The Warriors Are In The GOAT Debate, But They Blew Their Chance To End It
Filed under NBA Finals
The 2015 NBA season was The Year Of The Golden State Warriors. But then, so was 2016 — up until its final moments. Somehow, though, the 2017 version has managed to overshadow anything its forerunners had accomplished. Closing out a five-game Finals victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night, these Warriors put the finishing touches on a season that ranks among the greatest in basketball history. According to at least one metric, this team made a strong case that it should be considered the greatest of all time — but there’s still room for debate.
Going into the Finals, I noted that Golden State was closing in on the 1996 Chicago Bulls’ NBA record for the greatest peak performance ever, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Elo ratings (which measure a team’s strength over time). The Warriors blew past the Bulls’ old rating this season with their 113-91 romp over the Cavs in Game 1, then set a new high-water mark in each of the next two games. Although the Warriors’ Game 4 loss dropped them back below the Bulls’ maximum Elo, Golden State finished the season with a rating of 1846, 23 points higher than the ’96 Bulls’ final mark. (Like this year’s Warriors, those Bulls also jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the Finals, but Chicago lost both Games 4 and 5 to the Sonics, which dropped their end-of-season Elo below what it was at its peak.)
Using our preferred ranking method of blending together a team’s peak Elo, average daily Elo during the season and its final, end-of-season Elo, the 2017 Warriors come in as the greatest team in NBA history:
The best NBA teams ever (according to Elo)
Of course, Elo is hardly the only number you can use to rank historical teams. And the Warriors don’t quite make it to No. 1 in a few other statistical categories. For instance, according to Basketball-Reference.com’s Simple Rating System (SRS) metric, which adjusts a team’s point differential for the strength of schedule it faced, Golden State’s entire season — including the playoffs — ranks “only” third all time, trailing the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks in addition to the ’96 Bulls.
Part of that is due to the Warriors’ fourth-place ranking in regular-season SRS. But Golden State also blew a chance to move up the list with their playoff run. Had they completed the elusive Fo’, Fo’, Fo’, Fo’ with a Finals sweep, they would have compiled the best single-postseason SRS of any champion ever. But Golden State lost by 21 in Game 4 against Cleveland, so instead they finished with the second-best playoff performance of any NBA champ ever, behind the 2001 L.A. Lakers:
No. 2 all time isn’t bad, though! And for those who say the Warriors faced an easy road to the title, their strength of schedule — as measured by the average regular-season SRS of the teams they faced in the playoffs, with an adjustment for each game’s location — was the 34th most difficult among the 71 NBA champions since 1947, coming in as slightly tougher than the average title run. It wasn’t the hardest path, but it wasn’t a cakewalk either.
Here’s one more area where Golden State is probably the greatest ever: pure talent. Even on paper, before they ever played a game, the newly minted Kevin Durant Warriors seemed to have the greatest roster in NBA history. And unlike other recent “superteams” — such as the 2011 Miami Heat or 2015 Cavs — they basically lived up to their preseason billing. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations (using projected Box Plus/Minus) called for Golden State’s regular-season scoring margin per 100 possessions to be +12.3; they ended the season at +11.6, diminishing marginal returns be damned.
That might seem to bolster the argument that the Warriors had it easy. With so much talent, they set themselves up for smooth sailing before they even embarked — just roll out the ball and set ’em loose. But in conjunction with the fact that the NBA’s overall talent pool is the best it’s been in at least two decades, it also supports the argument that Golden State played the game at the highest level it’s ever been played. In an era of great players, the Warriors had more of them than anyone else — and they all played to their potential.
The specter of the Michael Jordan-era Bulls will always hang over every GOAT conversation, of course — as well they should. And according to the numbers above, the ’71 Bucks and ’01 Lakers (among others) should be right alongside Chicago in that conversation. But with their closing statement Monday night, the 2017 Warriors finished making their case. From now on, any discussion of the NBA’s best-ever teams has to put Golden State at (or at least near) the top of the list.
CORRECTION (June 13, 2:25 p.m.): A table in a previous version of this story listed every team’s Elo under the team’s current name, leading to some past years’ entries being listed under incorrect names. The table has been updated.
We’re the first to admit that the metric has its share of blind spots.