Why did the Jazz accomplish so little from 88-95?

[erudite23]

Also, get out of here with any pre-merger stuff. The league was so much different in the early 70s from what it was in the 90s that its pointless to compare the two.

[lorak]

I’m going to use the realgm top 100 list (viewtopic.php?f=64&t=830301&st=0&sk=t&sd=a) to prove my point about what typically happens when two top 30 players play together. I’m going to ignore seasons when one of the player was clearly past his peak (I’ll use MVP voting, All NBA teams as criteria here). To qualify both players must have made the top 30.

Nice work but I want to add something. I’ll compare every championship team with duo from top 30 (according to real GM list) to teams which Stockton and Malone had. Well, at least to two of them: one from Stockton’s prime (’88 to ’92) and second from seasons, when they advanced to the finals.

The best Jazz team during Stockton’s prime was 1991/92 version. Highest SRS during that span (1987/88-1991/92), highest win-loss record, and in playoffs they advanced to the WCF (lost 2-4 to heavily favored Blazers). Their starting five (in playoffs): Stockton, J. Malone, Benoit, K. Malone, Eaton (plus Corbin, Edwards and Mike Brown as key reserves – nobody played more than total 90 minutes in playoffs).

So prime Stockton and K. Malone had very good scorer J. Malone, however without three point range, without defense, without anything expect scoring, Benoit was rookie, small forward without range, not good in anything, Eaton was 35 years old and played less than 30 minutes in playoffs. From the bench Brown was their only big and he was poor rebounder, and even worse in scoring efficiency (.516 career TS% and .455 eFG%). Edwards was ok swingman, very good role player, Corbin was very weak offensively (another perimeter player without jump shoot!), but above average on defense.

1997 and 1998 Jazz teams were exactly the same: Stockton, Hornacek, Russell, Malone, Ostertag (and Foster, Anderson, Carr, Eisley and Morris from the bench)

At the time Stockton was 35 years old, Malone 34. Hornacek was great shooter (IMO one of the all time greats) but also old - 34 years, and weak defensively. Russell on the other hand was defensive specialist, but also had range and overall was at least average role player. Ostertag was inefficient as a scorer (career .516 TS% and .486 eFG%), but was great rebounder and very good defender against big players (his defense on Shaq was great). Anderson was young (rookie in 1996/97) but promising swingman. However at the time was nothing more than below average role player. Eisley was good backup at point guard but little too inefficient. Foster was backup PF/C but was extremely inefficient (career .482 TS% and .444 eFG%) and bad rebounder (career 12.5 TRB%). Carr was old (35-36 years old) and ineffective big - at the time around .510 TS% and .470 eFG%. He also was very poor rebounder - 9.8 TRB% that's awful for power forward. Morris was another inefficient swingman (career .513 TS% and .475 eFG%) without range.

So we have two Jazz teams:
Team A, the best team from period when Malone and Stockton were in their primes:
Stockton, J. Malone, Benoit, K. Malone, Eaton (bench: Corbin, Edwards and Mike Brown)
Team B, the Finals team:
Stockton, Hornacek, Russell, Malone, Ostertag (bench: Foster, Anderson, Carr, Eisley and Morris)

Team B was much better – better bench (in fact team A had no bench expect Edwards), better role players, better shooters, better defenders. But we’ll leave that and compare these teams to championship teams with top 30 duos.

1. Michael Jordan played with one player ranked in the top 30, Scottie Pippen based on All-NBA teams and MVP voting for 6 seasons. During those years the bulls won 5 championships. The Bulls won an average of 62 games.

And their average starting five was: Paxson/Harper, MJ, Pippen, Grant/Rodman, Cartwright/Longley (plus BJ, Kukoc or great shooters like Hodges or Kerr).

2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He played with two top 25 players when he was still at or near his peak: a post-prime Oscar Robertson and a pre-prime/prime Magic Johnson. His teams won 4 championships. The Bucks during the one season Oscar made an All-NBA team or received MVP votes won 66 games and a title.

And

5. Magic Johnson (discussed in the Jabbar paragraph)[/

1980 Lakers: Nixon, Magic, Wilkes, Chones, KAJ + Cooper, Haywood, Landsberger
1988 Lakers: Magic, Scott, Worthy, Green, KAJ + Cooper, Thompson, Rambis

BTW, KAJ and Magic played with each other during four season (1981, 1983, 1984, 1986) and they DIDN’T WON THE TITLE!

3. Bill Russell played with two top 30 player all time. Bob Cousy for 7 full seasons and John Havlicek for seven full seasons.

1957 Celtics (Russell's first championship): Cousy (All Star that year), Sharman (All Star), Loscutoff, Heinsohn (All Star), Russell + Ramsey, Risen, Phillip

Wow, great team at the time - Philip and Risen were old, but were stars in previous seasons and now were perfect as x-factors from the bench.

1963 Celtics (middle of dynasty): Cousy, S. Jones, Sanders, Heinsohn, Russell + KC, Hondo, Ramsey, Loscutoff, Lovellette.

Another powerhouse squad. Even Lovelette from the end of the bench was previously great player and now perfect as role player.

1969 Celtics (last title): Bryant, S. Jones, Hondo, Howell, Russell + Siegfried, Nelson, T. Sanders
The weakest of Celtics teams, but for most of the career Russell had much more talent around him.

