Securing a ticket to the National Basketball Association finals for two consecutive years is just as hard as winning an NBA title two years in a row.

In the 63-year NBA Finals history, there have been only 21 instances where the losing finalist from one season qualified for the league’s championship series the following year.

This year’s Los Angeles Lakers are the 21st team to have accomplished the feat.

A year ago, Kobe Bryant and his friends earned an NBA Finals berth but failed to collect a ring when they were waylaid by the Boston Celtics in six games.

Of the first 20 teams that lost during the NBA Finals in one season then reached the championship stage again the following campaign, only nine went on to capture the title in their return trip to the Finals.

These are the 1955 Syracuse Nationals (4-3 over Fort Wayne), 1958 St. Louis Hawks (4-2 over Boston), 1959 Boston Celtics (4-0 over Mineapolis), 1973 New York Knicks (4-1 over LA Lakers), 1979 Seattle SuperSonics (4-1 over Washington), 1983 Philadelphia 76ers (4-0 over LA Lakers), 1985 LA Lakers (4-2 over Boston), 1986 Boston Celtics (4-2 over Houston) and 1989 Detroit Pistons (4-0 over LA Lakers).

Tough luck goes to the other 11 teams that were beaten in consecutive NBA Finals appearances.

This list of back-to-back losers includes Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz, who settled for runner-up honors in 1997 and 1998 after being ambushed by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls both times via 4-2 scores, and the New Jersey Nets, who lost in the 2002 and 2003 Finals against the Lakers (4-0) and San Antonio (4-2), respectively.

Other back-to-back losing NBA finalists are 1952 New York Knicks, 1953 New York Knicks, 1956 Fort Wayne Pistons, 1961 St. Louis Hawks, 1963 LA Lakers, 1966 LA Lakers, 1969 LA Lakers, 1970 Lakers and 1984 LA Lakers.

Note that the Lakers were beaten on consecutive Finals trips on five occasions.

Additionally, the Lakers (1968-69-70) and the Knicks (1951-52-53) are the only franchises in NBA history to lose an NBA Finals in three straight years.

The 2009 Kobe Bryant-bannered Lakers hope to become the 10th team in league history to snare the NBA crown after being beaten in the finals the previous year.

Of course, Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic, who are facing the Lakers in this year’s best-of-seven titular showdown, have other ideas.

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2009 NBA Finals Trivia:

• Three players from this year’s NBA Finals rosters own championship rings. They are Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher of the LA Lakers and Tyronn Lue of the Orlando Magic. Bryant and Fisher won titles with the Lakers in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Lue was their teammate in 2000 and 2001.
  
  
• The Lakers’ Trevor Ariza once played for the Magic while Orlando’s Tyronn Lue formerly suited up for Los Angeles.
  
  
• How important is Game One of the NBA Finals? In the league’s first 62 seasons, the team that captured the opening game has gone on to win the series 45 times, including 18 in the last 24 years. That’s a .726 success rate.
  
  
• The team with the home-court advantage in the NBA Finals has also taken the series 45 times and lost 17 for a winning clip of .726. In 19 of the last 25 NBA Finals, the “home-advantageous” squad has emerged victorious. The only exceptions during the period are the 1985 Lakers (4-2 over Boston), 1993 Chicago Bulls (4-2 over Phoenix), 1995 Houston Rockets (4-0 over Orlando), 1998 Chicago Bulls (4-2 over Utah), 2004 Detroit Pistons (4-1 over the Lakers) and 2006 Miami Heat (4-2 over Dallas).
  
  
• The 2-3-2 home-road-home format has been utilized 28 times during the NBA Fainals in the league’s 62 previous seasons – 1949, 1953, 1954, 1955 and from 1985 to 2008. Under the aforementioned format, there have been only seven 3-0 sweeps in the three middle games – three by the home squad (1955 Fort Wayne Pistons, 2004 Detroit Pistons and 2006 Miami Heat) and four by the road unit (1953 Minneapolis Lakers, 1990 Detroit Pistons, 1991 Chicago Bulls and 2001 LA Lakers).