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Call it what you want, but like I said in this thread, Spurs are the best NBA franchise of the past 20 years, by any measure. This is not up for debate, and you're just showing your bias/ignorance if you argue otherwise.

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yes, absolutely best of the last 20. no doubt. Not best of the last 25, or best of the last 35 (or best of the last 5), but for that very specific window you've created, they are the best.


[This message has been edited by twenty two ags (edited 7/1/2014 9:23a).]

Yeah, 20 is such a crazy, specific number. We can do 15 or 25 if you like.

15 - Again, indubitably.
25 - Very close second to the Bulls, though a pretty solid argument can be made for 1a and 1b considering the Bulls haven't done **** since 98. Titles alone don't tell the whole story.

Since Jordan left, the Bulls have been knocked out of the first round six times and failed to make the playoffs seven times. They have had over 50 wins twice (counting second lockout year when they would have had over 50 wins had it been a full season - then they lost in the first round.)

That is a pretty below average franchise. Does one more title in 25 years erase all that?

It's going to be a long offseason.

Precisely, GS.

Let's compare to Spurs from 89-97:
Made 7 out of 9 playoffs.
Three first round exits, three in conference semis, one in conference finals.
Five 50+ win seasons. (And another at 49 wins.)
Four division championships.
One #1 WC finish, three #2 WC finishes.

[This message has been edited by Brian Earl Spilner (edited 7/1/2014 9:48a).]

I think some credit should go to Boston and LA since they won championships before and after completely retooling their team.

The Bulls and Spurs (to this point) won many titles with the same core, whereas LA won with Magic's teams and then Kobe's teams. The Celtics have had a couple different runs with completely different teams.

Well to be fair, the only common factor between the 99 Spurs and now is Duncan. That's basically two eras of Spurs dominance. The only difference is that the Spurs never had a "down" year, so the eras basically meld together. That makes it even more impressive imo.

The Richard Jefferson years though, those were dark times...

Did the Bulls have anyone from 91 on their 96 team other than Jordan, Pippen and Phil Jackson?

The Bulls pretty much retooled their entire team apart from Jordan/Pippen from one three-peat to another. Credit due.

The Spurs as well. From 99 to 03, the only common threads were Duncan/Robinson/Kerr and Kerr had been traded away and back in that time and Robinson went from 20/10 to 8/8 player. Those two teams were completely different in play and who were the main guys.

The 14 team is completely different from the 03 team, though three players remain. Parker was benched in crunch time because he was so bad in 03 and Manu was an 8ppg guy off the bench.

I think Jordan, Pippen and Phil were the only remains from the 93 team on the 96 team.

Sort of coincidental side history, but the Rodman for Purdue trade with the Spurs was a HUGE factor in the Bulls second three-peat.

Plus the change from 4 down twin towers to guard-oriented motion... and a second shift may be underway as they go to an offense built around 6'7 to 6'9 combo forwards surrounded by shooters.

[This message has been edited by Ulrich (edited 7/1/2014 10:42a).]

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Titles alone don't tell the whole story.

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They tell the only story that matters.

[This message has been edited by Emerson Biggins (edited 7/1/2014 11:10a).]

Hah, DM is still around? Guy is pathetic. How many socks is this now?

I wonder if the OP (or anyone else who discounts the titles of teams since the inception of the league) could find a similar claim that has been made by a high ranking NBA official, coach, or player, that also asserts that titles won in the league as constituted in present day somehow impress on them a greater weight, as they do to a handful of genius spurs fans on the basketball other board.


If such a claim can be found, please enlighten the rest of us dim-witted souls who place an equal importance on all of them.

and you danced around the query I posed just as easily.

but I guess it's easier to quip about irrelevant topics such as my identity instead of actually making a contribution to the discussion

It's undoubtedly more difficult to play and win today than 40 and 50 years ago. This is why I think Russell is perpetually overrated. He was Theo Ratliff when you think about it. Good player with long respectable career, yes. All-time great, I'm sorry but no.

There's more money in the sport now, more teams, more strategy, more competition, more sophistication, year-round training and focus, the salary cap, free agency... it goes on and on its not even close.

Those 60s Celtics teams had the reserve clause for goodness sakes, and no salary cap. Basically you owned all the players on your team for life until you wanted to cut or trade them. It was infinitely easier to keep teams and dynasties together under that setup.

It took 8 games to win a title back in the Celtics day, and those games were played against 2-3 actual players plus a bunch of semi-professional 5'10 white guys. You had a 50% chance of making the conference finals just by being in the league.

Alright well none of you better say a word in 25-30 years when the game has drastically changed from the way it is today, and folks start discounting the titles the spurs/lakers/heat won in the last decade.

Personally, I think that players like Wilt and Russell would have been great in any era, but the league as a whole was pitiful. Not enough talent to go around and most of what there was landed on the 2-3 teams that took basketball seriously. Just bunch of guys throwing the ball at the backboard hoping to get a lucky roll. Shooting percentages in the 20s and 30s. The best team on the A court at the rec any given Saturday in the spring makes the playoffs in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Alright well none of you better say a word in 25-30 years when the game has drastically changed from the way it is today, and folks start discounting the titles the spurs/lakers/heat won in the last decade.

