Greatest team to never win a ring: '97 Jazz vs. '95 Magic

pandrade83 · Post #1 » by **pandrade83** » Sun Jun 16, 2019 6:15 pm

Time to break up some of the "interesting" Kawhi discussions.

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.

'97 Jazz (HCA) 64-18, SRS 8.0, Offense +6.9, Defense -2.7, lost to Bulls in Finals in 6
Ostertag
Malone
Russell
Hornacek
Stockton

Carr
Eisley
Anderson

'95 Magic, 57-25, SRS +6.4, Offense +6.8, Defense -0.5, lost to Rockets in Finals in 4
Shaq
Grant
Royal
Anderson
Hardaway

Scott
Shaw
Bowie

Post #2 » by **penbeast0** » Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:06 pm

Tough to bet against Shaq and Horace Grant makes a nice man cover for Malone but I still have to go with Utah here. Neither Penny nor Anderson is going to be a good cover for Stockton and Hornacek is the best 3rd option the Jazz ever had. Plus the Jazz play better team defense. I do like Dennis Scott off the Orlando bench though, gives good size and better spacing from the 3, should be starting.

pandrade83 · Post #3 » by **pandrade83** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 1:42 am

penbeast0 wrote:Tough to bet against Shaq and Horace Grant makes a nice man cover for Malone but I still have to go with Utah here. Neither Penny nor Anderson is going to be a good cover for Stockton and Hornacek is the best 3rd option the Jazz ever had. Plus the Jazz play better team defense. I do like Dennis Scott off the Orlando bench though, gives good size and better spacing from the 3, should be starting.

I donno if it's THAT tough to bet against Shaq - Malone & Stockton beat a Shaq led team with a solid supporting cast B2B Years in '97 & '98 pretty easily.

The '98 team had a more impressive RS than this Orlando team. I kinda like Utah here for a lot of the reasons you said in a competitive series.

As a heads up, I'm going with the players who started the most games as my starting lineups to be objective using the BBRef data (even though it felt like Scott was the starter; he seemed to play more key minutes).

Post #4 » by **penbeast0** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 6:11 am

Royal was the starter all year but they changed to Scott for the playoffs, I was using playoff starters (like playoff health) but so long as you are consistent, that's cool.

Lou Fan · Post #5 » by **Lou Fan** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:25 pm

Maybe its just because the 95 Magic are my go to team in 2K but I've always felt this team were better than given credit for. I love the fit of their players next to Shaq and Penny especially in this series with Grant having a good chance at limiting Malone. I have a hard time seeing the Jazz slowing them down offensively and think the Magic could run them out of the gym with monster scoring performances.
Magic in 6

LKN · Post #6 » by **LKN** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:27 pm

Edit : NVM - year mix up!

Bergmaniac · Post #7 » by **Bergmaniac** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:49 pm

LKN wrote:Grant got hurt in game 1 against the Bulls and IIRC played a bit in game 2 and then was out the rest of the series.

Bulls blew them out horribly in game 1 even with Grant FWIW.

That was in 1996.

The 1996 Magic team was probably better than the 1995 team, they won 60 regular season games even though Shaq missed 28 games, but they faced a much stronger Bulls than in 1995 and were also quite unlucky with injuries in that series.

LKN · Post #8 » by **LKN** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:56 pm

Bergmaniac wrote:
LKN wrote:Grant got hurt in game 1 against the Bulls and IIRC played a bit in game 2 and then was out the rest of the series.

Bulls blew them out horribly in game 1 even with Grant FWIW.

That was in 1996.

The 1996 team was probably better than the 1995 team, they won 60 regular season games even though Shaq missed 28 games, but they faced a much stronger Bulls than in 1995 and were also quite unlucky with injuries in that series.

Yes - thank you!!!!!!! Totally got mixed up there. DUH

freethedevil · Post #9 » by **freethedevil** » Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:10 pm

I think it's got to be, at least in modern history, the 2018 rockets. The rockets played at a 70 win pace when healthy and took the warrirors a season removed from the goat playoff run(back when their defence was still #1 in the playoffs) to the brink in a game 7 despite missing chris paul for two games, and missing d'moute, their 5th best player(who filled a similar role to gsw's iggy), for the entirety of the series.

pandrade83 · Post #10 » by **pandrade83** » Wed Jun 19, 2019 3:25 am

twolves97 wrote:Maybe its just because the 95 Magic are my go to team in 2K but I've always felt this team were better than given credit for. I love the fit of their players next to Shaq and Penny especially in this series with Grant having a good chance at limiting Malone. I have a hard time seeing the Jazz slowing them down offensively and think the Magic could run them out of the gym with monster scoring performances.
Magic in 6

This team was a lot of fun to watch for sure.

pandrade83 · Post #11 » by **pandrade83** » Thu Jun 20, 2019 11:37 am

freethedevil wrote:I think it's got to be, at least in modern history, the 2018 rockets. The rockets played at a 70 win pace when healthy and took the warrirors a season removed from the goat playoff run(back when their defence was still #1 in the playoffs) to the brink in a game 7 despite missing chris paul for two games, and missing d'moute, their 5th best player(who filled a similar role to gsw's iggy), for the entirety of the series.

Houston is part of the tournament, per the link to the original idea.

pandrade83 · Post #12 » by **pandrade83** » Thu Jun 20, 2019 11:38 am

Bergmaniac wrote:
LKN wrote:Grant got hurt in game 1 against the Bulls and IIRC played a bit in game 2 and then was out the rest of the series.

Bulls blew them out horribly in game 1 even with Grant FWIW.

That was in 1996.

The 1996 Magic team was probably better than the 1995 team, they won 60 regular season games even though Shaq missed 28 games, but they faced a much stronger Bulls than in 1995 and were also quite unlucky with injuries in that series.

If there's multiple versions of a team that qualified, to be objective, I always went with the version that had the higher SRS.

freethedevil · Post #13 » by **freethedevil** » Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:39 pm

pandrade83 wrote:
freethedevil wrote:I think it's got to be, at least in modern history, the 2018 rockets. The rockets played at a 70 win pace when healthy and took the warrirors a season removed from the goat playoff run(back when their defence was still #1 in the playoffs) to the brink in a game 7 despite missing chris paul for two games, and missing d'moute, their 5th best player(who filled a similar role to gsw's iggy), for the entirety of the series.

Houston is part of the tournament, per the link to the original idea.

oh, my bad.

freethedevil · Post #14 » by **freethedevil** » Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:41 pm

didn't the jazz go neck and neck with what was that era's warriors?

shouldn't it be utah?

pandrade83 · Post #15 » by **pandrade83** » Thu Jun 20, 2019 11:56 pm

freethedevil wrote:didn't the jazz go neck and neck with what was that era's warriors?

shouldn't it be utah?

They very well could win. I think this squad has a credible chance; it looks like they’ll be moving on to round 3