Pistons made it to three consecutive finals, repeated as champions. How many teams in NBA history you can say this about?

First off, when we rate all time great teams we look at each season one at a time.

That was a function of there not being great competition at that time, the '88 team won 54 games with an SRS of 5.46. The 89 team won 63 games with an SRS of 6.24. The 90 team won 59 games with an SRS of 5.41. So the 89 team was their best team. 63 wins and an SRS of 6.24. Cleveland had a better SRS that season. The 2022 Suns were better.

They went to 3 straight finals because there was no al time great team at that time. Saying they were an all time great team would be like saying the 1976-78 Yankees were an all time great team. We don't judge these things merely by getting to the finals (world series) and winning twice in a row. To be an all ime great team you have to totally dominate in the regular season, like the 1998 Yankees, the 1996 Bulls, the 1967 76ers, the 1972 Lakers, the 1971 Bucks, etc....

There's a champion every year, but only once in a while does that champion qualify as an all time great team. Even the 1971-75 Oakland A's were not an all time great team. They never had a dominant regular season, they just won 5 divisions and 3 straight pennants and world championships. We don't anoint teams as all time greats merely for playing great over the course of 10-12 games like those A's did, with just two series to win a championship. Two of those 3 championships Oakland won were 7 game world series, including the one against the 82-79 Mets of 1973. It doesn't make them an all time great team merely because they won game 7 in 1972 and 1973.

Here are the all time great teams from the 1980s.

1983 Phil. 76ers - 65-17, 7.53, 12-1 in the playoffs
1986 Celtics - 67-15, 9.06, 15-3 in the playoffs
1987 Lakers- 65-17, 8.32, 15-3 in the playoffs

That's it.

idk why i bother, but just wanted to pop in here and say that SRS is specifically relative to each season itself and does not show, in any possible way, how each season compares to other seasons. so i'm not sure where you are getting that the league didn't have great competition in the late 80s, something that every basketball historian, fan, players, etc would disagree with in the strongest terms possible.

you can have a really good team dominate average teams, or a great team split a series with another great team. all-time great seasons can have 4 teams with a 6 SRS while weak seasons can have one team with a 9 SRS, its all relative.

when i used SRS in the LeBron vs Jordan argument, i used it to show how Jordan faced teams that were better relative to their league than LeBron faced. it wasn't to say who competed in the tougher era, but to who they competed against WITHIN their era.


now when comparing teams TO their era, it should be noted that the Pistons lost a total of 2 playoff games to non-Jordan teams in '89 and '90. regular season juggernaut or not, that's incredible. from '87-90 the 2 series that they lost both took 7 games from the 2 best franchises of the era (the celtics and lakers).

now to your point about only looking at individual seasons. yes and no. context matters, as in who traded teams, who signed, who was injured etc. but that can also happen within an individual season as much as in between seasons. multiple season peaks let us know how good a team can get to at its peak. for example, the 2001 Lakers regular season doesn't look great at all. but the 2000 regular season Lakers showed us exactly what we could expect from the 2001 post-season Lakers, and that's exactly what happened. the fact that championship-caliber teams don't always play every single regular season as hard as possible doesn't really matter when the championship is won in the playoffs.

A, It really DOES matter when determining all time great teams, and B, one of the marks of an al time great team is playing every single regular season game hard. Whether teams are great or just good, there's always gonna be a championship team every season, so just winning a championship is not a mark of all time greatness.

Never said that didn't have great competition in the late 1980s. In fact, usually when there is an all time great team the league DOESN'T have great competition because one team is head and shoulders above the rest of the teams. And that's in any sport.

There's more competition when there's more parity among the top teams. There's less competition when the Celtics are winning 8 titles in a row, or the Bulls are winning 6 titles in 8 years. Or the Yankees are winning 14 pennants in 16 seasons, with 5 world series in a row, or 4 world series in a row as they did from 1936 through 1939.