4. Wilt Chamberlain played with two top 30 players: Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. In 1969 both West and Baylor were top 30 players all time. From 1970 to 1973 he played with Jerry West.

In 1969 and 1970 Wilt had no one top 30 player by TWO and still they don’t won the title. The same works for West and Baylor…
In 1973 he had West and don’t won too.
1969 Lakers: Egan, West, Baylor, Erickson, Wilt + Counts, Hweitt, Hawkins
1970 Lakers: Garrett, West, Baylor, Erickson, Wilt + Hairstone, Counts, Egan
1973 Lakers: West, Goodrich, McMillan, Bridges, Wilt + Erickson, Counts, Riley

7. Hakeem Olajuwon had two teammate in the top 30: Clyde Drexler and Charles Barkley.

1995 Rockets: Smith, Drexler, Horry, Chilcutt, Hakeem + Elie, Cassell, Brown, Jones
1996 Rockets: Smith, Drexler, Horry, Brown, Hakeem + Cassell, Elie, Bryant
1997 Rockets: Maloney, Drexler, Elie, Barkley, Hakeem + Willis, E. Johnson, Threatt
1998 Rockets: Maloney, Drexler, Bullard, Ellis, Hakeem + Elie, E. Johnson, Barkley
1999 Rockets: Mobley, Dickerson, Pippen, Barkley, Hakeem + Mack, Price, Harrington

1995 was impressive, but after that 4 seasons with two or three top 30 players and no championship. At the same time even older team (Jazz) twice advance to the finals…

And here I’ll stop because unfortunately I have no more time. My points are:
1. Compare Jazz teams to those teams mentioned above. Most of them were better than Utah.
2. Two players from top 30 don’t automatically provide you championship. Magic and KAJ were unable to do it four times, Wilt+West+Baylor didn’t won two times, Dr J with Moses loose three times, and Hakeem with better teams that Jazz at the time can’t even advance to the finals.
1+2= 3. Jazz never had good supporting cast for Malone and Stockton and even when they advanced to the finals they had to fight with arguably GOAT . That’s not Stockton’s and Malone’s fault that they lost, that same as it wasn’t Dr J, Moses, KAJ, Magic, Hakeem, Drexler, Barkley, Wilt, Baylor or West when they lost multiple times.

BTW, I think it’s very underrated here how hard it is to get valuable free agent to sign with team from Utah…

[drza]

The problem with your thesis there is that these arbitrary rankings that you are coming up with are almost entirely based on accomplishment. If Dirk and Co won in 2006, when they were the best team in the league, and again in 2007, when again, they were the best team in the league, then Dirk would probably be ranked top 15. People are using rankings to prove championships when championships are based on rankings. Circular logic at its best.

Actually, your thesis has a hole in it. You might have a point if this were some kind of passive exercise, where a certain portion of the league is randomly selected to have championships. But the point is that players that perform at the highest level end up higher on most people's rankings. For Dirk and co to win in 2006 someone on the team would have had to play better than they did, and the most likely candidate to do that is the best player. It's not like the team suffered injuries after going up 2 - 0, they just started losing. That reflected poorly on Dirk, and hurts his standing on many people's rankings.

Likewise, for them to have won in 2007 would have required that Dirk play MUCH better than he did in those playoffs, when his scoring average dropped 5 ppg and his field goal percentage dropped 12%.

Had Dirk led those Mavs to back-to-back titles he'd DESERVE to be higher up on the lists. He didn't due so in large part because he wasn't quite that good. Very similarly to how some of us "antagonists" are questioning Malone and Stockton. It's not circular logic, it's very consistent: in the absence of huge extenuating circumstances, pairings of ultra-elite players should lead to at least one title. If it doesn't, it's fair to start examining whether the players involved are as great as advertised.

[Mayap]

Here is the hole in YOUR logic. Some people like to judge players on how they played on average. On average Malone/Stockton were elite players. They simply weren't in the right circumstances to win a championship like they should have.

Some people like yourself like to ignore the perception of Malone and Stockton that was completely obvious even to the most oblivious basketball fan(that they looked like and seemed like elite players) simply because they came up short in the end.

[erudite23]

Thanks, Mayap.


It IS circular logic, because if you are a top player its because you win championships and you win championships if you're a top player, there is no way to prove either. It IS consistent, but its also circular. Its the one unavoidable flaw in sport fandom.

And what's funny is that there is at least some truth to it...but its still a stupid way to argue. In the end, its all subjective, and what we have to do as sport fans is come up with some sort of artificial or arbitrary way to interpret what we see. In this case, if you really look at it, it is readily apparent that Utah had very little in the way of a supporting cast around the two superstars during this period. Even Jeff Malone, who was the best player besides those two, WASN'T EVEN AN AVERAGE PLAYER. The Jazz had exactly THREE occurrences of a player other than Stock or Malone posting a PER of 15 or better aside from Stockton and Malone during the ENTIRE period in question. No, that is not a typo. What's more, if you raise that to 16.0, it happened just once and NEVER did they have the benefit of a player posting more than the 16.3 that Thurl posted in 87-88. Lower that number to 14.0 and we had a total of FOUR occurrences from 88 to the day that we traded for Jeff Hornacek at the deadline in 1994. Just let that sink in. Eaton was very good defensively, but he was such a liability on offense and on the boards, not to mention the fact that he could only give you about 28 mpg, that you couldn't call him a good player, and maybe not even an AVERAGE player.


