CLEVELAND – Nostalgia is a powerful thing. And there’s nothing wrong with the very human tendency to look back at moments where things seemed less complicated and where the passage of time has erased any of the hard edges or the incongruent facts.
We all want certainty, or the hint of it at least, and looking back at the past provides at least a measuring stick, if not an unwavering standard.
But the rush of former NBA stars to claim that at their best they were better than the best on offer today needs to stop.
The Golden State Warriors have heard it for two years now. When they were on their way to 73 regular-season wins there was the argument that they weren’t on par with the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who won 72 games, the previous best.
Bulls star Scottie Pippen was so convinced of their superiority that he predicted Michael Jordan and his supporting cast would sweep the Warriors.
That Golden State blew their 3-1 lead over Cleveland a year ago robbed them of the final say as the Bulls, famously, went 6-0 in their Finals appearances.
But now the Warriors are making history again – they are the first team to 15-0 in the playoffs and could set a record that can never be broken if they can complete their fourth consecutive sweep tonight over the Cavaliers – the historical revisionists in the crowd have been emboldened.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who was on that 72-win Bulls team and a member of the early Spurs dynasty teams also has had enough. He can’t take any more of NBA legends lifting their own accomplishments by running down the current Warriors feats.
“They’re all right. They would kill us,” said Kerr, his tongue very, very, very firmly in cheek. “The game gets worse as time moves on. Players are less talented than they used to be. The guys in the 50s would’ve destroyed everybody. It’s weird how human evolution goes in reverse in sports. Players get weaker, smaller, less skilled. I don’t know, I can’t explain it.”
He doesn’t need to explain it, or shouldn’t have to. Regardless of how good the 1987 Los Angeles Lakers were or the 1996 Bulls were or even the 2004 Detroit Pistons were (more on that in a minute), they never won 73 regular-season games, they never won their first 15 post-season games and they never won 207-regular season games in a three-year period – 69 per season.
But nostalgia doesn’t rest. And strangely, it’s not just that teams from the past would (theoretically) prevail in a seven-game series against the current Warriors, Kevin Durant and all, they would sweep them. It’s often a sweep.
“We’re going to win,” Lakers great Magic Johnson was quoted as saying this week at a corporate event in Los Angeles, picking up the baton left by Pippen. “We’d probably sweep them.”
Julius Erving told a radio station in Los Angeles his 1983 Philadelphia 76ers – featuring Moses Malone – that won 65 regular-season games and went 12-1 in the playoffs would have handled the Warriors’ pace and space.
“This is a phenomenal team,” Erving said of the Warriors on ESPN LA 710. “They can put up points, and they do play team defence. They hustle, and they scrap.
“But when you have a team with the makeup of our team that year? We could play slow, we could play fast … we had four centres, four guards and four forwards, so a lot of the parts were interchangeable …. We would have figured out how to play against this team and how to beat this team.”
Rasheed Wallace of the 2004 Pistons said their elite defence would be too much for the Warriors.
“Oh, we’d run through them. Not even close. We play defence,” said Wallace on the Timeout with Taylor Rooks podcast. ”With the way that we played in Detroit, we’d lock [players] down. The things that we did in Detroit will never be done again.”
Never mind that the ’03-04 Pistons’ defensive rating of 95.4 was ‘merely’ the 14th-best of all-time (and second-best in the NBA that year) per Basketball-Reference. Or that Wallace’s club won just 54 regular-season games, or needed a seventh game to get past the New Jersey Nets in the second round, or averaged just 90 points a game, or never mind that the Warriors were also the second-best defensive team in the NBA this past season. Somehow, some way, Wallace’s Pistons would blow past the Warriors.
Similarly, the ’87 Lakers – an admittedly loaded club, tied with the current Warriors for the best offensive rating of all-time (115.6) – would run the Warriors off the floor while making an average of two (not a typo) three-pointers a game to Golden State’s 12?
My math says no.
Could the Lakers of Magic, Kareem and Worthy challenge the Warriors? Undoubtedly. Abdul-Jabbar would be a matchup nightmare. But how long would Kareem last with Durant and Curry constantly dragging him out to defend pick-and-rolls?
The same argument holds for the Shaquille O’Neal-era Lakers teams (and yes, Shaq believes they would crush the Warriors too). No one on the Warriors could stop Shaq, just like no one in O’Neal’s era could either.
But there’s a reason teams have steered away from running their offences (and defences) through big men that struggle when removed from the paint in recent years and it’s because three points are worth more than two.
The Warriors are used to hearing that their best isn’t good enough.
“It’s kind of comedy for me,” Curry said of the constant stream of disrespect from past greats. “The hypothetical game is never one I’ve played and I don’t want to be in that situation where you have to argue that … I respect every great team that’s come before us and I hope to be, 20 years down the line, when the next great team comes up, hopefully I’ll give them praise too.
“[But if] we win our 16th game [and second championship],” said Curry. “That’s all the praise we need.”
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