There's been numerous teams in this century who were better than 89 Pistons and did not win championships. I don't even agree that winning a championship is the main thing that makes a team great. The 73 win Warriors were an all time great team that did not win a championship. The playoffs are a small numbers of games, and in basketball an injury to a key player is far worse for a team's chances than in other sports, where one player doesn't mean near as much.

The 1972 Athletics won the world series without their best player, Reggie Jackson, who was injured scoring the series winning run on a double steal in game 5 of the ALCS against Detroit. That doesn't happen in basketball much. The bulls with Jordan hurt or the Lakers with Shaq hurt, or just about any great team that loses its best player for the NBA Finals is fucked.

To me, the regular season numbers are far more important in judging all time great teams than are the playoffs. Especially in the 50s and 60s when you only had to win 2 series to win the championship.

When Dr. J came to Rucker Park in Harlem, everybody came to watch!

bruce 2 posts earlier:

does this apply to players too? cause if so, that's a huge positive in favor of Jordan in particular.

Yes, and he certainly gets credit for missing very few games other than that early season with the broken foot, and for always playing real hard in every game. These clowns playing now are a joke with these rest games. And Wilt also gets credit for playing all the minutes he played, and for never fouling out.

personally, i hate debating individual places on a list to begin with. i like ranges, or tiers (but even tiers have cutoffs and i don't like it). mainly because i think there are many ways or looking at things in terms of which parts of the criteria are weighed higher or lower than the others, and because i think there is uncertainty and interpretation involved in almost every part of the criteria. some players will have a wider range than others, because they have stronger strengths and weaker weaknesses in terms of doing well in a particular criterion, or because they have more uncertainty for whatever reason.


i like pgm's list a lot, but i'm leaning more and more towards figuring out my own criteria for my own list. i think to some extent the following things all matter:

a) how much did a player contribute to winning relative to their era, particularly in the post-season
b) how much did a player influence future generations
c) how much did a player impact the game either stylistically or through rule changes
d) how much did a player impact the NBA as a business
e) how much did a player impact culture outside of basketball
f) how much did a player mean to a particular city and franchise
g) how many accolades did a player earn in their career
h) how large of an impact did a player make in terms of individual statistical production and efficiency
i) how strong was the era that a player was in, in comparison to other eras

probably more as well

So if the player is not lucky enough to have played with other great players he gets penalized?

Does this mean that Ken Griffey Jr., who never even played for a pennant winner, is rated lower than others who won all the time, like Jeter and Bernie Williams?

Does Ted Williams get rated lower for only playing on one pennant winner, and never winning the world series?

How about Ty Cobb, who never won the world series?

Mike Trout? Only in the playoffs once and wasn't good that time.

It's not as much of a problem in basketball, where one guy means a lot more to a team, but there's tons of great players in other sports who never won championships. Barry Sanders, Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers, OJ Simpson, Anthony Munoz, etc....

Barkley, Karl Malone, Stockton, Ewing, Chris Paul, Nash, etc.....

I put far less stock in championships than most people do.

whoops, i think the way i phrased this gave you the wrong impression on what i meant. i'm not talking about the result of winning, i'm talking about the value of a player as it relates to playing winning basketball. in other words, what you think WinShares shows, that's what I'm talking about. i'm not talking about ringzzz, or something. more like "how much better of a chance do i have to win a championship with this player as opposed to a different player, if all other variables are the same".


the result is still useful information, because winning obviously happens as a result of playing winning basketball. but it takes a whole team and the opponent does matter and all that. i think you and I, despite what you think, agree that a "rings" or championships-only approach is not the right approach.

Okay, but you said that winning in the playoffs is more important than winning in the regular season. Many great players never had much of a chance to win in the playoffs. Some of them only got there as a 7 or 8 seed because of how great they were during the season, but now they have to play a top seed right away.

Trout is the best example. CLEARLY the best player in the game for like 8-10 years, but only played in one playoff series so far.

Oscar was similar in basketball until he got with Alcindor in 1971. Otherwise he never gets to the finals.

If we really believe what you're saying then you must be with me in saying that Wilt was easily better than Russell.