Think about that right now. Look at every single champ of this decade and see how many players they had with a PER of 15 or greater who played at least 18mpg:

09 Lakers - 5 (Brown at 15.0 would have made it six)
08 Celtics - 5
07 Spurs - 4 (Bonner would have made it 5 but only played 12mpg)
06 Heat - 4 (worst team on the list, and still had 4 not counting Haslem or Posey)
05 Spurs - 3 (four more players came in between 14.0 and 15.0)
04 Pistons - 5
03 Spurs - 4 (Manu and SJax came up just short with 14.7 each)
02 Lakers - 2 (see below)
01 Lakers - 2
00 Lakers - 2


As you can see, every championship team of the last decade had one or two superstars with 2-3 other really good players around them and then a couple guys who fit well around THEM that could fill specific roles, with the lone exception being the 04 Pistons who did it by having 5 really good guys who fit well together, played selflessly, and got really lucky to boot.

And that leaves the Lakers.

First of all, if we were to lower the threshold to 14, it would change the numbers. Fox, Horry, Fisher, Horace Grant and CO were all pretty good players, and they regularly landed in the 14.0 range. More specifically, they had the one skill that allowed Kobe and Shaq to do their thing: shooting. More importantly, Shaq and Kobe were a better duo than Malone/Stockton, as much as it pains me to say. Shaq very well might have been the best player of All-Time during that stretch, and Kobe was the 100% perfect compliment who was playing at a near superstar level early in their time together and became a bona fide superstar level toward the end of it. Combine the two things, and the effect is the same.


The fact remains that the Jazz role players were deplorably awful during this stretch of basketball. Eaton was a nice piece, but on a team that was so desperate for offense his deficiencies couldn't be hidden.

I know its hard to imagine a 6'1" white guy as one of the dominant players in NBA history, especially when he doesn't have the dazzling quickness or explosiveness to make up for his lack of size. But he was. Live with it.

[drza]

Here is the hole in YOUR logic. Some people like to judge players on how they played on average. On average Malone/Stockton were elite players. They simply weren't in the right circumstances to win a championship like they should have.

Some people like yourself like to ignore the perception of Malone and Stockton that was completely obvious even to the most oblivious basketball fan(that they looked like and seemed like elite players) simply because they came up short in the end.

I don't have any problem saying Malone and Stockton were "elite" players, depending on your definition of elite. I don't know if I was the most oblivious basketball fan or not, but I know that at no time between 1985 and 2000 did I ever watch the Jazz and say "you know what...that Malone is the best player in the NBA". It was more like I've felt (in this generation) about guys like Dirk or Nash, that "that guy is REALLY good...but not as good as the very best." Whether that makes me an idiot or not, that was the subjective opinion of this oblivious fan.

Stockton was even harder to judge as an individual because so much of his impact was indirect and he was so entertwined with Malone, but for the Stockton/Malone pairing again my subjective opinion was similar to win I saw the Dirk/Nash or the Nash/Amare or the Kidd/Carter combos...that those are two great players playing great together, but again I never saw them as a killer combo like I did Shaq/Kobe or Duncan/Robinson or Jordan/Pippen or Magic/Kareem or even Bird/Mchale.

I don't think any of the "antagonists" in this thread are arguing that Malone and Stockton weren't great players, or "elite" players, or whatever. My only stance is that I don't think that they were among the best-of-the-best, which is what their counting stats and their rankings according to many posters on here would argue.

Maybe it is a circular argument because they never won a title, I guess I can't prove otherwise, but I know this: when I saw Duncan and Robinson play together Duncan's rookie year I'd have bet significant money that they'd eventually win a title together. When it became clear that Kobe really was going to be a special player, I would have bet significant money that the Lakers would eventually win a title around the Shaq/Kobe combo. But there wasn't one time in their 15+ years together that I started a season thinking, "you know what? Malone and Stockton are so great that those Jazz should be the team to beat this year." And it wasn't because of who their 3rd or 4th options were, it was because I just never believed they were quite the best. Sue me, that's significant to me.

[Sedale Threatt]

I sure did, after they nearly beat L.A. in 1988. Malone was 24, Stockton was 25. I figured it was almost a foregone conclusion that they'd win at least one championship, if not more.

Some great points as to why they didn't, especially regarding their supporting cast. Pretty pedestrian in almost every case.

[erudite23]

Well, its a serious hole in the resume, obviously. I can't account for what some random fan may or may not have felt about Stockton and Malone. A lot of the time, that type of thing takes into account things that are non-winning-basketball related, like Kobe's awe-inspiring athletic talents or Duncan's amazing combination of size, skill, agility and basketball IQ. Malone and Stockton were both players that didn't WOW you from a traditional sense. Both got an edge by out-working other players, and both were cerebral players who played an intelligent brand of basketball that didn't catch the eye of anyone not specifically looking for something to catch.

The Jazz of that time weren't the type to make you think "these guys are unstoppable". They were the type that made you think "we can take these guys" and then stand around in bewilderment after you got your ass swept 4-0. Just ask the 98 Lakers.

