How many finals should the Jazz have made from 88-99’?

[Hook_Em]

In hindsight, what would your over/under finals appearances be starting in 1988?

88-89’ - first rd loss to Golden State
89-90’ - first rd loss to Phoenix
90-91’ - second rd loss to Portland
91-92’ - conf finals loss to Portland
92-93’ - first rd loss to Seattle
93-94’ - conf finals loss to Houston
94-95’ - first rd loss to Houston
95-96’ - conf finals loss to Seattle
96-97’ - finals loss to Chicago
97-98’ - finals loss to Chicago
98-99’ - second rd loss to Portland

[DirtyDez]

2.5

[tsherkin]

1, if they'd called that bear hug on Malone.

[One_and_Done]

I'd say it's more that the number they did make tells us alot about how overrated Stockton has become. You make what you make.

[giberish]

1-3 with their actual rosters.

More if their team around Stockton and Malone was any good from 88-94.

[One_and_Done]

1-3 with their actual rosters.

More if their team around Stockton and Malone was any good from 88-94.

The team around Malone had plenty relative to the results he produced. Some people act like he was losing to the Bulls and Lakers every year. He lost in 1989 in a 1st round sweep to a 43 win team.

[tsherkin]

1-3 with their actual rosters.

More if their team around Stockton and Malone was any good from 88-94.

The team around Malone had plenty relative to the results he produced. Some people act like he was losing to the Bulls and Lakers every year. He lost in 1989 in a 1st round sweep to a 43 win team.

Right... but he averaged 31/16 on 57.4% TS, Stockton posted 27/14 on 60.1% TS, and they otherwise had Darrell Griffith and Thurl Bailey doing a lot of nothing, while they faced Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond.

It's not like Stockton and Malone flopped on that one. Mullin and Richmond combined for 71 points in game 1. Malone had 37/22 on 59.4% TS in Game 2 (Stockton shot 6/18). Stockton had 34/16 and 6 steals, posting 72.3% TS in Game 3. Malone had 33/14 with 4 offensive rebounds, posting 54.3% TS (he shot 50% from the field and was 7/10 at the line).

They didn't lose that series because their stars flopped, other than Stockton's game 2.

[falcolombardi]

If the late 90's were not kind of a joke they should have made zero, maybe 1 in 1996

[One_and_Done]

1-3 with their actual rosters.

More if their team around Stockton and Malone was any good from 88-94.

The team around Malone had plenty relative to the results he produced. Some people act like he was losing to the Bulls and Lakers every year. He lost in 1989 in a 1st round sweep to a 43 win team.

Right... but he averaged 31/16 on 57.4% TS, Stockton posted 27/14 on 60.1% TS, and they otherwise had Darrell Griffith and Thurl Bailey doing a lot of nothing, while they faced Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond.

It's not like Stockton and Malone flopped on that one. Mullin and Richmond combined for 71 points in game 1. Malone had 37/22 on 59.4% TS in Game 2 (Stockton shot 6/18). Stockton had 34/16 and 6 steals, posting 72.3% TS in Game 3. Malone had 33/14 with 4 offensive rebounds, posting 54.3% TS (he shot 50% from the field and was 7/10 at the line).

They didn't lose that series because their stars flopped, other than Stockton's game 2.

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless. World B.Free and Ricky Davis are good examples of 2 players who had superficially good stats, but who were negative impact players. I am not suggesting Stockton or Malone are negative impact players (particularly Malone is not), but I think handwaving an embarrassing 1st round sweep with “well, they had good stats” is insufficient. What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team? I certainly don’t think an argument of “well, they needed more help” would be persuasive, especially when they had the literal DPOY that year on their team. Bailey was an ok player, nothing special. Griffith wasn’t great either. But like… they lost to a 43 win team. In a sweep.

