Goodbye to the NBA shout of “1, 2, 3 Cancun!”

It’s become a familiar saying every time an NBA team’s season comes to an end, whether they’ve missed the playoffs or been bounced in brutal fashion: someone, somewhere, posts “One, two, three… Cancun!” on social media.

Sometimes it’s even the players themselves. A tongue-in-cheek battle cry marking the unofficial start of summer vacation, it riffs on the classic “one, two, three, team!” chant players use to rally before games or after timeouts, only this version trades grit for getaway.

The origin of “1, 2, 3 Cancun!”

But this viral send-off actually has roots that go back more than 25 years, to the 1998 NBA Playoffs and a Lakers team loaded with talent but short on chemistry.

That squad, led by a young Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, was swept 4-0 in the Western Conference Finals by a Utah Jazz juggernaut powered by John Stockton and Karl Malone. It was a humbling exit for a franchise chasing its first Finals appearance since losing to Michael Jordan’s Bulls in 1991.

The Lakers wouldn’t find postseason glory until Phil Jackson arrived the following year. Back in 1998, head coach Del Harris was trying to make sense of a gifted but unbalanced roster: Shaq and Kobe, sure, but also Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Elden Campbell, Rick Fox, Robert Horry, and a rookie named Derek Fisher. They were flashy, exciting, but - for the most part - immature.

Nick Van Exel’s eternal NBA joke

Among them, Van Exel stood out as a lightning-quick, high-scoring point guard who had just earned an All-Star nod. But questions about his temperament often overshadowed his talent. And it was Van Exel, moments before Game 4 against the Jazz, who muttered what would go down in NBA lore.

Instead of joining the usual “one, two, three, Lakers!” chant in the tunnel of the Great Western Forum, Van Exel cracked a joke: “One, two, three, Cancun!” The team was facing a sweep, and summer vacation was already on his mind.

Years later, Van Exel told journalist Howard Beck he hadn’t meant anything by it. “It just popped into my head,” he said. “I didn’t even say it that loud. It wasn’t like I’d given up, I just wanted to lighten the mood.”

He certainly didn’t expect the line to outlive his Lakers tenure, let alone become a meme that NBA fans still post decades later. “If I’d known, I would’ve trademarked it,” he joked.

That night, the Lakers were eliminated. The series was a shutout. “We were young,” Van Exel reflected. “Too many guys were worried about getting their stats, not about winning together.”

At the time, he was 26 - seven years older than Kobe - and well aware the team wasn’t coming back from a 3-0 hole. No team ever had, and no one in that locker room believed they would.

Lakers trade Van Exel after “1, 2, 3 Cancun!”

Just a month later, Van Exel was traded to the Denver Nuggets for veteran big man Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue. Days after the deal, the Los Angeles Times published a piece revealing the Cancun comment. According to the report, Shaquille O’Neal had complained to GM Jerry West, and the joke had become part of the rationale for shipping Van Exel out.

Van Exel has always denied that. “The trade was already done,” he said. “I knew I was leaving. But someone always ends up taking the fall.”

In hindsight, the move made sense. Van Exel had clashed with Coach Harris, and the Lakers needed to clear space for Kobe and Fisher in the backcourt. The locker room, fractured and ego-heavy, needed a reset.

Shaq, for his part, eventually admitted he shared some of the blame - not just for the team’s early exits, but also for the Cancun mindset. “It wasn’t all on Nick,” he said years later. “We were all thinking that way. Down 3-0 to the Spurs or Jazz? It was over. We all knew it. So yeah, I was thinking about dropping 40 and heading to Orlando to chill.”

Still, both Van Exel and Robert Horry confirmed that the Cancun quip came from Van Exel himself. And while he’s always insisted it wasn’t meant as disrespect or a sign of quitting, the line struck a chord.

“I was just trying to ease the tension,” Van Exel said. “That’s who I was - a jokester. I liked keeping guys loose. Not many heard it, but the ones who did laughed.”

Today, that offhand remark lives on as one of the NBA’s most enduring in-jokes. “One, two, three… Cancun!” is no longer just a locker room punchline, it’s the league’s unofficial way of saying, “See you next season.”

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