[Dr Positivity]

Right, because SRS all by itself can tell us how good a team was, in the context of the moment, the quality of play across the entire NBA and every intangible element in basketball. Sorry, but that post was so pathetic it made me want to scratch my own eyes out.

No but it can ballpark it better than the subjective opinion of a Utah Jazz fan or the common perception of the media which has proven over and over to be biased and wrong. Who do you think is more likely to get media play, the 97-98 Jazz who participated in the most watched NBA games EVER and who everyone from their early 20s onwards can clearly recall, or the **** 1972 Bucks? Who cares about the 72 Bucks? Or for that matter the 80s Bucks? By all accounts the 80s Bucks were easily as succesful as the 90s Jazz but nobody cares because they never made the finals over insane Boston and Philly teams, whereas the Jazz had a 2 year window open up where the real powerhouse of the league was waiting in the Finals and the best teams they had to beat were the Shaq Lakers (perfect matchup - Shaq can't guard the pnr) and an aging Hakeem-Barkley-Drexler. What if the Jazz were in the Eastern Conference? They'd have never made the finals in 96-98 right? Would they be as underrated and under the radar as they were in the late 80s-early 90s? Hell yes. They'd be right there with the 80s Bucks, 90s Cavs, Pacers, Blazers, etc. Or more apt, the early 90s Blazers.

But you know what, 98% of people will say the Stockton and Malone Jazz are easily >>> 80s Bucks because they made 2 finals watched by 75 million people. That single handidly made them superduperstars. And that's why you can't trust "what everyone thinks"

How about we go with Hollinger, the god father of advanced NBA statistics and one of the giants in the field on this one:

27. 1997 UTAH JAZZ ......SCORE: 220.7
KEY FACTS
Regular-season record: 64-18
Postseason record: 13-7
Avg. scoring margin: +8.8
Avg. scoring margin, playoffs: +3.3
Finals result: Lost to Chicago, 4-2 LEADERS (regular-season stats)
Scoring: Karl Malone, 27.4 ppg
Rebounds: Karl Malone, 9.9 rpg
Assists: John Stockton, 10.5 apg
Coach: Jerry Sloan
If you're looking for the honorary "best team never to win a title," I'll go with the Stockton-to-Malone Jazz. This unit was their best team, winning 64 games by going 41-6 over its final 47 regular-season games, then knocking out the Barkley-Olajuwon-Drexler Rockets in six games in the conference finals.

Unfortunately, their opponent in the Finals was a 69-win Bulls team with Michael Jordan. Despite that, the Jazz played them incredibly tough -- they were outscored by a mere four points over the course of the series, and two of their four losses were on last-second shots.

Lol so now you bring out Hollinger? Where in that piece does Hollinger actually say WHY the Jazz are better? He just throws out their point differential and then picks him as his favorite. Except I have already proven that if point differential is what you go by, the Jazz are nowhere NEAR the best team to not win a title ever. So I'd like to see exactly why Hollinger picked them and why he thinks they're any better than a team like the 90s Blazers who were just as good as the Jazz by any objective metric (point differential, playoff success/finals appearances, reg. season wins, etc.)

I like SRS, I think its a good barometer for how well a team played during the regular season, and I think that its an excellent means of separating random chance over an 82 game schedule from actual performance. But it doesn't tell the tale of how good a team is. This is ESPECIALLY true of veteran NBA teams who have already "conquered" the NBA regular season and are saving themselves for the playoffs.

Then why didn't Stockton and Malone have a single 8+ SRS team throughout their entire careers? Surely if they were taking it easy during 97-98, they'd have gone harder and put up some historic seasons when they had equal supporting casts before, no?

Its posts like the above, who do nothing but look at raw statistics and then make judgments without the help of context or the human element that give stat heads a bad name.

I care about objective analysis. Right now your conclusion is that the Jazz were one of the greatest teams of all time and simply had bad luck by facing the late 90s Bulls. Your evidence for this is based on a strong media opinion of Stockton and Malone after the 97-98 NBA Finals and your own opinion as a Jazz fan. Neither of these sources can be trusted.

Show me OBJECTIVE reasoning for the 97-98 Jazz being two of the greatest teams of all time that just had bad luck by facing an even better team. I'll show you mine

- Neither the Jazz win total or point differential in 97-98 is that of a near GOAT team
- The Jazz in 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 had a very similar team to their Finals ones. If they were one of the greatest teams of all time, why did they lose every year to teams like the Blazers, Sonics, and Rockets? Don't tell me their supporting cast was worse in those years than in 97-98 because that is straight up wrong. The Jazz did not prove anything more in 97 and 98 than they did the last 5 years, they just had nobody as good as the Sonics/Blazers/Rockets to play anymore
- Why didn't the Jazz have better regular seasons? Do you know the Jazz never made 1st in the West once from 92-96? That kills the "they weren't trying as hard in the regular season" excuse

EVERY indication shows the Jazz were as good as the Sonics, Blazers, Suns in the 90s and no more. Literally every indication. And that's not an insult at all, those were excellent teams. But the 97 and 98 Jazz were not one of the greatest teams of all time.

[Dr Positivity]

If you want to argue Stockton and Malone had crappy supporting casts, then go ahead. But they certainly didn't lead two of the greatest teams of all time in 97 and 98.

