bastillon wrote:meanwhile, Duncan was leading the most talented supporting cast out of any teams. yes, they weren't very good offensively, but they were dependable. no, they weren't bad supporting cast, actually they were best teammates defensively any leader has ever had. young Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen in his prime, old David Robinson, young Stephen Jackson... I mean there aren't many teams even comparable to these guys defensively, much less better.
let's see other teams from 2003...
-
Sacramento was the consensus pick for the title. they lost to the Lakers in 7 games the year earlier and made some great moves in the offseason which would supposedly put them over the top. Chris Webber got injured in the playoffs and they lost. although it's worth noting they made it to game 7 vs healthy Mavs so even without Webber, they were still a great team.
-
Blazers were a very good team. they had great talent, but I think we all remember Sheed-era in Portland. they weren't as good as for example in 2000, but still, they could be dangerous threat to the Spurs... unless healthy Mavs wouldn't have beaten them first(in 7 games).
-
Dallas was the best team according to stats. throughout 2002-2003 campaign they posted efficiency differential(ORtg-DRtg) which was the best in the league. to see how great they performed in this metric, let's check out other contenders.
Code: Select all
ED
Mavs 8.4
Kings 6.8
Spurs 5.9
Nets 5.7
Pistons 4.2
Pacers 3.8
Blazers 2.9
Jazz 2.7
76ers 2.5
Lakers 2.5
Hornets 2.3
Wolves 2.3ED = efficiency differential
as one can see, Dallas led the league by a pretty decent margin and Spurs were 'only' 3rd. it's worth noting that ED in the east was inflated because of terrible teams back then. so if we focused on stats, they predicted Dallas to win a title that year... but Nowitzki, who is typically an iron man, got injured in western finals vs Spurs and after losing him, it wasn't the same.
one could argue that Dallas also had Nash, but their management didn't acknowledge how great player he was and Finley was the focus of their offense after Nowitzki went down. they made the same mistake in 2004 offseason when they decided not to re-sign him and playing bigger role, he went on to be almost three-time MVP and torched the Mavericks in 2005 playoffs with 30/12/6.
anyway, the point is that Nowitzki went down and Dallas decided that Finley will carry them. Spurs won 4-2. to make the situation easier for San Antonio, they beat two very good teams before Nowitzki injured himself - Portland and Kings, both capable of competing with Spurs.
-the
Lakers were quite a good team, too. ED underappreciated them, because Shaq was injured and out of shape for like half of the season and once they made it to the ASG, they were rolling. 26-9 after ASG showed it was a very good team...
Kobe injured his shoulder in 2003 first round against the Wolves and although he played a great series against Minnesota(having as bad defenders as Wally and Peeler on him helped), he couldn't flat out dominate the Spurs like he did previous years. Kobe averaged 32/5/3.7 that year but he shot only 43% and commited 4.5 TOs a game. Shaq played great with 25/14, too, but the Lakers had absolutely no help from other players. Rick Fox wasn't even playing, injured himself vs Wolves IIRC, George was playing through enormous pain and couldn't contribute to the team. with both Fox and George injured, there was nobody to play SF. Horry was playing terribly in that series. shot 26% from the field and didn't make one single three. Fisher was the only bright side for LA, as he had hot hand and shot 61.5% from 3s. the point is that Lakers had no depth whatsoever and with injuries bothering couple of players, they couldn't compete with the best teams.
actually they almost lost to Wolves in the first round. KG beat them almost by himself. Wolves were leading 2-1 in the series and KG publicly stated they'll win game 4. Wolves were leading in the 3rd qrt, but LA stormed back and won the game. but... Timberwolves were a pretty bad team to contend for a title and LA had trouble beating them.
-to give you an idea how bad were the
Wolves, check out their team. apart from KG there was Troy Hudson, Szczerbiak, Gill, Peeler, Rasho and some Joe Smiths and Gary Trents on the bench. so after injuries to key Lakers players, they were no longer able to contend for a title. they downgraded to 'KG with bunch of scrubs' type of team in terms of winning a title, really Wolves were close to Lakers that year... okay, maybe not that close, because LA won every time they had to, but still... it's a team where 2nd and 3rd best players were guys like Wally and Hudson. one is a solid bench player who could provide scoring with the 2nd unit(Wally) the other is just a scrub, bad PG, terrible defender, though pretty good as a shooter. they shouldn't be anywhere near starting on contender, much less playing significant roles there.
