Project Proposal: Greatest Team To Never Win a Ring

[No-more-rings]

The only answer for this has got to be the 2016 Warriors. How a team can win 73 games and not get the title is mind boggling.

The 2013 Spurs get overlooked in discussions like this though, they ran through a very good west and we all know should've beat the Heat. The Lakers were junk, but they beat a young Warriors that were hot off a underdog series win and then dismantled and swept a 56 win Grizzlies team that had Gasol in his dpoy. And i recall Parker being quite banged up in the playoffs so i'm not even sure they were playing to their full potential.

[pandrade83]

The only answer for this has got to be the 2016 Warriors. How a team can win 73 games and not get the title is mind boggling.

The 2013 Spurs get overlooked in discussions like this though, they ran through a very good west and we all know should've beat the Heat. The Lakers were junk, but they beat a young Warriors that were hot off a underdog series win and then dismantled and swept a 56 win Grizzlies team that had Gasol in his dpoy. And i recall Parker being quite banged up in the playoffs so i'm not even sure they were playing to their full potential.

Thanks for the comment. Per the OP, neither squad was eligible; I'm looking for greatest teams who NEVER won a ring with the core.

[pandrade83]

I'm temporarily postponing this until the GOAT Team project is finished due to really low turnout on Blazers/Cavs.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Best regular season team to not win a title is the 2016 Warriors. I think that tby the end of the regular season the Warriors had burnt out and were no longer playing at the level they had played all year round and then they had injuries and Curry never fully recovered in the playoffs. So the Warriors might not have been the best team to never win if we are talking about the Warriors playoff team.

But what is the competition? The 1986 Bucks? 2016 Warriors is my home team. 1986 Celtics is also my home team. I don't think the 1986 Bucks can beat the 2016 playoff version of the Warriors and they definitely can't beat the regular season version of the 2016 Warriors. But the eras are different. The 1986 NBA still did not fully appreciate the 3 even though they were starting to use the 3. A team without 3 point shooting is giving up the floor spacing.

Maybe forget about different eras and just honk about how good a team was for it's era. Cross era refereeing you could imagine swapping of the refs and rules each quarter. 2016 Warriors have to play with illegal defense rules and tighter traveling calls 2 quarters and 1986 Bucks have to play with looser traveling and a zone for 2 quarters.

When I think "best team to not win the championship" I tend to think multi year like the 1980s Bucks and the 20teens Rockets. The 2019 and 2018 Rockets can also beat the 1986 Bucks. Even adjusting for eras I think these current era Rockets give the 1980s Bucks a a challenge for best team to not win a championship. The Rockets may not have played as hard in the regular season as the Bucks relative to their era. I actually think the NBA plays harder in the regular season now but since the whole league is doing that the 2019 Rockets may play harder in the regular season than the 1986 Bucks did and yet the 2019 Rockets sill got outworked by their opponents more than the 1986 Bucks did. The 1980s Bucks did not get outworked by their opponents but 1980s style was to coast a lot in the first 3 quarters of a regular season game.

Yes, I am already counting the 2019 Rockets as losing to the Warriors. I am almost counting the the 2020 Rockets as being great but losing to the 2020 Warriors. Maybe I should wait to see where Duran winds up and whether Chris Paul can stay healthy. Sill I expect this eras Rockets to be competition for the 1980s Bucks in terms of being very very good for an era without winning a championship.

For the Cavs I would count LeBron's firs time there as being a different era than his last time there.

Another way you could do this would be best year withou a championship and the year before and after. So this would remove the 2016 Warriors because they won championships. It would remove any team that was great for only one year. It would be a sort of compromise between great for an era and great for a year. It would remove the 2018 Rockets until we no the results of 2019. As soon as the 2019 Rockets lose to the Warriors the 2018 Rockets would become the greatest team to not win a championship by the greates year plus the year before and after method.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

The only answer for this has got to be the 2016 Warriors. How a team can win 73 games and not get the title is mind boggling.

LeBron fans would like to give LeBron the credit. That isn't the correct answer. The Thunder played better than the Cavs did. The regular season Warriors played better than the playoff Warriors did. The regular season Warriors set more screens and ran without the ball more than the playoff Warriors did. You could say playoff refereeing allowed teams to bump and hold players running without the ball and that is true but the Warriors propblem was bigger than that.

The Warriors had their record winning streak to start the season. Every opposing team got up to play the Warriors and that turned every regular season game into a playoff game. This was good and bad for the Warriors. The Warriors were playing playoff basketball night after night so they understood how to play playoff basket ball better than their opponents but it was not sustainable.

By he end of the season the Warriors were few games away from going 41-0 at home which was quite a record to achieve and surely something a team could get up for; but the Warriors went flat and allowed the Celtics to come into Oakland and beat them. For a few games before the Celtics game there were signs that the Warriors had lost their will to win. They were also close to the regular season record when the lost to the Celtics. Overtime vs the Jazz before the Celtics and a loss at home to the TWolves 2 games after the Celtics. All year long the Warriors will to win had been at a record high level and just before the playoffs they lose their will to win. Bad timing.

The Warriors rose to the challenge of playing without injured Curry. The Warriors rose to the challenge of digging themselves out of a hole vs the Thunder. The Thunder played great but the Warriors would have been in that hole if they had not lost their edge earlier and if Curry had been fully healthy.

The Warriors an out of gas vs the Cavs. LeBron and the Cavs were great. Guys like Shumpert and TT don't get enough credit for what they do on defense in the playoffs. Sill the Cavs never really played the 73 win Warriors except for those regular season games.