Homer38 wrote:NZB2323 wrote:Homer38 wrote:
Injury are part of the game, but the bulls for the most part have always been healthy for most of the 1990s outside of 1998 with Pippen and his back problems at the end of the finals but he was still playing and he was still very impactful like in game 6 against jazz when he finished the game at +16 in a one point win
LeBron was the league's best player for a very long time between 2009 to 2020 no matter who was his competition like Wade, Kobe, KD, Kawhi, Curry, Giannis etc and he often played against elite team in the finals like the spurs and the warriors....Jordan is the best player ever, but it's also true that he was lucky to play when the lakers,pistons and celtics were no longer dominant...Overall Jordan had a combined record of 2-5 against his teams and we can't say the pistons were still a great team when the bulls beat them in 1991...It was a 50 wins team only
In 1993, the Suns were great in offense, below average in defense and the Knicks were great in defense and terrible in offense, so rarely did the Bulls ever play against teams that were great in offense and defense like it was often the case for LBJ in the finals
In 1993 the Suns were 9th in defensive rating and 1st in offensive rating.
In 1991 the Lakers were 5th in defensive and offensive rating.
In 1992 the Traiblazers were 3rd in defensive and 7th in offensive rating.
In 1996 the Supersonics were 2nd in defensive rating and 8th in offensive rating.
In 1997 the Jazz were 9th in defensive and 2nd in offensive rating.
In 1998 the Pacers were 5th in defensive and 4th in offensive rating.
The rankings can be misleading due to the number of expansion teams and the number of historic bad teams the NBA had in the late 1990s...I mean in 1998 the NBA had like 6 teams with 62 losses or more and it was not much better that the few years before!
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1998.html
How does 6 terrible teams have anything to do with who Jordan is playing against in the playoffs? In 2016 4 teams had 59 losses or more. 2012 was a shortened season, but we had a team that only won 7 games.
And I'm not sure how there being 6 terrible teams in 1998 means that the 93 Suns were below average defensively when they were 9th. In 93 there were only 2 teams with 62 losses or more. When Jordan won his first title, only 1 team had 62 losses.

