The NBA is a top heavy league, where star power is much more impactful than in other leagues. Was anyone looking to see how Shaq and Kobe’s 5th best player was in 2001? Like, it shouldn’t matter very much, because if Stockton is the star people think he is then that team should have had plenty to get past a 43 win team in round 1. The last game of the series wasn’t even close; they lost by 20. Nor did the Warriors have Tim Hardaway as you claim. They had Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond and alot of nothing (their next 3 highest minutes guys were journeymen Teagle, Higgins and W.Garland). Surely if Malone and Stockton are better than those 2, as most would say, then those 2 and the DPOY should have been more than enough to roll those guys. Nor was it a case where Mullin and Richmond were young guys who were “coming into their own” in the playoffs and were underrated. The next year they added Tim Hardaway and Sarunas and STILL only won 37 games.

The reality was that Malone was an MVP type guy, but Stockton was nowhere near that, which is why they didn’t perform like a team with two top 10 players.

[lessthanjake]

I think the Jazz had several years where they were good enough to put up a very good regular season, but not realistically good enough to make the Finals. Kind of like a team like the Knicks these days.

From 1988-1993, I just don’t really think they were ever good enough. In the sense that they got to a Game 6 in the WCF in 1992, I suppose it’s possible that they could’ve made it that year, but I think the Blazers were clearly the better team and the Jazz didn’t actually have much chance of winning the series.

After 1993 is when things get a bit more interesting.

The Western Conference was pretty open in 1994 (particularly since the Sonics were upset in the first round), so even though the Jazz weren’t actually better than they’d been in prior years, I think it was actually possible for them to make the Finals that year, though I wouldn’t say they *should* have made it, but rather just that it was a reasonable possibility that year.

1995 is when the Jazz actually started being the best team in the Western Conference. I think they were probably the best team in the conference in the four-year span from 1995-1998. That said, being the best team doesn’t mean you’ll always get through the conference, so perhaps making the Finals twice was about what we’d expect from those years. But it was definitely possible for them to do even better.

Once we get to 1999, I think we’re back to the chances being very low. While they lost to the Blazers—a team that was similarly good as them that they could’ve potentially beaten—I don’t really think they could’ve beaten the Spurs (even accounting for the fact that they always played David Robinson well).

So what we have is basically a four-year span where they were the best team in the Western Conference, one year where they weren’t actually a great team but the conference was a bit weak at the top end that year so they could’ve reasonably made it, and a bunch of years where they were a good team but not really a team we could reasonably think would make the Finals. I guess I’ll note that teams that we wouldn’t expect to make the Finals do occasionally do so, so the probability in 1988-1993 and in 1999 wasn’t actually zero. But it was low. I’m inclined to say that three Finals appearances overall wouldn’t have been particularly overachieving, but four Finals appearances probably would have. And I think two Finals appearances was okay, and not a notable underachievement. One Finals appearance probably would’ve been, though. So I guess my answer is 2-3 Finals appearances.

[lessthanjake]

The team around Malone had plenty relative to the results he produced. Some people act like he was losing to the Bulls and Lakers every year. He lost in 1989 in a 1st round sweep to a 43 win team.

Right... but he averaged 31/16 on 57.4% TS, Stockton posted 27/14 on 60.1% TS, and they otherwise had Darrell Griffith and Thurl Bailey doing a lot of nothing, while they faced Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond.

It's not like Stockton and Malone flopped on that one. Mullin and Richmond combined for 71 points in game 1. Malone had 37/22 on 59.4% TS in Game 2 (Stockton shot 6/18). Stockton had 34/16 and 6 steals, posting 72.3% TS in Game 3. Malone had 33/14 with 4 offensive rebounds, posting 54.3% TS (he shot 50% from the field and was 7/10 at the line).

They didn't lose that series because their stars flopped, other than Stockton's game 2.

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless. World B.Free and Ricky Davis are good examples of 2 players who had superficially good stats, but who were negative impact players. I am not suggesting Stockton or Malone are negative impact players (particularly Malone is not), but I think handwaving an embarrassing 1st round sweep with “well, they had good stats” is insufficient. What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team? I certainly don’t think an argument of “well, they needed more help” would be persuasive, especially when they had the literal DPOY that year on their team. Bailey was an ok player, nothing special. Griffith wasn’t great either. But like… they lost to a 43 win team. In a sweep.

