Quote:
Originally Posted by trainwreckog
nice, high level post burke - said a lot with just a little. some good points.
not that you were, but i would stop far short of putting this spurs team anywhere near the utah teams.
the utah teams were pretty game-theory optimal, despite not shooting as many 3's.
they had the #1 offense in the league with a 112.7 offensive rating, higher than the spurs this year who had 108.3.
and utah's pace was only 89.3 (21st of 29), so they were really grinding it out but still maintained elite efficiency on offense.
keep in mind that in 1998, that utah team drubbed a 56-win pop/drob/duncan team 4-1 in ecsf, (when drob was still really good), so duncan/pop is not somehow unbeatable by utah - worth a mention so as to not get the perceptions warped by recency....
then the jazz SWEPT the loaded lakers (shaq, kobe, eddie jones, van exel, elden campbell, rick fox, derek fisher, robert horry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
virtually impossible that this spurs team would do that well against a team like that.
then the rosters compare in utah's favor.
prime malone (28 PER, 27ppg) > current duncan
stockton (22 PER) more of less = parker 23 PER
hornacek 19 PER = ginobili 19
the supporting casts are a wash (i.e. danny green < shandon anderson even without the 3's - anderson had higher offensive rating and ows) and supporting casts as we know are in large part fillers/placeholders around the guys dictating the action.
iggy had made a post saying this year's old spurs were better than any team the bulls had faced, so i replied with this post, basically proving otherwise... the bolded being the clearest evidence..
and based on this sort of comparison, i made a subsequent post saying the spurs were very far from being an all-time team, and predicted a heat victory in 5.
seeing as how the heat clearly clamped down defensively and figured the spurs out, looks like the spurs are indeed overrated, as we all suspected.