freethedevil wrote:sansterre wrote:Spurs: ATG regular season, close loss in Semis to ATG team
Thunder: Extremely good regular season, close win in Semis over ATG team, close loss in Conf Finals to ATG team
Warriors: ATG regular season, weak series in Semis, close win in Conf Finals over ATG team, close loss in Finals to ATG team
Cavs: Very good regular season, close win in NBA Finals over ATG team
I feel a little weird putting the ‘16 Spurs in the Top 25. Objectively I think it’s very reasonable. Look, it was one of the best regular seasons ever. They lost to an ATG team; that loss just happened to be in the Semis because of their conference. Put the ‘16 Spurs in most years of the aughts and I think they’d win the whole thing (not a fair thought exercise, but you get my point). I genuinely believe that the ‘16 Spurs were a Top 25 team that simply got screwed by being put in the 2016 Western Conference. If you think that *no* team should be in the Top 25 that didn’t make the Conference Finals at least . . . I think that’s arbitrary (as I expect the ‘72 Bucks being ranked this high having only made the Conference Finals of a league half as big didn’t ruffle anyone’s feathers).
But I hope it’s clear that the ‘16 Spurs should *at least* be in the Top 50. I don’t think there is a fair place to put the ‘16 Spurs. Everything about this team and their situation is a little unfair.[/spoiler]
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I think the unreasonable bit here, is putting them about the 2016 Warriors who,
A. Not only got farther in the playoffs despite having their best player injured but
B. Beat the same team that decisively spanked the spurs(spurs lost the last four games by an average of 9.5 pints) despite having their besy player hobbled
C. Despite a signficantly worse situation doing signifcantly better against, not one,
but two atg teams. Warriors essentially lost the cavs series on a coin flip despite curry's injury, and draymond being suspended. They beat the thunder despite curry having an injury that takes months to recover from. The warriors without curry played like a 48 win team in the regular season. Nohting about their performance in the first two rounds indicates a postseason dip, so I'm not really sure how the warriors *not having as good of a mov without their best payer fo rhalf a series has basically overwritten a far healthier spurs team essentially getting greatly outperformed by a not-healthy warriors in not one, but
two series against ATG opposition, one of whom had literally just reverse swept the spurs in the second round. To be frank the warriors...only beating their second round opponent by +4.... being some kind of knock is self-defeating since it essentially holds the fac tthat the warriors secured the top seed in the regular seaosn against them. When you win 73 games, and you use that seeding to coast through your best player getting hurt, that really shouldn't be used as a reason to prop up another team which you are clearly outplaying in the playoffs despite not being at 100%.
Putting the spurs over the warriors just isn't reasonable to me at all, becuase you don't even have to adjust for health here, the warriors clearly were better when it mattered and it wasn't patciularly close.
The order of events also happens here. The spurs won two games, were figued out, and were never really a match for OKC. The warriors on the other hand were extremely vulnerable,okc took advantage, and then the warriors won 3 straight games indicating they'd adjusted for the thunder. This would suggest that in most situations it was really a matter of if/not when.
Good thoughts.
I can only build rankings on actual team performance, not on theoretical team performance. I have zero problem ranking the healthy '16 Warriors higher than the '16 Spurs. But the '16 Warriors as they played had a bad series (because they lost Curry) and that's something the '16 Spurs didn't have.
And I am concerned about characterizing the Thunder as having "decisively spanked" the Spurs. I don't think the series really speaks to that. The games went: Spurs +32, Thunder +1, Spurs +4, Thunder +14, Thunder +4, Thunder +14. To say "the Thunder won the last four games by 9.5 points a game", first off, is wrong (7 points a game) but second off, it's a bit skewed. "If you ignore the games that the Spurs won, the Thunder swept them easily." I mean, the Thunder won. That counts. And they did perform better toward the end of the series (one might say that the winning team often performs better toward the end of the series, particularly the last game). But decisively spanked? There were three really close games (the Thunder won 2 of them) and three bigger wins (Spurs by 32, Thunder twice by 14). If that's decisively spanked, didn't the Cavs "decisively spank" the Warriors in the Finals?
"The Cavs decisively spanked the Warriors, figuring them out and winning the last three games by 11 points a game." All factually true (except for the decisive spanking part). But what's that you say? The Warriors series was basically a coin-flip?
Look. I'm just a spreadsheet jockey. Maybe the Thunder *did* decisively spank the Spurs. But to me those series look really, really similar (if the Spurs had won that one-point Game 2, the two might well have played out almost identically).
If your point is that the '16 Warriors *when healthy* were better than the '16 Spurs, I agree. But my list doesn't (and won't) adjust for that, so it's a bit of a non-point.
If your point is that the '16 Warriors *as they played* were better than the '16 Spurs . . . You may be right. I am uncomfortable that the '16 Spurs are ranked higher. I am deeply curious what light v2 sheds on this. But I honestly am not convinced. It looks like they both had one dominant series, and the Spurs lost a coin-flip while the Warriors won one coin-flip, lost the second, and had one weak series. And any objective formula will ding them for that. If the Spurs had managed to get the one-seed the '16 Warriors would have been obliterated by the Thunder (without Curry) and suddenly the Spurs are in the Conference Finals after beating the Blazers by 10+ (I think it's a safe bet). The Warriors certainly earned their 1 seed fair and square. But there is absolutely zero question that, in Round 2, the Spurs were a way better team than the Warriors; it's just that the Spurs ended up playing an all-time Top 50 team and the Warriors played a merely decent team.
That the Warriors only had to play a weak-ish team without Curry really glossed over the damage the injury did. But the formula cares about all of that, and it considers the semi-finals very concerning for a team that we'd want to rank very high.
If you are arguing that the '16 Warriors were "greater" than the '16 Spurs, absolutely. I'm with you completely.
But if you're arguing that the '16 Warriors *as they played* were more "dominant" (which is more what my list is built around) than the '16 Spurs . . . I'm not convinced.