The NBA is a top heavy league, where star power is much more impactful than in other leagues. Was anyone looking to see how Shaq and Kobe’s 5th best player was in 2001? Like, it shouldn’t matter very much, because if Stockton is the star people think he is then that team should have had plenty to get past a 43 win team in round 1. The last game of the series wasn’t even close; they lost by 20. Nor did the Warriors have Tim Hardaway as you claim. They had Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond and alot of nothing (their next 3 highest minutes guys were journeymen Teagle, Higgins and W.Garland). Surely if Malone and Stockton are better than those 2, as most would say, then those 2 and the DPOY should have been more than enough to roll those guys. Nor was it a case where Mullin and Richmond were young guys who were “coming into their own” in the playoffs and were underrated. The next year they added Tim Hardaway and Sarunas and STILL only won 37 games.

The reality was that Malone was an MVP type guy, but Stockton was nowhere near that, which is why they didn’t perform like a team with two top 10 players.

I think this is overly simplistic. I get your point that there’s more to what happens than what’s on the box score and if you lose to 43-win team then your stars probably weren’t playing incredibly. But when your two stars put up 31/16 on 57% TS% and 27/14 on 60% TS%, then putting the *primary* blame on those stars seem really silly. The rest of the team put up an abysmal 44% TS%, and the team’s rDRTG was +7.3 (with positive numbers being bad). Malone and Stockton are a part of that defensive performance, of course, but the Jazz had the DPOY winner, so the team wasn’t centered around Stockton or Malone defensively (which makes it make little sense to put outsized blame on them for the team’s defense).

Basically, what happened in that series is that the supporting cast shot completely terribly, and the league’s #1 defense got carved up. I think we can try to blame Malone and Stockton for that—perhaps they weren’t creating good enough looks for their teammates on offense and perhaps they were a significant part of the blame defensively. But when the supporting cast shoots awfully, it’s mostly the supporting cast’s fault. And when the defense collapses, it’s the team’s fault as a whole (and to the extent the blame lies on lack of impact from anyone in particular, it’d surely be the DPOY). Ultimately, if the supporting cast shoots terribly and the team has a complete defensive collapse, it actually is quite possible to lose three straight games to a mediocre team, even with the team’s stars actually playing pretty well.

[tsherkin]

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless.

Absent contextual support, that's about as empty a statement as one can make.

What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team?

People inappropriately hate on Lebron, so that's a bad example.

In that particular series, everyone besides Malone and Stockton shot 36.1% FG and 30.0% from 3.

You'd have to be REALLY reaching and trying to ignore how things played out to pin that one on the stars. Individuals can accomplish only so much, particularly when they were dealing with 33 ppg on 62.6% TS from Chris Mullin, 25.7 on 65.5% from Richmond and 14.3 ppg from Rod Higgins on 63.3% TS.

[theonlyclutch]

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless.

Absent contextual support, that's about as empty a statement as one can make.

What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team?

People inappropriately hate on Lebron, so that's a bad example.

In that particular series, everyone besides Malone and Stockton shot 36.1% FG and 30.0% from 3.

You'd have to be REALLY reaching and trying to ignore how things played out to pin that one on the stars. Individuals can accomplish only so much, particularly when they were dealing with 33 ppg on 62.6% TS from Chris Mullin, 25.7 on 65.5% from Richmond and 14.3 ppg from Rod Higgins on 63.3% TS.

I think it's fair to assign at least some blame on the defensive stalwart/supposedly GOAT-level playmaker for both the opposing perimeter stars going off and the inability to set up role players for easy shots against the formidable defense of *check notes* Run-TMC era Warriors, no?

[tsherkin]

I think it's fair to assign at least some blame on the defensive stalwart/supposedly GOAT-level playmaker for both the opposing perimeter stars going off and the inability to set up role players for easy shots against the formidable defense of *check notes* Run-TMC era Warriors, no?

I think we know that Stockton wasn't guarding either Mullin or Richmond, and that he wasn't threatening a DPOY on a perennial basis. Winston Garland wasn't tearing them up, so what else was he supposed to do?

