Best of the Best, Part 2

   

   Welcome back to Part 2 of this Best of the Best series. What did you think of my best baseball team of all time? As we move on from baseball, I thought let’s move onto basketball. Before we get started, Golden State seems to be a better team than last year. They are 11-0 and an unreal 11-0! They have a chance to be the best basketball team of all time, but until that happens; we will talk about the current all-time best time. When it came down to baseball, it was really hard to choose between the 27 and 98 Yankees. Basketball was a little bit less complicated, but was compelling none the less.

    What’s the first team that comes to mind when you think “Best of All Time” in basketball? If you guessed the 1995-96 Bulls, then you are correct. They had a 72-10 record(something no one has ever matched). That season they were first in the league in Points per game with 105.2. They were also 3^rd best in the league at 92.9 points per game allowed. Not only was the best player on the planet, Michael Jordan, on that team, but he had a great supporting cast. Pippen was a scoring and assist wizard. The real steal was Dennis Rodman. He came over from that “Bad Boy” team in Detroit. He was a rebounding machine. That season he averaged 14.9 rebounds per game.

     On this Bulls team, they had 3 players who averaged 13.1 points per game or better. As well, 8 players had a Field Goal percentage of 48% or better, but Steve Kerr was the only one over 50%. 4 players had 5.1 rebounds per game or better. If you put all of this together, we can collectively see how well that team played together. They were also in the middle of a 2^nd 3peat of winning championships.

     Honestly, the only team I feel that I can come close to comparing to this team is the 1971-72 Lakers. Yes, I know I was not born during this time period, but I did do my research. Just like the Bulls, they were first in scoring that season. They actually had more points per game than the Bulls with 121.0/game. With that, they also gave up more points per game with 108.7/game. This team was just a scoring machine. Jerry West averaged 25.8 points per game and Gail Goodrich had 25.9 per game. They also had 6 players with Field Goal percentage at 47% or better including Wilt Chamberlin’s insane 64.9%. He was also better at crashing the boards than Rodman, averaging 19.2/game.

   Even though the Lakers did have a 69-13 record that season and won the title, I don’t feel that they were the better team than the Bulls. The Bulls played in a league with 29 teams opposed to the Lakers with 17 teams. This means that the Bulls had more competition to deal with on a daily basis. The Bulls were also better defensively. The presence of Rodman certainly helped them. No disrespect to Wilt, but Jordan was just the better player on a better team. Unless the Warriors keep up the magic this season, I do not think that we will see a team like the 95-96 Bulls for quite a while.