Biggest underachiever of the 1990s

[SeattleJazzFan]

early and mid-90s jazz were definitely underachievers. the late 90s teams that went to the finals had two geezers, hornacek and a bunch of mediocre role players - if anything they may have overachieved. shouldn't have taken stockton and malone that long to reach the finals. overrated HC and **** GMing cost them more opportunities.

[Pick And Roll]

I see the early 90s Blazers finally got a vote

I'll say this for that particular nucleus of players; the 1990 Finals loss is more forgivable due to the fact that they basically overachieved and Detroit was more battle tested.

But there is definitely no excuse for dropping the ball against LA in '91 when they (not Chicago) had the league's best record. And I don't give them a pass for '92 either; Chicago (even by Jordan's admission) was not more talented than they were.

[Owly]

I see the early 90s Blazers finally got a vote

I'll say this for that particular nucleus of players; the 1990 Finals loss is more forgivable due to the fact that they basically overachieved and Detroit was more battle tested.

But there is definitely no excuse for dropping the ball against LA in '91 when they (not Chicago) had the league's best record. And I don't give them a pass for '92 either; Chicago (even by Jordan's admission) was not more talented than they were.

In a vacuum, for me though, Pistons (i.e. large sample, RS) are on paper the worst opponent (though teams don't always play that exact level in the playoffs,e.g. in this instance do you say Isiah's 3pt shooting was bad D, bad luck or clutch Isiah improving his 3 for the finals - latter two would reflect an effective change in short term opponent level). It is probably the weakest Blazer team too though.

'91 Lakers might be better than their SRS in the playoffs with the capacity to tighten their rotation to tilt towards their first 5 or 6 (Green's minute's surprisingly down but in general those 6 soak up more minutes) who are all solid or better. They benefited at the margin from unexpected lower load in going through the 7 seed Warriors in the second round.

'92 is a 7 SRS team losing to a 10 SRS team (rounding actually making this look a bit closer). I'm sure "even" Jordan would be happy to say it wasn't (natural) talent that got the win but effort and wanting it more and willing the win into existence.

Also as seemingly alluded to in the Pistons remark it seems unfair to only focus on the eventual loss rather than full performance (in playoffs if that's how one is interpreting the question).

This isn't to say they couldn't have won those series. First glance I'd probably favor them a little in the first two.

In terms of specific players several Blazers (not the absolute top guys) rank pretty high as playoff numerical droppers. Robinson, Duckworth and Petrovic (all now sadly deceased) were all bad in this regard from memory (whilst iirc Porter went in the other direction). This would seem to support an underachiever angle, but if the claim is not limited in scope it would require a more thorough, comprehensive analysis.

Oh and other random trivia: the '90 Blazers might have got to 2-2 if Danny Young's heave had been got off slightly earlier in G4. Well that's a touch optimistic, if it was got off earlier but still went in. And if that did change but Henderson didn't change to just dribble out the clock for Detroit. And the 3 would only have sent the game to overtime.

[HeartBreakKid]

Those Utah teams were low in talent. Stockton was great but didn't help with scoring at under 15pts in the three years 96-98 and averaged less in the PO. Hornacek was not much better either. Malone carried the scoring load more than Jordan did and was the easy focal point for defenses. Being defended by Rodman is about as difficult as it gets and he performed near his usual in 98. Jordan is the best in the playoffs, being outplayed by him is nothing unusual.

That doesn't sound low in talent.

I don't get why people never take into account teams opposition within the same season when talking about talent. How many teams in the NBA had a third player as good as Jeff Hornacek in 1998?

You're talking like they had to beat the Showtime Lakers to get to the NBA finals.

Lakers were stacked, Shaq, Jones, Kobe, Van Exel, Horry, Campbell, Fox, got swept by Utah.
Rockets had Olajuwon, Barkley, Drexler with good role players, got beaten by Utah.
Portland was loaded, Seattle was loaded, Spurs had twin towers, Chicago was more talented.

Utah was literally the least talented of all the playoff teams those years and most years.

Pretty much none of those teams you mentioned were in their primes. They were all old just like Utah or had players just starting their careers (Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan??)

[Dr Positivity]

Not sure if I'd call these underachievers. They all made finals and lost to Jordan. I'd call Sonics sand Jazz likely to be regular season overperformers as much as playoff underperformers. Suns got worse Barkley after 93, and Blazers had Drexler injured in 93 and 94 it seems.

Of the group I'd pick the Jazz because 98 was a pretty winnable finals and they had other bad losses earlier in the 90s. But again I think the Jazz biggest strengths of playing hard and professionalism was a bigger advantage in the regular season than playoffs.