As for the Stockton and Malone having crappy suporting casts argument now - In the late 80s they had a DPOY C in Eaton, after that they had a solid 3rd wheel in Jeff Malone and Hornacek. Other than that they had role players and shooters. That's about all you need for Stockton and Malone. I have already proven the Jazz's problem was not scoring ability, it was turning the ball over too much. In 1990 they had the best eFG and FT line help in the league and somehow finished 10th offensively because they turned it over so much and didn't grab any offensive rebounds. If they finished top 3 offensively that year they'd have been title favorites because they also had a top 5 defense and Jordan was still a year away.

If Stockton and Malone turned the ball as little as Nash's Suns, they'd have had a top 5 offense from 88-92 when they dominated defensively (thus making them easy title contenders), then after that they'd have the 1st or 2nd best offense in the league every year to go along with a 7th-8th best defense. The Jazz would've been legit title contenders every year from 88-98. With that many kicks at the can they'd easily have multiple titles

Stockton and Malone shot themselves in the foot historically by turning it over 7 times a game. That is too many possesions to give to the other team a game. That's why they didn't win anything until the late 90s when the West sucked.

[erudite23]

Let's just look at the 90-91 Jazz as a test case in this discussion:


PG: 23.4
SG: 14.4
SF: 10.4
PF: 24.8
C: 9.5

Backup Wing: 12.4
Backup Big: 9.6

That's the seven man rotation, right there. No one else played more than 10mpg.

This is a team that won 54 games and lost in the 2nd round of the playoffs. Compare this team to any of the mid-tier teams of the last decade and Stockton and Malone's excellence become evident very quickly.

Its no wonder that when they replaced that 14ish PER at SG with an 17-18 guy in Hornacek, that 9-10ish PER at C with a 13-15ish Ostertag, the starting SF with a 13ish Bryon Russell (who was a "defensive specialist"), and the backup big with a 12ish Antoine Carr that the Stockton and Malone combo suddenly began to make serious playoff runs. Hmmm.

[lorak]

[ the Jazz had a 2 year window open up where the real powerhouse of the league was waiting in the Finals and the best teams they had to beat were the Shaq Lakers (perfect matchup - Shaq can't guard the pnr) and an aging Hakeem-Barkley-Drexler. .

Rockets were as aging as Jazz.

[Mayap]

The 96-98 jazz was an elite team. Even though I agree that the 72 bucks were certainly the best team not to win a championship, I still think the jazz of those years and the Bulls were by far the greatest teams I had ever witnessed(starting watching in '94). I would rate the Jazz over even the rockets of 94-95, and the biggest reasons for their success simply lied in Malone and Stockton, but mostly Malone I would argue. Nothing about the Jazz was a gimmick...their level of play was superb, they simply outplayed and outsmarted their opponents, literally stunning the opposing team and fans. The one thing that slowed them down was a lack of a reliable scorer. Malone could not be depended upon in a halfcourt type game, his FG% in that 15 foot jump shot was not impressive. Against a team like the Bulls this proved to be their downfall.

I simply cannot fathom a team that played basketball so fundamentally better than the Jazz did. As I've told others, it takes pure skill to beat a team like that, and MJ epitomized pure skill. I certainly believe they were one of the best teams not to win a championship, and I can say this with a lot of confidence despite having never seen teams like the 80s bucks, etc etc. SRS isn't the gold standard when making these comparisons.

[Dr Positivity]

The 96-98 jazz was an elite team. Even though I agree that the 72 bucks were certainly the best team not to win a championship, I still think the jazz of those years and the Bulls were by far the greatest teams I had ever witnessed(starting watching in '94).

That right there is the problem

If you rely on subjective analysis you can only go by what you saw. Otherwise you're putting teams on an uneven playing field. If you saw the Jazz and nobody else before 94 you'd be much more likely to put the Jazz as the best team to not win the title. That's why it makes much more sense to look at objective facts. Then you are free from nostalgia and subjective experience which can never be trusted

The Jazz ARE one of the best teams to win a title from 94-09. The objective facts (stats, playoff accomplishment, regular season wins) all back this up. There's only one team with a better SRS from 94-09 who didn't win the title... last year's Cavs. Who I think just got rattled, particularly Mo and Delonte. These things happen

I'm not saying SRS is the be all end all, but to override it teams need to prove their worth in other ways. Nobody the Jazz beat proved anything, they didn't have 65 win+ seasons, and Stockton and Malone teams had been losing for a decade already including the last 5 years with identical level supporting casts. In this case the Jazz performed exactly how their 6-7.5 SRS throughout the 90s indicates they should've. When your SRS, regular season wins, and playoff performances all paint the same picture, how can you argue against it other than relying on subjective nostalgia or media hype?

[sp6r=underrated]

The 96-98 jazz was an elite team. Even though I agree that the 72 bucks were certainly the best team not to win a championship, I still think the jazz of those years and the Bulls were by far the greatest teams I had ever witnessed(starting watching in '94).

