RealGM Greatest Franchises Rankings - #10

[giordunk]

1. Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers
2. Boston Celtics
3. Dallas Chaparrals, San Antonio Spurs
4. Chicago Bulls
5. Syracuse Nationals/Philadelphia 76ers
6. Philly/SF/Golden State Warriors
7. Miami Heat
8. Fort Wayne/Detroit Pistons
9. Houston Rockets

[giordunk]

Relevant data brought up in the previous thread

Knicks; 73 completed seasons, .485 win rate, 42 playoffs appearances (.575), .500 win rate in playoffs (186-186), 8.9 games per playoff, 8 NBA Finals, 2 NBA Championships
Thunder; 52 completed seasons, .541 win rate, 31 playoffs appearances (.596), .497 win rate in playoffs (161-163), 10.5 games per playoff, 4 NBA Finals, 1 NBA Championship
Bucks; 51 completed seasons, .516 win rate, 31 playoffs appearances (.608), .473 win rate in playoffs (121-135), 8.3 games per playoff, 2 NBA Finals, 1 NBA Championship
Blazers; 49 completed seasons, .537 win rate, 35 playoffs appearances (.714), .441 win rate in playoffs (116-147), 7.5 games per playoff, 3 NBA Finals, 1 NBA Championship
Pacers; 52 completed seasons, .515 win rate, 35 playoffs appearances (.673), .485 win rate in NBA playoffs (115-122), .533 win rate in ABA playoffs (57-50), .500 win rate in playoffs combined (172-172), 9.8 games per playoff, 1 NBA Finals, 0 NBA Championship, 5 ABA Finals, 3 ABA Championships

rs Win%
Sonics/Thunder - .542
Jazz - .539
Trailblazers - .538
Suns - .529
Pacers - .514 (.502 in NBA, .574 in ABA)
Hawks - .495
Knicks - .486

Playoff Appearances
Hawks - 46
Knicks - 42
Trailblazers - 35
Pacers - 35 (26 NBA, 9 ABA)
Sonics/Thunder - 31
Suns - 29
Jazz - 28

% of Seasons in the Playoffs
Trailblazers - .714
Pacers - . 673 (.605 NBA, 1.000 ABA)
Hawks - .657
Jazz - .622
Sonics/Thunder - .596
Knicks - .575
Suns - .569

Conf/Div Finals Appearances
Knicks - 16
Pacers - 15 (8 NBA, 7 ABA)
Hawks - 13
Sonics/Thunder - 10
Suns - 9
Trailblazers - 7
Jazz - 6

% of Seasons in Conf/Div Finals
Pacers - .288 (.186 NBA, .778 ABA)
Knicks - .219
Sonics/Thunder - .192
Hawks - .186
Suns - .176
Trailblazers - .143
Jazz - .133

Titles
Pacers - *3 (*all in ABA)
Knicks - 2
Hawks - 1
Trailblazers - 1
Sonics/Thunder - 1
Suns - 0
Jazz - 0

Finals Appearances
Knicks - 8
Pacers - *6 (*1 in NBA, 5 in ABA)
Sonics/Thunder - 4
Hawks - 4
Trailblazers - 3
Suns - 2
Jazz - 2

% of Seasons in the Finals
Pacers - *.115 (*.024 in NBA, .556 in ABA)
Knicks - .110
Sonics/Thunder - .077
Trailblazers - .061
Hawks - .057
Jazz - .044
Suns - .039

I also care a lot about players so...

Pacers All-Time Top 12 (49 All-Star Selections)
1. Reggie Miller
2. Roger Brown
3. Dale Davis
4. Rik Smits
5. Mel Daniels
6. Billy Knight
7. Vern Fleming
8. Danny Granger
9. Jeff Foster
10. Jermaine O'Neal
11. Paul George
12. Freddie Lewis

Knicks All-Time Top 12 (96 All-Star Selections)
1. Patrick Ewing
2. Walt Frazier
3. Willis Reed
4. Harry Gallatin
5. Charles Oakley
6. Carl Braun
7. Bill Cartwright
8. Kenny Sears
9. Richie Guerin
10. Allan Houston
11. John Starks
12. Earl Monroe

Sonics/Thunder All-Time Top 12 (66 All-Star Selections)
1. Gary Payton
2. Kevin Durant
3. Russell Westbrook
4. Jack Sikma
5. Shawn Kemp
6. Fred Brown
7. Rashard Lewis
8. Detlef Schrempf
9. Gus Williams
10. Nate McMillan
11. Serge Ibaka
12. Dale Ellis

