Rank these past NBA Teams

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99-00 Portland Trailblazers- Lost a heartbreaking game 7 to eventual champ Lakers


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[img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

This continues to be my worst loss as a fan. The Giants losing the WS in 2002 is up there but doesn't hurt as badly somehow.

I'm not sure I'll get over it even if the Blazers win a title in my lifetime. It's probably not perfectly rational, but I really think the Blazers could have started a dynasty there and instead LA did that.

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I feel your pain. On the other side, this was the great win that eluded the team for all the dark times of the Vlade/van exel years. One of the most exciting games ever.


disclaimer: i hate the lakers now (and this is after growing up listening to Chick describe West, Hairston, Goodrich, etc and then going to all the early games of the magic era for 5 bucks in the colonade) I used to make my schedule around when these guys were playing. Now I think they are a bunch of overpaid whiney gangster punks and I could care less. sigh.

[tuq]

OK, after a night of rumination and meditation I have decided.

I think there are a ton of candidates for "best" team. However I'm going with the homer pick and the 1993 Suns. They were the best team in the league that year. I'm more recently invested in the 2007 Suns, but the same can't be said of them - they were probably as good as the Spurs but we're denied ever knowing how they would have fared against the 67-win Mavericks. At the most it was a three-way tie for best team last year.

Other really good choices are those Jazz teams and that Heat team from the same season. And of course the young and developing 1990 Bulls team that pushed the reigning and eventual champion Pistons to the limit.

For worst team, I have to go with the 1995 Rockets. It was an MJ-less season (well, he was back by then as #45 but not on top of his game as witnessed by the Magic's pozzing of the Bulls in the playoffs). Not only were they a six seed they just weren't that good. The Dream carried a mediocre roster past a 3-1 deficit against the Suns, beyond a Spurs team featuring the squeezably soft David Robinson, and to victory over a Magic team partially because Nick Anderson forgot how to shoot free throws. It's still amazing to me that the Rockets won one title, much less two in a row.

[NajdorfDefense]

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I think Big Z > Mutombo. I remember Matt Harpring (HE PLAYS FOOTBALL) was the 2nd best scorer on that sixers team. Yaouch! (And I love Harp, he plays on the jazz, gotta love him, but... He's a decent 6th man, but 2nd scoring option gets a big WTF)

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LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! Try to at least get the players right next time before you decide which team is better.

[tdarko]

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can anyone make assani a mod?

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Is this directed at me Bobbo?

1. Not my fault your favorite player was arguably the dirtiest player in the league during that era.

2. lol @ pleading for someone to become a mod--not that it would matter anyway.

3. Chill broham

[tdarko]

I voted 1993 Suns as the best of this bunch even though they were the second best team in the league that year no matter how many times tuq goes on and on about it. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I thought that team was super-dynamic and plus sir-Charles was more of a beast than people remember, they also had a ton of weapons around him...they were a damn good team.

I voted the Sixers as the worst. They may have won some awards that year but as I watched the playoffs that year I couldn't help but to say the same thing after every one of those games, "damn AI is carrying this team." If AI wasn't Superman that year, that team wouldn't have accomplished much of what they did whereas a few of these other teams it seemed had more than one way to beat you. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] AI though.

[Billy Bibbit]

Tuq,

I voted for the Rockets too, and I was surprised they got so few votes. You didn't even mention that the Jazz came really close to bouncing them in the first round. If I remember correctly that series came down to the final minutes of Game 5.

1995 was a weak year in the NBA, when a lot of teams could've easily won it all: San Antonio, Phoenix, Utah, Orlando, Indiana, New York, and Chicago. The Rockets are overrated by history because they were on the positive side of variance and won the title (edit: and teams that were just as good as them in the 90's but never won are underrated). The Rockets are the worst team on Assani's list and the only other team that's even debatable is the 00-01 76ers.

As you noted, a lot of people forget that Michael Jordan played in those playoffs, and saying that he wasn't on top of his game is just hindsight IMO. He was scoring 40+ on a regular basis and at the time many, many people just assumed the Bulls would win the title in the absence of any historically great teams in the NBA that year. I am of the opinion that Jordan was just as good as ever in those playoffs but the reason the Bulls lost is that they didn't have Horace Grant or Dennis Rodman, but that goes against the conventional wisdom that Jordan won 6 titles by himself so I'll leave that debate for another thread.

[kidcolin]

I know that Rockets team wasn't great, but they would stomp the Philly team.

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I know that Rockets team wasn't great, but they would stomp the Philly team.

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Yup. The Sixers match up terribly w/ the Rockets. Dream dominates this series...agreed that these are the two worst teams though.

[JuntMonkey]

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The 96-97 Jazz lost to a Bulls team that was worse than the 89-90 Bulls team. Food for thought in this debate.

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I don't know much about the '90 Bulls team, but this doesn't sound right. The '95-'96 Bulls were arguably the best team ever. '96-'97 is just one year later, and the team went 69-13 I believe.

Also the '99 Heat are a much better candidate here than '97. They were the top seed in the East and were the clear favorites to go to the Finals. Poor them, they run into the 8th-seeded New York Knicks in the first round, and lose 3 games to 2 on a shot that bounced off the rim, bounced off the backboard, and went in with 0.8 remaining. Hilarious.

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I don't know much about the '90 Bulls team, but this doesn't sound right. The '95-'96 Bulls were arguably the best team ever. '96-'97 is just one year later, and the team went 69-13 I believe.

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I didn't really get ClarkNasty's comment either. The 89-90 team was very good (55-27) and ran into what was at the time their buzzsaw--The Bad Boys but that team wasn't anything like the 96-97 team. That Jazz team was actually pretty good and it is unfortunate that their peak (unfortunate for Sloan, Malone and Stockton) was during the Bulls reign.

I think the second version (second 3-peat) of the Bulls was better than the first. Anyway, that 96-97 team lost the last couple games and was coasting or they would have won 70 games twice in a row. Ron Harper, MJ, Pippen, Rodman, and Longley w/ a bench of Kukoc, Wennington, Kerr, and Buechler was better than any other previous Chi teams. The addition of Rodman was a defining piece to making them one of the greatest teams in history--in 96-97 he averaged over 16 boards a game. The year before Rodman, Pippen and MJ were all defensive 1st team. This team was a monster whereas the teams that played the Lakers, Blazers, Suns were damn good but I don't think anyone thought they were unbeatable.

I think Utah taking that Bulls team to 6 games was proof of how good they were.