That right there is the problem

If you rely on subjective analysis you can only go by what you saw. Otherwise you're putting teams on an uneven playing field. If you saw the Jazz and nobody else before 94 you'd be much more likely to put the Jazz as the best team to not win the title. That's why it makes much more sense to look at objective facts. Then you are free from nostalgia and subjective experience which can never be trusted

The Jazz ARE one of the best teams to win a title from 94-09. The objective facts (stats, playoff accomplishment, regular season wins) all back this up. There's only one team with a better SRS from 94-09 who didn't win the title... last year's Cavs. Who I think just got rattled, particularly Mo and Delonte. These things happen

I'm not saying SRS is the be all end all, but to override it teams need to prove their worth in other ways. Nobody the Jazz beat proved anything, they didn't have 65 win+ seasons, and Stockton and Malone teams had been losing for a decade already including the last 5 years with identical level supporting casts. In this case everything objective points to the Jazz making the Finals due to a weak West, rather than the Jazz suddenly becoming a GOAT team after clearly being on the Sonics/Blazers/Suns/etc. level for the last 7 years despite having the same team. Think about how ridiculous that sounds.

Not that SRS should settle this dispute. But the 94 Sonics were just as good as the Cavs according to SRS and they got eliminated in the first round.

[lorak]

Stockton and Malone shot themselves in the foot historically by turning it over 7 times a game.

Great duos and career tov per game

Magic 3.9, + KAJ 2.7 = 6.6
Dr J 3.1 + M. Malone 3.1 = 6.2
K. Malone 3.1 + Stockton 2.8 = 5.9
Olajuwon 3.0 + Drexler 2.7 = 5.7
Kobe 2.9 + Shaq 2.8 = 5.7
Pippen 2.8 + MJ 2.7 = 5.5

[erudite23]

Right, because SRS all by itself can tell us how good a team was, in the context of the moment, the quality of play across the entire NBA and every intangible element in basketball. Sorry, but that post was so pathetic it made me want to scratch my own eyes out.

No but it can ballpark it better than the subjective opinion of a Utah Jazz fan or the common perception of the media which has proven over and over to be biased and wrong. Who do you think is more likely to get media play, the 97-98 Jazz who participated in the most watched NBA games EVER and who everyone from their early 20s onwards can clearly recall, or the **** 1972 Bucks? Who cares about the 72 Bucks? Or for that matter the 80s Bucks? By all accounts the 80s Bucks were easily as succesful as the 90s Jazz but nobody cares because they never made the finals over insane Boston and Philly teams, whereas the Jazz had a 2 year window open up where the real powerhouse of the league was waiting in the Finals and the best teams they had to beat were the Shaq Lakers (perfect matchup - Shaq can't guard the pnr) and an aging Hakeem-Barkley-Drexler. What if the Jazz were in the Eastern Conference? They'd have never made the finals in 96-98 right? Would they be as underrated and under the radar as they were in the late 80s-early 90s? Hell yes. They'd be right there with the 80s Bucks, 90s Cavs, Pacers, Blazers, etc. Or more apt, the early 90s Blazers.

But you know what, 98% of people will say the Stockton and Malone Jazz are easily >>> 80s Bucks because they made 2 finals watched by 75 million people. That single handidly made them superduperstars. And that's why you can't trust "what everyone thinks"

Right, and that's the exact argument that statheads use ad nauseum: well stats are a lot better than ethereal garbledeegook. Well, there IS a reason why so many people think that the Jazz were such a great team. They watched them lock horns with probably the greatest team of All-Time and match them blow for blow. As Hollinger mentioned in the quote below, the Bulls beat the Jazz in games decided by very small margins, with two victories coming on last second shots. That's not a coincidence.

More importantly: look at your list. If SRS was the end all be all for "quality of team", then why do several of the teams on your list that didn't win 'chips have an annotated "lost to:" with a team that has a lower SRS? If that doesn't disprove your slavish devotion to a stat that simply gives a barometer of how consistently good a team was over an 82 game schedule and doesn't prove how GOOD that team was in all the senses of what qualifies as a "good" team, than I don't know what does. There are many things that capture the quality of a team, one of which is SRS. That leads me to....

How about we go with Hollinger, the god father of advanced NBA statistics and one of the giants in the field on this one:

27. 1997 UTAH JAZZ ......SCORE: 220.7
KEY FACTS
Regular-season record: 64-18
Postseason record: 13-7
Avg. scoring margin: +8.8
Avg. scoring margin, playoffs: +3.3
Finals result: Lost to Chicago, 4-2 LEADERS (regular-season stats)
Scoring: Karl Malone, 27.4 ppg
Rebounds: Karl Malone, 9.9 rpg
Assists: John Stockton, 10.5 apg
Coach: Jerry Sloan
If you're looking for the honorary "best team never to win a title," I'll go with the Stockton-to-Malone Jazz. This unit was their best team, winning 64 games by going 41-6 over its final 47 regular-season games, then knocking out the Barkley-Olajuwon-Drexler Rockets in six games in the conference finals.

Unfortunately, their opponent in the Finals was a 69-win Bulls team with Michael Jordan. Despite that, the Jazz played them incredibly tough -- they were outscored by a mere four points over the course of the series, and two of their four losses were on last-second shots.

Lol so now you bring out Hollinger? Where in that piece does Hollinger actually say WHY the Jazz are better? He just throws out their point differential and then picks him as his favorite. Except I have already proven that if point differential is what you go by, the Jazz are nowhere NEAR the best team to not win a title ever. So I'd like to see exactly why Hollinger picked them and why he thinks they're any better than a team like the 90s Blazers who were just as good as the Jazz by any objective metric (point differential, playoff success/finals appearances, reg. season wins, etc.)

