense, one goal (by Neuville against Paraguay, by Ballack in the other two cases), hope for the best" with no real standout players on the German side besides Goal Keeper Oliver Kahn and midfielder Michael Ballack, who was just coming off his club team Bayer Leverkusen placing second in three separate competitions (UEFA Champions League, DFB Cup and the Bundesliga). Ballack would switch to FC Bayern the next season. In the Semifinal against South Korea, Ballack felt the need to stop a South Korean attack (when it was still 0:0) with a foul, which earned him the second yellow card of the knockout stage and thus disqualified him from the final - FIFA later explicitly changed the rules to avoid having such a Disproportionate Retribution of losing a top player for the final due to a yellow card. Brazil had a strong squad, but perhaps not even as strong a squad as in 1998 (when they lost to France in the final) and they mostly muddled through against, again, not the strongest rated teams in the tournament. In the final, Germany's defense was defeated twice by Brazil and without Ballack, Germany's already mediocre offense had nothing to offer, so the final score was 2-0 Brazil, making Brazil the first country to win the World Cup a fifth time. Brazil and Germany had never met each other in a World Cup before but held the impressive combined streak of either of them having made every World Cup final from 1954 (back when Germany was separated as West Germany and East Germany) to 2002 with the exception of 1978 - a streak that would end after this World Cup.^note  (Since then, the only time either of the two made a final was Germany in 2014, in Brazil where they won, after humiliating Brazil 7-1 in the semifinal round.) What would have happened with less terrible officiating? Would South Korea or Turkey still have made their impressive runs (bringing them into the Semifinals, their best results to date and the best result ever by an Asian nation)? What if one of the three knife's edge victories of Germany in the knockout stage had gone the other way? What if Ballack had been allowed to play in the final? What if Ballack hadn't stopped that South Korean attack with a foul? Would they have scored? What if Brazil had failed to score against Kahn (whose only game which wasn't a clean sheet in that tournament otherwise was the 1-1 against Ireland in the group stage with the goal for Ireland coming in stoppage time)? What if Ronaldo hadn't decided to get that ridiculous hair cut?
• The 2008-2012 Spanish national team has been considered one of the best in history, winning three major trophies back to back. After the decline and disappointing performances in 2014, 2016, and 2018, many have been wondering what the team would have been like if Messi, who had Spanish citizenship ^note  He could have also represented Italy through his ancestry, chose Spain over Argentina, unlikely as it sounds considering Messi's dream to represent Argentina. Became an even more prevalent thought with Messi not winning a trophy with Argentina until he was 34, having a short international retirement in-between.