Hat Trick
Last week, the Kansas City Chiefs failed in their attempt to be the first NFL team to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Our beloved Packers have won three straight championships twice – from 1929-1931 and from 1965-1967, but only the last two victories were in the Super Bowl era.
Winning three consecutive championships is pretty rare in America’s four major professional sports. The Montreal Canadiens won three straight Stanley Cups from 1976-1979, while the next three championships were won by the New York Islanders.
The Oakland Athletics won three straight World Series from 1972-1974. The New York Yankees won four straight World Series from 1936-39 and then five in a row from 1949-1953. They won another three consecutively from 1998-2000.
The Boston Celtics won eight consecutive NBA championships from 1959-1966. Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to three titles in a row twice, from 1991-1993 and again from 1996-1998. The most recent pro team in those four leagues to win three straight championships was the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers from 2000-2002.
So, every time a team is looking at a third consecutive championship, the term “Three-Peat” comes up. And no one is a bigger fan of three-peats than Pat Riley.
The legendary NBA coach of the Lakers, New York Knicks, and Miami Heat, where his current role is president, actually trademarked the phrase “three-peat.” According to NPR, Riley and his company, Riles & Company Inc., own at least six trademarks for uses of the phrase “three-peat” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, including variations such as “3Peat” and “ThreePeat.”
As the Lakers’ head coach, Riley trademarked the phrase in November of 1988 as the team was chasing its third consecutive NBA title. Like the Chiefs, the Lakers came up short and were swept in the 1989 NBA Finals by the the Detroit Pistons’ Bad Boys. Despite the loss, the phrase lived on.
When the Bulls won their third straight NBA title in 1993, Riley earned an estimated $300,000 from the sale of championship merchandise featuring the phrase “three-peat,” and approximately $600,000 again after completing their second trifecta in 1998. Likewise, the Yankees and Lakers also paid Riley after they won their third consecutive respective championships. However, in 2005, Riley told ESPN.com that he donates most of his earnings from the trademark to his charity, the Pat Riley Family Foundation.
In a 2005 interview with ESPN, Riley revealed he doesn’t approach teams about using the phrase. Instead, he waits for those teams to reach out to him. “It’s like going out there and picking up a penny on the ground,” he explained. “I don’t pay any attention to it. If somebody wants to license that phrase, we’ll license it to them. But I don’t go out and pursue it. We don’t sell it; we don’t browbeat anybody. If they want it, they go to somebody and they’ll pay us a royalty on it.”
That being said, Riley still aggressively protects his trademark’s integrity, such as when he fought off entrepreneurs that made “Three-Pete” shirts when former USC football coach Pete Carroll was going for his third straight NCAA football title.
Well, the Chiefs did reach out to Riley before the Super Bowl and they apparently struck a deal. While the exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, had the Chiefs won, licensees that would have made products featuring the phrase “three-peat” included Fanatics, New Era, Wilson, Riddell, and Wincraft. The products would have been exclusively sold at Chiefs’ retailers.
Unlike the Chiefs, for Pat Riley, the third time is truly a charm.
Reg P. Wydeven
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