-you had also teams like Utah with 40-y-old leaders, Sacto beat them in 5, and Marbury's
Suns. Phoenix shouldn't be able to compete with the team who won a title that year, but Spurs had some trouble eliminating them. I mean they made it to game 6 despite pretty much noone who could play any kind of post defense. it really shows how "powerful" Spurs were - 6 game series with a team led by Marbury(who is a TERRIBLE playoff performer).
-in the east situation was even more pathetic, I'd say way more pathetic. you had a team like
Hornets who were considered as finals candidate. this team consisted of Baron Davis, Jamal Mashburn, PJ Brown, Jamaal Magloire, George Lynch and David Wesley(the guy who is known on YouTube as "the worst lay-up ever", check it out btw). couple of solid role players led by Baron and Mashburn. such a team would have a hard time making the playoffs today. they were considered as finals candidate. ended up losing in 6 to another 'finals candidate', 76ers.
-
Philly was a good team. having Iverson as the guy who is supposed to lead them somewhere didn't help, that's for sure, but they were still a good team. not 2001-good, because Mutombo was gone, so was their elite defense and title aspirations, but still. besides AI, they had 35-y-old Coleman, Van Horn and those role players from their 2001 squad - Snow, McKie, Hill. similar to Hornets, trouble making the playoffs today, very unlikely to win any round if getting there. ended up losing to injured Pistons with Chucky Atkins eliminating them in some crucial game IIRC.
-
Indiana was a great team... in that watered down, historically weak east. obviously they had Miller, JO, Artest and Tinsley, but in the playoffs noone was playing well outside of JO and Artest. Reggie shot 28%, Harrington 21%, Mercer 33%... Celtics upset them in the 2nd round.
-then you had the
Pistons. they were a surprise that year. everyone expected them to regress after the Stackhouse trade but with Billups, Hamilton and Ben Wallace, they were a pretty solid group of players. as you can see in the chart above, Pistons were 5th in the league in ED. what this chart doesn't show is that Billups was injured in most of the playoffs and he was one of two guys capable of scoring in high volumes for this team. Billups had a sprained ankle and although he was playing after missing only couple of games, he wasn't nearly as effective as they would've liked him to be.
so without Billups, Pistons had to use Chucky Atkins for long stretches and Hamilton was their only option offensively. when they lost to Nets, Rip was playing as well as ever with 22 PPG, 47% and defense all over him all game long. Pistons just didn't have anyone outside of him. without Billups, they weren't even playoff team. lost by sweep to NJN.
-finally, there were NJN.
Nets weren't a great team, but in this historically weak east, they could play pretty well. they beat Bucks 4-2 and then swept all of the rest in the east, but eventually were exposed with lack of half-court offense in the finals against the Spurs. Jason Kidd isn't the best offensive anchor you'd like to have. he's a non scorer and was forced to take a lot of shots and with his poor J, he also missed a lot of them(Iversonesque efficiency). Nets were in the finals ONLY because all other teams flat out sucked. Pistons were gone with Chauncey's ankle, Celtics were poor even when healthy, Indiana had terrible offense with Reggie and co. struggling and so on. most of these teams from 2003 east wouldn't make the playoffs today and most likely would've been a top lottery candidates. that east was so pathetic that Pistons made ECF with Atkins-Hamilton-Curry-C.Robinson(1.5 RPG in ECF as a PF)-Ben.
so, according to ED, Spurs main rivals were Dallas(injured Nowitzki), Kings(eliminated by healthy Mavs, injured Webber), Nets(40-45W team with normal competition, in the finals because of even worse teams on their way), Lakers(injured Kobe and George, Fox not playing, Horry off year, barely beat Wolves who were terrible outside of KG). some of these teams didn't stand in their way, some of them were injured by the time they played, some of them were just poor.they beat
Suns 4-2
Lakers 4-2
Dallas 4-2
Nets 4-2
the way they were playing in those playoffs, considering all circumstances(competition, injuries and such), I'd say Phoenix was 40W team, LA 50W, Dallas 45-50W, Nets 45W in terms of real value. that's what Spurs faced on route to their titles.
the general conclusion coming from this post is that 2003 was a year of injuries(affected a bit Kobe, but Webber, Nowitzki, Billups and some other players were done). competition was poor in general but east was just pathetic. you have to remember that when judging Duncan's title or Kidd's finals from that year. I don't think most of these teams I described, would stay competitive with the best teams of today's league, much less winning some series in the playoffs...