And he can't make shots for his teammates, either. Darrell Griffith wasn't a good scorer. Thurl Bailey absolutely crapped himself, he shot like 12% worse than he did in the RS.

There's a limit to reasonable expectations, man.

[One_and_Done]

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless.

Absent contextual support, that's about as empty a statement as one can make.

What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team?

People inappropriately hate on Lebron, so that's a bad example.

In that particular series, everyone besides Malone and Stockton shot 36.1% FG and 30.0% from 3.

You'd have to be REALLY reaching and trying to ignore how things played out to pin that one on the stars. Individuals can accomplish only so much, particularly when they were dealing with 33 ppg on 62.6% TS from Chris Mullin, 25.7 on 65.5% from Richmond and 14.3 ppg from Rod Higgins on 63.3% TS.

If Prime Lebron/Wade or Shaq/Kobe got swept in round 1 to a 43 win team then the criticism would be very appropriate. Quoting stats that look good on paper rather misses the point. If Malone and Stockton had such a big impact, that should have been enough to win even if they started next to three G-Leaguers. Citing the 3pt% of a team in 1989 also strikes me as misleading.

There are people on here who think Stockton is a top 25 player all-time, and was a top 10 player when he played, and argue he's among the GOAT point guards. If so, this was an embarrassing loss.

[tsherkin]

If Prime Lebron/Wade or Shaq/Kobe got swept in round 1 to a 43 win team then the criticism would be very appropriate. Quoting stats that look good on paper rather misses the point.

No, I rather think it directly addresses a ridiculous narrative.

If Malone and Stockton had such a big impact, that should have been enough to win even if they started next to three G-Leaguers.

No, that's sinfully ridiculous and inaccurate.

Citing the 3pt% of a team in 1989 also strikes me as misleading.

Then focus on the 36.1% FG...

[One_and_Done]

If Prime Lebron/Wade or Shaq/Kobe got swept in round 1 to a 43 win team then the criticism would be very appropriate. Quoting stats that look good on paper rather misses the point.

No, I rather think it directly addresses a ridiculous narrative.

If Malone and Stockton had such a big impact, that should have been enough to win even if they started next to three G-Leaguers.

No, that's sinfully ridiculous and inaccurate.

Citing the 3pt% of a team in 1989 also strikes me as misleading.

Then focus on the 36.1% FG...

It just feels like you're reaching here. First you thought Tim Hardaway was on the Warriors, and now you're assigning significance to 3pt% in 1989. They had the DPOY on their team too. No matter how you look at it this was an embarrassing result.

[tsherkin]

It just feels like you're reaching here. First you thought Tim Hardaway was on the Warriors, and now you're assigning significance to 3pt% in 1989.

C'mon, man. I added it to be thorough, not because it was a major factor. Don't shift goalposts. Everyone but Malone and Stockton shot like crap. That's the takeaway.

It matters. A lot, and you'd have to be REALLY trying hard to bend reality to an inaccurate narrative to ignore that.

[lessthanjake]

If your high stats don’t translate to winning impact, then they’re meaningless.

Absent contextual support, that's about as empty a statement as one can make.

What would the reaction have been if prime Lebron and Wade had been swept in the 1st round by a 43 win team?

People inappropriately hate on Lebron, so that's a bad example.

In that particular series, everyone besides Malone and Stockton shot 36.1% FG and 30.0% from 3.

You'd have to be REALLY reaching and trying to ignore how things played out to pin that one on the stars. Individuals can accomplish only so much, particularly when they were dealing with 33 ppg on 62.6% TS from Chris Mullin, 25.7 on 65.5% from Richmond and 14.3 ppg from Rod Higgins on 63.3% TS.

If Prime Lebron/Wade or Shaq/Kobe got swept in round 1 to a 43 win team then the criticism would be very appropriate. Quoting stats that look good on paper rather misses the point. If Malone and Stockton had such a big impact, that should have been enough to win even if they started next to three G-Leaguers. Citing the 3pt% of a team in 1989 also strikes me as misleading.

