Greatest Team To Never win a Ring: '97 Jazz vs. '06 Mavericks

[pandrade83]

This is a voting based tournament to determine who was the GOAT team to not win a title. The original thread for this is

here

Each player will be considered to be as dominant against his opponents as he was the year that he played (ie. if you are just going to say the more modern team wins, don't bother to participate). And EACH MATCHUP WILL FEATURE THE RULES, REFEREES, AND EQUIPMENT OF THE OLDER TEAM. This doesn't mean that Steph Curry will be called for carrying each time he tries to dribble, just assume that his handle is proportionately as good relative to the era as it is relative to his own. So, in 65, if you think he has the best handle in today's league, you can assume he has the best handle of that era; if he's roughly average for starting PGs of today's league in terms of that one aspect, you can assume he is roughly average for starting PGs of that era. This hopefully will eliminate a bit of the recency bias. Health is as it was at the close of the Regular Season; perhaps a team didn't win because of injury.

One last thing. VOTES WITHOUT ANALYSIS (or with what in my personal subject opinion is stupid analysis) WONT BE COUNTED. (Lots of capital letters!) I will list results here. Each thread will be open until it slips to page 2 of the board.

'97 Utah (has HCA) 64-18; lost in Finals to Bulls in 6. Offense: +6.9, Defense -2.7
Ostertag
Malone
Russell
Hornacek
Stockton

Carr
Eisley
S. Anderson
C. Morris
G. Foster

'06 Dallas 60-22; lost in Finals to Heat in 6. Offense: +5.6, Defense -1.2

Diop
Nowitzki
J. Howard
J. Terry
D. Harris

A. Griffin
M. Daniels
J. Stackhouse
Dampier
Van Horn

[pandrade83]

I'll be taking the Jazz pretty comfortably here.

Nowitzki is fantastic, but he's going to have to work awfully hard to keep Dallas in this series.

Dallas doesn't have much playmaking which is going to make their offense a bit gummy against a disciplined Utah defense; they don't have a big wing scorer to take advantage of Utah on the perimeter and they actually have the smaller backcourt.

I don't think either team is well equipped to defend the other's dominant power forward but Malone is going to have more offensive help and is paired with better/more disciplined defensive talent.

[penbeast0]

Amazing, Ostertag has an offensive edge on someone! Dirk v. Mailman is something of a wash with Dirk having an offensive edge and Malone a defensive/rebounding edge. Josh Howard has a pretty strong edge over Byron Russell, but the guard play just isn't close. Stockton and Hornacek blow away Terry and Harris and while Dallas is a little deeper, Antoine Carr is better than anyone coming off Dallas's bench. It would certainly be interesting but if I'm a betting man, I'm taking Utah.

[Warspite]

The 1988 Mavs would sweep either team.

[OdomFan]

1997 and 1998 Jazz win comfortably.

[pandrade83]

The 1988 Mavs would sweep either team.

The min qualifications for this tournament were:

Srs of 5 or higher (or very close to it such that you can round to it)
Won a game past the 1st round
The 72 bulls were the one exception based on popular demand.

[Texas Chuck]

06 Mavs have the best player I believe in Dirk (no offense Mailman) but I'd have the Jazz being the better team. Best players tend to win series so I think Dallas has more of a shot than they seem to be getting here though the edge of Sloan over Johnson probably pushes me that direction as well.

[JordansBulls]

1997 Jazz beat Shaq/Kobe/Jones/Van Exel as well as peak Hakeem/Barkley/Drexler and had a chance against MJ/Pippen. Mavs lost to Wade/and old Shaq

[Magic Giannison]

Utah for me, the only one that could've stopped them was the best form Bulls.

Stockton and Malone are enough to make me pick them

[pandrade83]

This is a sweep for Utah. I'll put the next one up in a second.

[TheBomb81]

Jazz for me.

[bledredwine]

Jazz, easily.

When you have Stockton running the show and Malone as scorer with solid roll players, it beats Dirk + crew. The Jazz also played tenacious defense in the finals.

EDIT: Wow.. We are all agreeing on this one. That's rare, but nice.

[Hal14]

Jazz. The precision and discipline these guys played with was fun to watch. They swept a Lakers team that had Shaq, Kobe, Van Exel and Eddie Jones..then beat a very good Rockets team..which had just beaten the defending western conference champs Sonics.