Lol, you are going to have a conversation on this topic without having read one of the few pieces of "cannon" on the subject? Hollinger DOES say how he arrived at that conclusion, and--like is always the case with him--he came to it on a purely mathematical basis. Do some research and then come back and talk.

That composite score you see in the upper right hand corner (in this case 220.7) is a mixture of various different elements, with special weight to playoff performance.

For example, these amaaaaaazzzzziiiiinnnnngggg 86 Bucks you are slobbering over (SRS 8.69) not only GOT SWEPT BY THE 86 CELTICS, admittedly one of the great all time teams, but also got taken to 7 by an underwhelming Sixers team (SRS 2.45). How can a team that a) had nothing in the way of an All-Timer on the their team, b) failed to ratify their amazing single season by posting subsequent quality seasons, or c) failed to measure up when it really counted be measured on par with the great teams of all time? Because they beat the **** out of the Trent Tucker led Knicks squad during the regular season? Because they were able to consistently perform at their best in early January against Reggie Theus and Lasalle Thompson in their domination of the Sacramento Kings? There are many aspects of being an All-Time team. If you go to the playoffs and get swept, I DO NOT CARE WHO SWEPT YOU, you're off the list, period.

I like SRS, I think its a good barometer for how well a team played during the regular season, and I think that its an excellent means of separating random chance over an 82 game schedule from actual performance. But it doesn't tell the tale of how good a team is. This is ESPECIALLY true of veteran NBA teams who have already "conquered" the NBA regular season and are saving themselves for the playoffs.

Then why didn't Stockton and Malone have a single 8+ SRS team throughout their entire careers? Surely if they were taking it easy during 97-98, they'd have gone harder and put up some historic seasons when they had equal supporting casts before, no?

Here's what's funny. SRS has room for random chance. As good of a stat as it is, there is still a standard error involved. This great team you're talking about, and the Jazz' UNFORGIVABLE ability to field an 8+ team is completely and utterly arbitrary. The Jazz' best team posted an SRS of 7.97! We're talking about three HUNDREDTHS of a point away from your little standard. Of all the teams you listed, the only ones that didn't completely undermine their case by losing to a vastly inferior team (all time great teams DO NOT get embarrassed or eliminated by inferior squads) or otherwise ruining their case were the 91 Blazers who got beaten very handily by an 8.57 SRS Bulls team. If you watched that series, and I did, it was clear that they didn't belong on the same court as MJ's guys. But even then, I'm fine with the idea of putting that Blazer team in the convo with my Jazz. When you stack it all up, though, I think its clear that the Jazz have a stronger case.

Lol, you're own methodology is proving you wrong.

Its posts like the above, who do nothing but look at raw statistics and then make judgments without the help of context or the human element that give stat heads a bad name.

Show me OBJECTIVE reasoning for the 97-98 Jazz being two of the greatest teams of all time that just had bad luck by facing an even better team. I'll show you mine

- Neither the Jazz win total or point differential in 97-98 is that of a near GOAT team
- The Jazz in 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 had a very similar team to their Finals ones. If they were one of the greatest teams of all time, why did they lose every year to teams like the Blazers, Sonics, and Rockets? Don't tell me their supporting cast was worse in those years than in 97-98 because that is straight up wrong. The Jazz did not prove anything more in 97 and 98 than they did the last 5 years, they just had nobody as good as the Sonics/Blazers/Rockets to play anymore
- Why didn't the Jazz have better regular seasons? Do you know the Jazz never made 1st in the West once from 92-96? That kills the "they weren't trying as hard in the regular season" excuse

EVERY indication shows the Jazz were as good as the Sonics, Blazers, Suns in the 90s and no more. Literally every indication. And that's not an insult at all, those were excellent teams. But the 97 and 98 Jazz were not one of the greatest teams of all time.

1) How can a Jazz team with an SRS of 7.97 be SOOOOO clearly below a Bucks team with an SRS of 8.69, when that Bucks team got taken to the brink by an SRS of 2.45 and then swept in the next round? Hmmm. Because that .72 is just completely and utterly irreproachable? Of course it is.

2) The Jazz DID NOT have a similar team in those years to the 95, 96, 97 and 98 teams. The Jeff Hornacek trade, along with the drafting of Bryon Russell and Greg Ostertag, as well as the acquisitions of quality role players who would fill specific needs like Antoine Carr, Chris Morris, Adam Keefe and Greg Foster completely remade the team. They were a totally different animal.

3) As you might notice, it wasn't Stockton and Malone that were TO prone. Stock had a bit of a high TO rate, true, but not any higher than Steve Nash's was during his MVP run, for example. And if you were around back then to watch, you would know that the Jazz were a half court team in a league where open-court play ruled. Stockton generated a ton of easy shots, but he didn't do it by running up and down the court, he did it in the half court set. Tighter windows, more room for error. The Jazz were annually among the 5 or 6 slowest paced teams in the league. And it wasn't because Stock and Karl couldn't run. Karl is still known as the best running big in NBA history, in point of fact. It was because the Jazz never had the wing athletes to succeed that way. And for Karl, his TO rate was lower than that of any of his contemporaries (Barkley, Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing) and was rivaled only by McHale (though still better than even him).

