Greatest Team To Never Win a Ring: '16 Thunder vs. '08 Jazz

[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 matchup will utilize the rules, refs, & equipment of the older team in this tournament. 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. Voting without any reason listed at all will not be counted. Each thread will be open until it slips to page 2 of the board.

'16 Thunder (have HCA), 55-27 +7.1 SRS, +6.7 offense, -0.8 Defense lost to Warriors in WCF in 7
Adams
Ibaka
Durant
Roberson
Westbrook

Waiters
Kanter
Foye

'08 Jazz 54-28, +6.9 SRS, +6.3 Offense, -1.0 Defense lost to Lakers in 2nd round in 6

Okur
Boozer
AK-47
R. Brewer
D. Williams

Korver
Milsap
Harpring

[pandrade83]

I won't cast the 1st vote in a departure - I'll wait til it gets close to the bottom to vote to hopefully drive more participation.

[Eskobar13]

Damn I loved this Jazz team.

This would be an awesome match-up with Brewer and AK trying to stop Westbrook/Durant. The inside battle would be big-time too, with 3 legit interior players on both teams.

Jazz have better depth but without going into this much deeper I'd say Thunder end up taking it in 6 or 7 on the backs of Westbrook and Durant.

[No-more-rings]

Maybe i'm underrating the Jazz, but i don't see this as that close. OKC beat a 67 win team, and took a 73 win team to 7. I saw the Jazz at the time as a good contending playoff team, but not a top tier threat to win the conference. They were always worse than the Spurs, Suns and often the Mavs too.

[giberish]

OKC really underachieved during the regular season. Perhaps this was due in part to their weak bench (especially for defense). For a playoff series they can ride their stars/starters higher minutes to limit their bench impact - making them as effective as a typical 60+ win team.

Conversely Utah had a high-quality bench, which helped their regular season marks but doesn't help as much for the playoffs. OKC ends up with a significant advantage among starters and Utah can't make it up in the limited bench minutes of a playoff series.

[pandrade83]

I too am going with OKC. Utah is a good team and they have more good players than OKC for sure, but OKC did better in the RS in a format that doesn't favor them than Utah. I'll take the Thunder in 5.

[The Explorer]

OKC. Always have to go with the stars that have more game changing ability.