It does ignore defense in favor of .. essentially calculating efficiency vs. possessions.
Defense affects the other team's efficiency, thus improving up the defending player/team's relative offensive efficiency.
Some notes:

- Jordan did not play in either 98-99 or 99-00.
- Rodman was CRITICAL to the second trifecta - replacing Horace Grant's production and then some.
- Bo Outlaw was a fairly effective player, but not as effective as that chart shows. One of a few gripes I do have with Berri (and especially his subordinate posters) is that they seem to have a lot of miscalculations. The same time period for the same player in a different source will frequently show different numbers. The same applies to Jayson Williams.
I did read the article that the image was from [http://mgoblog.com/content/sports-economists-always-wrong-about-everything], and he has some very valid points. I do think that Berri tries to overstretch what he's capable of saying fairly often (if the comments are to be remotely believed, so does Berri). However, at the end of the day - I think shooting efficiency and posession generation are going to result in most of a team's wins. The question is how those two factors are most positively affected.
Anyway, back to OT.
One thing our team doesn't have is either a dominant rebounder (3-4 decent ones, mind you, but no dominant one) or strong guard rebounding (AB / KM, anyone?). Further, our shooting efficiency is subpar (or at least was last year). So we're average in rebounding, steals, blocks, turnovers, subpar in efficiency, and the only guy who could make a difference on that is coming back from injury and limited to maybe 22mpg?
I have higher hopes for our team than that chart showed, but it certainly prompted me to step back and reality check.
Morey 2020.
Q:How are they experts when they're always wrong?
A:Ask a stock market analyst or your financial advisor