Trail Blazers All-TIme Top 12 (42 All-Star Selections)
1. Clyde Drexler
2. Terry Porter
3. Damian Lillard
4. LaMarcus Aldridge
5. Rasheed Wallace
6. Jerome Kersey
7. Buck Williams
8. Jim Paxson
9. Arvdyas Sabonis
10. Cliff Robinson
11. Mychal Thompson
12. Damon Stoudamire

Hawks All-Time Top 12 (92 All-Star Selections)
1. Bob Pettit
2. Dominique Wilkins
3. Cliff Hagan
4. Lou Hudson
5. Al Horford
6. John Drew
7. Tree Rollins
8. Mookie Blaylock
9. Zelmo Beaty
10. Kevin Willis
11. Doc Rivers
12. Lenny Wilkens

Jazz All-Time Top 12 (43 All-Star Selections)
1. Karl Malone
2. John Stockton
3. Adrian Dantley
4. Andrei Kirilenko
5. Rudy Gobert
6. Jeff Hornacek
7. Paul Millsap
8. Derrick Favors
9. Deron Williams
10. Mehmet Okur
11. Mark Eaton
12. Gordon Hayward

Suns All-Time Top 12 (62 All-Star Selections)
1. Shawn Marion
2. Kevin Johnson
3. Steve Nash
4. Alvan Adams
5. Amar'e Stoudemire
6. Walter Davis
7. Dick Van Arsdale
8. Larry Nance
9. Dan Majerle
10. Paul Westphal
11. Charles Barkley
12. Jeff Hornacek

[giordunk]

I think it's between the Pacers and the Knicks just to get the remaining franchise with history and a few championships out the way. Knicks have more history and significance to the game of basketball so I'll give it to them.

I think the teams with no championships should start to get some serious consideration.

[penbeast0]

As the best player on at least 2 of the 3 Pacer title teams (McGinnis was the main man on the 3rd one), Mel Daniels should definitely rank above Dale Davis who was a solid role player. Daniels was an MVP candidate, Davis at best a marginal all-star. Roger Brown was the top scorer, but Daniels was the best player.

For that matter, where is Dave DeBusschere on the Knicks?

[penbeast0]

I go with Indiana over OKC/Seattle and NY. More consistent good teams, less disappointments, and although the ABA championships were less competitive than the NBA ones in those earlier years, the NBA wasn't exactly at a peak in the 70s. As a fan, I'd love to be a Pacer fan. The ABA history is cool (as is the Holzman era history with the Knicks), they've had disappointments, but the team has never been a tanker/quitter and always seems to be trying. Can't say that with the Knicks.

Vote: Pacers

[Owly]

As the best player on at least 2 of the 3 Pacer title teams (McGinnis was the main man on the 3rd one), Mel Daniels should definitely rank above Dale Davis who was a solid role player. Daniels was an MVP candidate, Davis at best a marginal all-star. Roger Brown was the top scorer, but Daniels was the best player.

For that matter, where is Dave DeBusschere on the Knicks?

I'm pretty sure it's franchise win shares leaders off basketball reference. (e.g. https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/)

So 21st. http://bkref.com/tiny/ApNN1

[Owly]

As the best player on at least 2 of the 3 Pacer title teams (McGinnis was the main man on the 3rd one), Mel Daniels should definitely rank above Dale Davis who was a solid role player. Daniels was an MVP candidate, Davis at best a marginal all-star. Roger Brown was the top scorer, but Daniels was the best player.

fwiw, insofar as you care about title teams because they were title teams Daniels has a large deficit to catch in non-boxscore stuff to make up Brown's productivity/efficiency metric advantage in the 1970 playoffs.

[Cavsfansince84]

I'd have to vote Knicks.

[trex_8063]

I'm going with the team that is [among those left on the table]:

*1st in total rs wins
*2nd in total playoff appearances
*1st in conference finals appearances
*2nd in % of seasons in conference finals [1st in NBA-only CF%]
*1st in NBA championships
*1st in Finals appearances (ABA and/or NBA)
*2nd in % of seasons in Finals [1st in NBA-only finals appearance%]


Vote: New York Knicks

[Odinn21]

Voting for the Sonics/Thunder franchise.

[colts19]

Going with the Pacers, they have been a solid and very competitive team for most the their history. Never really had a stretch of really bad years like the knicks.
Vote Pacers.