4) There is a clear shift in Jazz history, and it started at the end of 94 with the acquisition of Hornacek. The next year, the Jazz had everything they needed: they had their 3rd wheel doing his thing (Horny posted an 18+ PER that season), they had a solid cast of supporting actors in Adam Keefe (PER 15.1), Big Dog Antoine Carr (solid reserve bigman) and Tom Chambers (scorer off the bench). This to go along with new blood in Bryon Russell and the ever important defensive/rebounding big man (Felton Spencer). Unfortunately, during a year that featured possibly the best collection of franchise big men in NBA history, with Robinson, Ewing, and Hakeem still in their prime, Shaq coming into the league and other greats hanging on or starting out....we lost our one true center for the year at mid season. When you play a prime Hakeem in the first round of the playoffs without a true center to guard him, then bad things can happen. They happened to us, and we lost 3-2 in a series where the Rockets guards shot lights out...but we still almost won. Not much you can do there.

But that year marked the beginning of true contention for the Jazz. We won 60 games that year and our playoff hopes were derailed by Spencer's injury. The next season, Spencer was never the same and Ostertag wasn't ready to step up full time. We posted the 3rd best SRS in the league and took the Western finalist Supersonics all the way to the brink before succumbing late in the 7th game.

Finally, the next year, the Jazz were fully equipped with a real, true Center (Tag) and a nice deck of complementary role players to fill in around John and Karl, along with the ever important 3rd wheel in Jeff Hornacek. We posted a NOT QUITE EIGHT point SRS, dominated the West, won the western crown and then had an, all things considered, fairly easy road to the Finals losing just 3 games total in the 3 rounds leading up to the Finals.


As you can see, if you take the idiot stat glasses off, this is a normal growth curve, just like every team follows. If you want to point the blame, point it at the Jazz front office for having two All Time dominant players and taking 7 years to really begin to adequately fill in around them. Prior to the Hornacek trade in 1994, the Jazz didn't have another single STARTING quality player. Jeff Malone put up 20 ppg in a ridiculously inefficient way, and even he was better than anything else they had before or after him.

If you want to understand the history of this team, think of it like this:

84-88

The gestation period. This is the time it took for Jazz management to realize they had great young players who were capable of dominating the league.

88-94

This is the equivalent to the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness that the Jews did after the Exodus, waiting to be led to the promised land.

94-98

This is the time when they finally got busy about making their team into a contender, and things really took off.


Again, it all began with Horny. His acquisition signaled the beginning of true legitimacy for the Jazz as a franchise and as a contending team in the West. Before that, it was just a bunch of JAGS and two HOFers running around and winning 50 games before getting eliminated without too much trouble in the playoffs.


That's as simple as I can put it for you. If you can't get it now, then I'm afraid there's no hope for you.

[Dr Positivity]

I think you misunderstood my mention of the 80s Bucks. I do not think they were better than the 90s Jazz. I brought them up more to illustrate the difference the media hype of making the 97-98 finals watched by 70 mil can bring. Stockton/Malone Jazz have a lot more hype and 'best team to never win the title' talk than the 80s Bucks despite the two teams having similar runs for their eras

I am not denying the late 90s Jazz are one of the better non title teams we've had in the last 30 years. What I denying is that they're one of the greatest teams of all time and the best team ever to not win the title. This is what's wrong. If the Jazz are one of the greatest teams of all time then so are the 90s Blazers, Suns, and Sonics and 80s Bucks and the 00s Suns and Mavs. MY argument is that NONE of these teams are 'one of the greatest teams of all time'. The 96 Bulls are one of the greatest of all time. The 86 Celtics are one of the greatest of all time. The 71 Bucks are one of the greatest of all time. The 90s Jazz, Suns, and Sonics are not in the conversation with those teams

[Dr Positivity]

The Jazz SRS and offensive/defensive numbers, regular season wins, and playoff performances are all in direct coorelation with each other leading to the conclusion that they like the Blazers/Barkley Suns/Sonics/Nash Suns/Dirk Mavs/80s Bucks are all in the same boat of great, contending teams who are not good enough to handle the really historically great ones like the Bulls, Lakers, Celtics.

If the Jazz had a weak SRS but dominated the playoffs and won 2-3 titles, or had a 10 SRS and lost in the playoffs to the Bulls, you could have an angle for them as one of the best teams of all time. But when everything coorelates, no... you don't have an angle. The only argument against is "Well I watched them as Utah fan and I am positive they were one of the best teams of all time" Give me a break

[Mayap]

I actually hated Utah at the time, and I freely admit that they were the best team(they and the bulls) I have ever witnessed. The only team you can compare to the level of play they exhibited in 97-98 is the 2001 playoff lakers(teams since that time, that is), so please don't bring in the Mavs or the Suns into the discussion, they are not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the Jazz.

Media hype had nothing to do with my opinion of the games, I was an avid watcher and the fact that 69.9999 million other people were watching with me didn't make me think anything more of a team I hated.

On another note, the 72 bucks lost because Wilt did a great job and outplayed KAJ, who was 10 years his junior and in his prime(had the highest Win Shares ever, at 25, that year, to show the significance of Jabbar on that team). A shame they don't post those games anywhere for us to watch, if they are available.