Which team is your greatest of all time? To answer this question with more rigor than it’s typically debated in sports bars, in 2015 I rated every group since minutes played were tracked in 1951-52 (sorry to the 1949-50 Minneapolis Lakers) based on their performance in both the regular season and playoffs.
Three decades after, it’s time for an update with a new No. 1, plus several other newcomers to the list thanks to the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors dominating the contest in their respective conferences.
The method
For champions, I took the average of the point differential during the regular season and their point differential in the playoffs in addition to the point differential of their opponents. That tells us how many points each game better than an ordinary team each champion was, giving equal weight to the postseason as the regular season to reward the most important games.
For non-champions, the starting point is the same, but their playoff differential was also adjusted by effectively giving them a five-point reduction for each game they came up short of the name. That has little impact on teams like the 2012-13 San Antonio Spurs, who lost in Game 7 of the Finals, but it harshly penalizes teams which rolled up big victory margins early in the playoffs before falling short in the conference finals.
The adjustment deals with quality of drama. It’s no surprise that some of the best single-season team performances in NBA history came in the early 1970s, when the league had expanded quickly and also battled the ABA for incoming draft selections. The redistribution of gift allowed stars to shine more brightly. For every season, I quantified how gamers saw their moments per game increase or reduce the subsequent season as compared to what we would expect given their age. More minutes suggests that a poorer league, while fewer moments indicates one that’s gotten stronger.
Each year is rated relative to 2017-18, from a high of 21 percent stronger in 1965-66, the last year the NBA had only nine teams, to a low of 10 percent poorer in 2004-05, the last time that the league expanded. That modification is multiplied from the group’s typical regular-season and playoff scores to give a last score greater than an ordinary team this season.
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