[penbeast0]

I'm pretty sure it's franchise win shares leaders off basketball reference. (e.g. https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/)

So 21st. http://bkref.com/tiny/ApNN1

Thanks

[Fadeaway_J]

Was it officially established that we're considering ABA history?

[trex_8063]

Was it officially established that we're considering ABA history?

I don't know that we discussed it, per se, but rather it was just assumed because we're essentially ranking franchise histories......if a team's history includes the ABA, so be it.
EDIT: Speaking for myself, I don't see a reason to exclude it (though perhaps we don't weight it as heavily).

[penbeast0]

Was it officially established that we're considering ABA history?

I don't know that we discussed it, per se, but rather it was just assumed because we're essentially ranking franchise histories......if a team's history includes the ABA, so be it.
EDIT: Speaking for myself, I don't see a reason to exclude it (though perhaps we don't weight it as heavily).

I'd weigh it higher than 1950s NBA; the discount rate for player performance last time I read a decent attempt at quantifying it, ranked from about a 20% discount early on to about 5% for the last couple of years. If Kareem had signed with the ABA (many in the ABA community thought he might but blamed George Mikan for screwing it up), I might rate the ABA higher than the NBA the last few years of the league.

[Colbinii]

Was it officially established that we're considering ABA history?

Of course you consider it.

You could come to the conclusion after considering it that it has 0 weight.

Sent from my SM-G960U using RealGM mobile app

[trex_8063]

Was it officially established that we're considering ABA history?

I don't know that we discussed it, per se, but rather it was just assumed because we're essentially ranking franchise histories......if a team's history includes the ABA, so be it.
EDIT: Speaking for myself, I don't see a reason to exclude it (though perhaps we don't weight it as heavily).

I'd weigh it higher than 1950s NBA; the discount rate for player performance last time I read a decent attempt at quantifying it, ranked from about a 20% discount early on to about 5% for the last couple of years. If Kareem had signed with the ABA (many in the ABA community thought he might but blamed George Mikan for screwing it up), I might rate the ABA higher than the NBA the last few years of the league.

I'd generally rate the ABA years more heavily than the pre-shotclock era [and particularly more than the BAA years], but I put the post-shotclock 50's NBA on pretty much equal footing with it; maybe even marginally AHEAD of the the ABA by '58 or '59 [definitely a little ahead of the first couple years of the ABA, actually].

Additionally, where we're scrutinizing franchise success and one of the measures we've frequently been looking at is % of seasons making the playoffs, it's important to acknowledge that making the playoffs [or the conference finals if you were a high-seeded team] was generally not as challenging in the ABA:
*for the first five years of the ABA's existence, 8 out of 11 teams (72.7%) would make the playoffs each year......that's a higher proportion than all except a brief 7-year period ('55-'61, in which 75% [6 of 8] of teams made the playoffs) of the NBA's huge 73-year history.
**for the next three seasons, 8 out of 10 ABA teams (80%, more than ANY year in NBA history) made the playoffs each season.
***in the final ABA season, 5 of 7 (71.4%) remaining teams were in the playoffs.

By comparison, with the exception of that 7-year period referred to above, the NBA consistently had a lesser proportion of teams going to the playoffs (even as low as 47.1% in the 4-year span of '71-'74, where only 8 of 17 teams were in the playoffs).

[trex_8063]

Some "vague votes" (e.g. "I think...") where I guess I can't say for positive they're casting an official ballot, but if including them the current count is:

Knicks - 3
Pacers - 2
Sonics/Thunder - 1

[Fadeaway_J]

I'll go Sonics/Thunder over Knicks here. Maybe it's recency bias but to struggle like the Knicks have in the 21st century, when the East has generally been so crappy and given the resources available to them, is a bad look, and their results line up with the way they've been run as a whole. I'm also more forgiving when your most prolonged bad stretch comes during your first few years as an expansion team, which was the case with the Sonics. The Sonics/Thunder have a much better win rate with comparable time as a championship contender (albeit with one fewer title).

[Dr Positivity]

I'm picking between Knicks and Pacers. Both teams peaked in success in early 70s, in NBA for Knicks and ABA for Pacers. While I value the Knicks NBA titles more than the Pacers ABA ones, the Pacers success after that point is better. They mirrored each other as rivals in the 90s, and then the Pacers have had much better post 2000 record. However at the end of the day, the Pacers still have 0 NBA titles and only 1 final. The Knicks also made some finals in the 50s.

Vote Knicks, but I don't feel great about it