There are people on here who think Stockton is a top 25 player all-time, and was a top 10 player when he played, and argue he's among the GOAT point guards. If so, this was an embarrassing loss.

I really don’t think we’d expect a team to win any playoff games if they had three G-leaguers on the court all the time.

I’m interested in you being specific here about what Stockton and/or Malone did badly. Explain why they are at fault for the supporting cast having a 44% TS%. And explain exactly why they are particularly to blame for the Jazz having a defensive collapse in which then end up having a +7 rDRTG after being the #1 defense in the league. I imagine if they both had played *incredible* defense, the team wouldn’t have had a +7 rDRTG, but neither of them were the Jazz’s most important defensive player, nor were they the ones whose primary assignments did the best on the Warriors. It really feels like you’re looking at a series result and wanting to come to a preordained conclusion about it, even if it requires handwaving away the available information (which is not at all consistent with your conclusion) and making really vague proclamations that aren’t really tied to anything. I think it’d make sense if you were to say that Malone and Stockton probably weren’t quite as good as their box score stats indicate, because the team lost 3-0 to a mediocre opponent. But to act like the series was primarily their fault—or really, primarily Stockton’s fault, since you have a preconceived narrative about Stockton that you’re wanting to use this series to argue for—is a real stretch, unless you’re able to actually come up with very specific analysis of the tape to demonstrate it. And you’re not making any attempt to do that. In fact, I highly doubt you’ve even watched this series at all.

[One_and_Done]

So there’s a few things to get into here.

The first and foremost is that the NBA is a star league. Stars can and have carried bad teams in the past. Of course, there are limits to that also, but if a team has two top 10 players who fit well together then the other 3 role players shouldn’t matter too much. Those role players will hold them back against the best teams sometimes, but they shouldn’t matter against a 43 win team in the 1st round. I struggle to see the historical precedent for a team with two top 10 players who fit well together getting swept in the 1st round by a team that is barely above 500. If this had happened to other superstars we’d rightly be questioning their actual impact. Shaq and Kobe’s 5th best player didn’t much matter, at least not to determine if they’d get out of the 1st round. So that’s the first point to consider.

The second point is that the Jazz support cast around those 2 stars wasn’t even bad. Mark Eaton was DPOY that very year. That’s 3 of the 6 guys the Jazz played covered. Ok, Thurl Bailey only shot 353 from the field, and Griffith only shot 408, but those guys weren’t taking a tonne of shots and only shot 5-12% better in the regular season. Bob Hansen didn’t shoot great either, but again he’s a small part of their offense. The Jazz were a lot bigger than the Warriors, and unsurprisingly outrebounded them by a large margin (38% more offensive rebounds). Those second chance points should have made up for off shooting nights quite a bit. Malone and Stockton were on the court for almost every minute of the series too. It feels weird to look at a team whose top 3 players are defensive specialists, and who were killing the other team on the boards, and say “well, the other team shot better so what could Malone and Stockton do?” Like, guard them better maybe? It also feels like if Stockton is ‘one of the GOAT point guards of all-time!!’ then he should be putting his team in a position to play better offense.

To me it seems like there are several possible explanations:

1) Stockton and/or Malone’s impact isn’t as big as it looks on paper

2) Mullin and Richmond are apparently much better than is commonly believed

3) The coaching for the Jazz failed them

I don’t think see many people claiming Sloan was a bad coach, so my inclination is to dismiss the idea that he just couldn’t cope with the small ball Warriors. Option 2 doesn’t seem too likely, because the Warriors won only 43 games this season and then followed that up with a 37 win season the next year despite upgrading their talent considerably. That leaves option 1. My long held view has been that while Stockton was an all-star then, he was not a superstar and would not be an all-star today, for reasons that I have elaborated on at length before. That seems to help explain series like these, where the Jazz losing is utterly inexplicable if both Stockton and Malone were legit MVP candidates. For mine, only Malone was. None of this is to say Stockton is bad, but I feel like his impact is very overrated by advanced stats and this series underscores that.