[tsherkin]

I dunno if I wanna rip too hard on the late 90s Jazz. They didn't have sufficient secondary scoring around Malone. He played just fine in 98, but Stockton and Hornacek just weren't all that as scoring threats, particularly against Chicago's defense. Had they faced basically anyone else in the Finals, they might have won despite that. Seattle was far more disappointing to me.

[tsherkin]

Not sure if I'd call these underachievers. They all made finals and lost to Jordan. I'd call Sonics sand Jazz likely to be regular season overperformers as much as playoff underperformers. Suns got worse Barkley after 93, and Blazers had Drexler injured in 93 and 94 it seems.

Hmm, that's probably a better to say what I was trying to say.

[ronnymac2]

How is this not Seattle? They were a first seed that lost to an eighth seed. Then the next season, they were arguably the best team in the league during the REG SEA (+7 SRS, #1) and lost again in the first round to as average a ballclub as you can get in the 1995 Lakers (-0.01 SRS, #15).

Nobody cares if you overachieved in the REG SEA...at least take care of business in the first round against middling opponents.

[Owly]

How is this not Seattle? They were a first seed that lost to an eighth seed. Then the next season, they were arguably the best team in the league during the REG SEA (+7 SRS, #1) and lost again in the first round to as average a ballclub as you can get in the 1995 Lakers (-0.01 SRS, #15).

Nobody cares if you overachieved in the REG SEA...at least take care of business in the first round against middling opponents.

Not saying it isn't them but reasons it might not be is

1) Per my earlier post it very much depends how one understands the questions. RS versus playoffs is just one possible way.
2) Seattle beat notionally superior opponents in '92 (circa 2 SRS deficit to Warriors), managed a conference finals in '93 and were barely outscored and defeated by a team with a very marginally inferior SRS but a better record and thus HCA) then again met high expectations with a finals appearance in '96.
3) The Sonics might reasonably expected to be a lesser playoff team. Having a 9th man in minutes as good as Ricky Pierce is less valuable when rotations tighten. Conversely they don't get the benefits of more superstar minutes because they didn't have a superstar in that 94-95 window.
4) Seattle are said to have been 21st of 27 in salaries in '94 (https://www.eskimo.com/~pbender/misc/salaries94.txt) though up to 8th the following year. In that light the '94 team could be said to have been overachievers. They were over the over/under on Reference for both seasons too.
5) If you think outscoring opponents and losing is more bad luck than bad play the Sonics might be thought more unfortunate than underachieving (though this is not binary).

If, per 1, you understand it as RS minus playoffs (bigger is more underachieving) on a two year window then otoh, this is clearly the Sonics, but also per 1, underachiever is loose, vague, woolly enough that it can be understood many different ways.

[f4p]

Somewhat easily the Sonics imo. The Jazz mowed through the western conf twice and really weren't that talented. To me the Sonics were the more talented team. The Jazz were just supremely disciplined.

not that stockton and malone aren't already thought of as playoff underperformers, but i wonder how history looks at them if barkley doesn't get hurt in game 4 in 1998 and the jazz lose to an 8th seeded rockets team in the 1st round instead of getting to be the "The Last Dance" opponent. they mowed through the next rounds but seemed absolutely lost as to what to do with us through about 3.5 games, scoring something like 11 points in the 1st quarter of game 4 while no one could guard barkley. then barkley tore his triceps and drexler couldn't pick up the slack and we couldn't score for the next 6 quarters and that was that. would have been a massive choke job for the jazz and knocked stockton/malone down a few more spots on all-time lists.

[f4p]

How is this not Seattle? They were a first seed that lost to an eighth seed. Then the next season, they were arguably the best team in the league during the REG SEA (+7 SRS, #1) and lost again in the first round to as average a ballclub as you can get in the 1995 Lakers (-0.01 SRS, #15).

Nobody cares if you overachieved in the REG SEA...at least take care of business in the first round against middling opponents.

Not saying it isn't them but reasons it might not be is

1) Per my earlier post it very much depends how one understands the questions. RS versus playoffs is just one possible way.
2) Seattle beat notionally superior opponents in '92 (circa 2 SRS deficit to Warriors), managed a conference finals in '93 and were barely outscored and defeated by a team with a very marginally inferior SRS but a better record and thus HCA) then again met high expectations with a finals appearance in '96.
3) The Sonics might reasonably expected to be a lesser playoff team. Having a 9th man in minutes as good as Ricky Pierce is less valuable when rotations tighten. Conversely they don't get the benefits of more superstar minutes because they didn't have a superstar in that 94-95 window.
4) Seattle are said to have been 21st of 27 in salaries in '94 (https://www.eskimo.com/~pbender/misc/salaries94.txt) though up to 8th the following year. In that light the '94 team could be said to have been overachievers. They were over the over/under on Reference for both seasons too.
5) If you think outscoring opponents and losing is more bad luck than bad play the Sonics might be thought more unfortunate than underachieving (though this is not binary).

