emunney wrote:drew881 wrote:midranger wrote:There’s no asterisk or anything, but in retrospect our championship run was pretty charmed.
Suns were a super young, first year being good team with minimal playoff experience outside of Chris Paul continuously choking. Devin freaking Booker was their best player.They immediately hit the skids similar to us post-finals. They’re on their second blowup since. They were like a D+ level finals team.
Hawks, basically the exact same as above but multiplied by a factor of 100x. Trae Young was their best player. F level conference finals team.
Nets, were a volatile group of personalities with a lousy coach that had 2 of their best 3 players hobbled or out basically the whole series. Also needed an immediate blowup after that series. Coach gone. Players gone. Kevin Durant was their best player and was INCREDIBLE. But, their second best player that series was who? Blake Griffin? Bruce Brown? Jeff Green? C+ level second round team given the injuries. Only that because Durant was so good. We should have blown them away once Kyrie was hurt and Harden could barely move. We eked out the series victory by the slimmest margin possible.
Miami is such a weird team. Consistency in personnel, but their results have been up and down year-to-year. This was a down year. Butler was their best player but was completely AWFUL. Probably a B+ level first round matchup who we made look silly. There’s a possibility that they were the toughest matchup we faced.
Yup, but we are bagging on the Pacers because OG is out.
Ultimately you can only beat the teams you play against, and we don't know what the outcomes would have been given different circumstances. Other than informing the decision-making of the teams involved, I don't think any of this sort of litigation really serves anything. That said, fair to point out that the Bucks may have benefited from injuries to other teams. Although I'd certainly argue the Bucks and Knicks are/were missing better players than the Nets did.
You can't take anything away from the Pacers because they won the games.
I've never once heard anyone try and bash or discredit a Superbowl winner because they were healthier than a team/teams they faced (which is pretty much always a big factor in how far a team gets in the NFL)
NBA the last few years has become a bit of a war of attrition in a similar vein (although not as extreme obviously) and see no issue with that. It opens up a level of parity that simply never existed before the last few years when you could pretty much pencil in 3 out of 4 of the conference finalists, without fail, by mid-season every year
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