Nick Van Exel wants to make it clear: he never left his team, never meant to imply it and never meant to offend anyone. Surely he never intended to start a meme, mainly because, well, no one in 1998 knew what a “meme” was when Van Exel gave his tongue-in-cheek rallying cry:
“One, two, three… Cancún!
“It just popped into my head,” Van Exel says now, laughing at this weird little origin story. “It wasn’t like it was scripted.”
It won’t technically be in the script either on Tuesday night, when TNT Inside the NBA airs what could be its last show of the 2022 playoffs. But if the Warriors complete their sweep of the Mavericks, you can bet someone – Shaq, Kenny or Chuck – will send Luka Dončić & Co. into the summer with a cheeky chorus and ubiquitous:
“One, two, three… Cancún!
And Van Exel, watching from his own vacation, will sit back, smile and shake his head.
“I probably should have dropped this thing,” says Van Exel, now an assistant coach for the Hawks.
If you watch the NBA playoffs, you know what it’s all about: a team is eliminated and it instantly becomes fodder for the “Gone Fishin'” segment – with players and coaches magically transported to yachts, beaches, piers and sometimes banana boats. Hilarity ensues. Oh, does it follow.
And then, invariably, someone will shout out Cancun, the vacation hotspot on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Still Cancun. Not the Maldives or Mykonos, not Aruba or Fiji or Zanzibar. No, just Cancun. And it’s because of Van Exel.
That’s because in the 1998 Western Conference Finals, the Lakers – then built around a young Shaquille O’Neal (26) and an even younger Kobe Bryant (19) – were , for the second consecutive spring, completely destroyed by the Jazz, a veteran-laden powerhouse led by Karl Malone and John Stockton.
The Lakers were brighter and more talented, with Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Robert Horry, Rick Fox and Derek Fisher flanking O’Neal and Bryant. But Jazz was more mature and methodical and ultimately overwhelming.
“We were young,” says Van Exel. “We had guys who wanted to get their points and do their thing, instead of going out there and winning as a group.”
The series was heading for a sweep, and everyone knew it.
The mood at the Great Western Forum was austere as the Lakers huddled in a back lane before racing for Game 4. “One, two, three… Lakers!” they all shouted to break up the huddle. Except for a mischievous voice: “One, two, three… Cancun!
“But I didn’t say it loud so everyone could hear it,” Van Exel recalled. “I think only a few people heard it. And they started to laugh a little. And that was my point, was to loosen the band. … I’m a prankster. I like to have fun, keep everyone free.
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Van Exel was 26 at the time, a five-year-old veterinarian. His voice mattered, in good times and bad. He had tried on other occasions to rally the Lakers with impassioned speeches: “I was getting emotional; I started crying and s—,” he recalled. “And of course the s— didn’t work.” But it was my job. »
Anyway, in this case, the battle was already lost. No NBA team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit (nor any team since).
“It was just a funky vibe,” says Van Exel. “And I don’t think anyone in that group really believed that we were going to come back and win the series.”
No, they would all be on vacation soon. A little tropical-themed joke seemed fitting, at least to Van Exel. But maybe not to everyone.
A month later, the Lakers traded Van Exel to the Nuggets for veteran Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue. A week after that, the Los Angeles Times, in an unsourced post, reported on the “Cancun” quip for the first time and said O’Neal had complained to team president Jerry West about it. The clear implication was that West traded Van Exel because of it.
At which Van Exel, hearing the article read to him today, can only laugh. “It certainly wasn’t that,” he said.
“I was traded in the middle of the season,” explains Van Exel. “I knew I was gone wow before [June]. But they had to put their hat on something. Someone had to be the scapegoat.
There were more obvious reasons for the trade. Van Exel had clashed with head coach Del Harris on several occasions. The Lakers had a surplus of talented young guards in Bryant, Jones and Fisher, and mounting pay issues. And, in Van Exel’s recollection, the team had begun to split into factions that season.
“Things started to change a bit,” he says. “You know it, you can feel it, you can feel it. So I left long before.
O’Neal is dismissive of the story now, saying, “I’m not going to blame it all on Nick. I was part of it too. »
That is to say, the song of Cancun? “Uh, maybe.”
“I don’t want to blame it on just one guy,” O’Neal says. “So just say it was me, Nick, Eddie, everyone.”
No, Van Exel laughs, it was just him – a fact that Horry confirms. (“He said it as a joke to make everyone more relaxed.”)
“I’m not going to sell my guys,” O’Neal said. “Look, we all have the same mentality. Bro, when you go 3-0 against the Spurs and Utah, there’s no coming back. Everybody knows it. You can go down 2-0 and have a chance, but when you go down 3-0 do you have one game left? There is no going back. So I don’t want to blame them. We all had this perspective, including me: Well, we’re not going to win this year. So let me go and put my 40s on, then after the game go back to Orlando and relax.
And the Van Exel business? “It was just time to make some changes,” O’Neal said.
John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated
(The original report also said Van Exel made the remark — which he quoted as “Cancun, Cancun, Cancun” — on a practice day, with the Lakers down 2-0. Van Exel and Horry, however, both say “One, two, three… Cancun!” happened minutes before the start of Game 4, which would make today, May 24, its 24th anniversary. Please celebrate responsibly.)
The “Cancun” story at the time came with a clear implication: that Van Exel was leaving his team. Horry dismisses the idea, saying, “I don’t think anyone was mad about it.” Van Exel is adamant that his intentions were pure.
“Everyone here knew me,” he said. “They knew I wasn’t giving up on them. That would be the last thing they would say about me.
But why Cancun? Why not Maui or Barbados or the Caymans?
“I just knew Cancun was a resort town at that time,” says Van Exel.
Indeed, Horry recalls Cancun being a popular destination for professional athletes and entertainers of that era.
And now it’s a punchline that’s so universal in NBA circles, even coaches and players will refer to it when their season ends with a thud, as the Pelicans coach did. Alvin Gentry in 2018. It’s just that most viewers probably have no idea where he came from. .
We don’t even know exactly how or when he got into the Inside the NBA lexicon. “Gone Fishin'” has been a staple of the show since 2002. But the Cancun banter, according to TNT officials, didn’t really take hold until around 15, when O’Neal invoked the reference. In 2016, the show’s staff members incorporated Cancun into the graphics for “Gone Fishin'”.
Van Exel says he likes all of that a lot, even though he hasn’t been to Cancun himself for many years, and he’s not sure that’s still the best benchmark.
“There are a lot of different vacation spots they can say as opposed to Cancun,” he says. “I don’t know how many guys go to Cancun these days.”
He has his own new favorites, but he’d rather not share them today.
“No, because then [TNT] will probably try to throw them in there too,” he laughs. “I’ll keep it to myself.”
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