If, per 1, you understand it as RS minus playoffs (bigger is more underachieving) on a two year window then otoh, this is clearly the Sonics, but also per 1, underachiever is loose, vague, woolly enough that it can be understood many different ways.

i was going to make some of these points as well, even though i also picked the sonics. nba history is cruel when you are deep and superstar-less. i was just thinking about the lakers/blazers game 7 the other day and how it's almost like fate just decided portland had to miss 13 shots in a row and let brian shaw hit 4 3's in about 10 minutes to let a reeling lakers team somehow avoid the 3-1 collapse. stockton and malone, if stockton is as good as many here claim, should be a much surer thing based on historical trends. being deep is a great way to eventually get upset.

on the other hand, they didn't get "upset" by jordan. they blew a 2-0 lead to an 8th seed. according to this, they are the biggest favorite to ever lose a series:

https://www.sportsoddshistory.com/nba-playoffs-series/?y=all&o=s

[ronnymac2]

How is this not Seattle? They were a first seed that lost to an eighth seed. Then the next season, they were arguably the best team in the league during the REG SEA (+7 SRS, #1) and lost again in the first round to as average a ballclub as you can get in the 1995 Lakers (-0.01 SRS, #15).

Nobody cares if you overachieved in the REG SEA...at least take care of business in the first round against middling opponents.

Not saying it isn't them but reasons it might not be is

1) Per my earlier post it very much depends how one understands the questions. RS versus playoffs is just one possible way.
2) Seattle beat notionally superior opponents in '92 (circa 2 SRS deficit to Warriors), managed a conference finals in '93 and were barely outscored and defeated by a team with a very marginally inferior SRS but a better record and thus HCA) then again met high expectations with a finals appearance in '96.
3) The Sonics might reasonably expected to be a lesser playoff team. Having a 9th man in minutes as good as Ricky Pierce is less valuable when rotations tighten. Conversely they don't get the benefits of more superstar minutes because they didn't have a superstar in that 94-95 window.
4) Seattle are said to have been 21st of 27 in salaries in '94 (https://www.eskimo.com/~pbender/misc/salaries94.txt) though up to 8th the following year. In that light the '94 team could be said to have been overachievers. They were over the over/under on Reference for both seasons too.
5) If you think outscoring opponents and losing is more bad luck than bad play the Sonics might be thought more unfortunate than underachieving (though this is not binary).

If, per 1, you understand it as RS minus playoffs (bigger is more underachieving) on a two year window then otoh, this is clearly the Sonics, but also per 1, underachiever is loose, vague, woolly enough that it can be understood many different ways.

1. I would define it as how well you did in the regular season (season record, seed, SRS) vs. who you end up losing to (opponent's season record, seed, SRS). I wouldn't be against bringing betting odds before playoff series into the equation like an above poster did.

2. Seattle performed well in the surrounding years.

3. I agree, and I think you've identified a major issue of that Sonics team. Broad strokes statement, but depth doesn't matter as much in the playoffs. Also, that version of Payton wasn't as dynamic offensively as he'd later become, and Kemp was a poor offensive player throughout (low bball IQ on offense).

4. I appreciate looking at the salary situation, particularly relative to the league. It's what a real gm would actually need to do. In that case, following '94, I would for sure be disappointed, but I would be encouraged by the REG SEA results that I moneyballed into existence and would be hoping that some of my young top players would continue improving, especially offensively. I don't know the salary situation of the other contenders in this thread, but those REG SEA results for being in the lower third in salaries makes the answer more interesting if we put weight into salaries, which is reasonable.

5. Once is unlucky. Twice in two consecutive years - I'd lean more toward underachieving. But I get your point about how if we replayed these series over and over in a simulation, the team that outscored its opponent (in '94 and '95, Seattle did) should still likely be the favorite to win out (considering the other data we have - SRS, seed, record, HCA, etc.). At least I think that is what you were getting at.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Suns had injuries that stopped them from reaching their potential.

The other 3 teams reached their potential. They just were not as good as the Bulls. No disgrace.