RealGM

This is a voting based tournament to determine who was the GOAT team to not win a title. The original thread for this is

here

Each matchup will utilize the rules, refs, & equipment of the older team in this tournament. This hopefully will eliminate a bit of the recency bias. Health is as it was at the close of the Regular Season; perhaps a team didn't win because of injury.

One last thing. Voting without any reason listed at all will not be counted. Each thread will be open until it slips to page 2 of the board.

'16 Thunder (have HCA), 55-27 +7.1 SRS, +6.7 offense, -0.8 Defense lost to Warriors in WCF in 7
Adams
Ibaka
Durant
Roberson
Westbrook

Waiters
Kanter
Foye

'08 Jazz 54-28, +6.9 SRS, +6.3 Offense, -1.0 Defense lost to Lakers in 2nd round in 6

Okur
Boozer
AK-47
R. Brewer
D. Williams

Korver
Milsap
Harpring

I won't cast the 1st vote in a departure - I'll wait til it gets close to the bottom to vote to hopefully drive more participation.

Damn I loved this Jazz team.

This would be an awesome match-up with Brewer and AK trying to stop Westbrook/Durant. The inside battle would be big-time too, with 3 legit interior players on both teams.

Jazz have better depth but without going into this much deeper I'd say Thunder end up taking it in 6 or 7 on the backs of Westbrook and Durant.

Maybe i'm underrating the Jazz, but i don't see this as that close. OKC beat a 67 win team, and took a 73 win team to 7. I saw the Jazz at the time as a good contending playoff team, but not a top tier threat to win the conference. They were always worse than the Spurs, Suns and often the Mavs too.

OKC really underachieved during the regular season. Perhaps this was due in part to their weak bench (especially for defense). For a playoff series they can ride their stars/starters higher minutes to limit their bench impact - making them as effective as a typical 60+ win team.

Conversely Utah had a high-quality bench, which helped their regular season marks but doesn't help as much for the playoffs. OKC ends up with a significant advantage among starters and Utah can't make it up in the limited bench minutes of a playoff series.

I too am going with OKC. Utah is a good team and they have more good players than OKC for sure, but OKC did better in the RS in a format that doesn't favor them than Utah. I'll take the Thunder in 5.

OKC. Always have to go with the stars that have more game changing ability.