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At least we'll remember having lived through it.

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Alright well none of you better say a word in 25-30 years when the game has drastically changed from the way it is today, and folks start discounting the titles the spurs/lakers/heat won in the last decade.

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Quite possible. If the game has an order of magnitude difference in talent, skill, professionalism, and popularity with dramatically different rules, then I'll agree. Seems a little unlikely, but you never know.

though by then i'm fairly certain y'all will have cooked up a great cliché-ridden diatribe about how the best era of the sport clearly existed between the years 1999 and 2014 (probably even whittling it down further to simply the 99/03/05/07/14 seasons) while emphatically stating "this isn't even up for debate", further allowing you to keep those goalposts of y'alls on their black and silver painted roller-skates.

This guy probably thinks the Roman Empire would win World War II.

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though by then i'm fairly certain y'all will have cooked up a great cliché-ridden diatribe about how the best era of the sport clearly existed between the years 1999 and 2014 (probably even whittling it down further to simply the 99/03/05/07/14 seasons) while emphatically stating "this isn't even up for debate", further allowing you to keep those goalposts of y'alls on their black and silver painted roller-skates.

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And yet, even that is more legitimate than puffing your chest about titles that were won years before you were born.

But keep spewing your bullsh, it's actually kinda keeping the offseason interesting.

Q: Which is more difficult: [1] winning a Western Conf Championship in 2014 or [2] winning an NBA title in 1960?

A: ?

Oh by the way... The franchise that comes out looking like the best all time in this analysis is the LA F'n Lakers. And I HATE them. Passionately.

And I'm pretty sure that no player, coach, of exec that's hoping to get inducted into the Basketball HOF is going to state the obvious about how much more difficult it is to win it all today than 50 years ago.

[This message has been edited by Adam87inSA (edited 7/1/2014 6:31p).]

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And I'm pretty sure that no player, coach, of exec that's hoping to get inducted into the Basketball HOF is going to state the obvious about how much more difficult it is to win it all today than 50 years ago.

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If it's so obvious to everyone, then why would anyone be penalized for simply stating the obvious. That would be crazy. I think the far more likely reason is that anyone who has actually been close to the sport in some capacity, and has seen it's inner-workings understands and respects all of the eras equally.

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cute that OP tried to create this whole scenario to inflate the importance of his spurs. no bias at all. 3 more "modern titles" and you're still sitting at half of the number the lakers/celtics have.
can you do the same thing with aggie football? i am not a spurs fan, but i would love to be able to ignore the a&m-texas series from 1940-1975. lets create a gimmick that makes each of those games only worth 0.25 games, and the games since 1975 count 2x.

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Finally someone that gets it.

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to have the best player at a position retire because they got a nice job offer from an insurance agency.

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I like this stock example from GS. Too bad it's taken completely out of context. The job was a sweet-heart gig with a bank (not insurance, couldn't even get that part right) in his home-town of Baton Rouge. He was going to retire anyway (due to injuries and his self-described deteriorating skills) and he made less at the bank than he made his final season playing in the league. Feel free to offer up some other examples of elite players choosing other jobs over the NBA because they paid as well or better.

http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2012/12/12/the-qa-at-80-pettit-reflects-on-wilt-russell-cousy-and-life-outside-the-nba/

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This is why I think Russell is perpetually overrated. He was Theo Ratliff when you think about it. Good player with long respectable career, yes. All-time great, I'm sorry but no.

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Dumbest. Post. Ever.

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I think you should consider ABA titles since those years many of the best players in the world played in the ABA. This gets the Nets and Pacers on the board.

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No you shouldn't. Because the discussion is about NBA titles. Not titles from leagues that cease to exist because they were inferior.

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Just my opinion... and hey maybe I'm way off base here...

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^^^OP shoulda stopped typing here^^^

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At least we'll remember having lived through it

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100% my point brian. None of you have any first hand knowledge of how good the league was back in it's early days. So you lazily speculate because it's easier than giving credit and recognition. Crazy me, I choose not to denigrate signifcant accomplishments simply because they didn't happen in front of my own two eyes.

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This guy probably thinks the Roman Empire would win World War II.

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truly a spot on comparison for this discussion ulrich. solid contribution. [/sarcasm]

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And yet, even that is more legitimate than puffing your chest about titles that were won years before you were born

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not puffing my chest out about anything, i don't have a favorite NBA team. I'm just able to give credit where credit is deserved.

~ And finally, the truly hilarious thing about all of you spurs fans crapping all over anything that happened before they won a title, is the fact that the spurs' style of play most resembles a team from the 50s/60s/70s eras than any of the other most recent champions.

Think about it, back then teamwork as a whole was valued more than individual superstars. Fundamental basketball was the rule rather than the exception back then. Actual defense was played. And the spurs collection of largely unathletic talent (relative to most of the other elite teams in today's game) would fit right in with teams in the NBA of the past.

Another similarity is that most of the general public outside of south Texas couldn't name the spurs as today's NBA champion, just as a majority of the general public didn't know who won back then (though past teams had the excuse of nationally televised games being virtually non-existent that the spurs can't fall back on today).

Really the only major difference between the spurs and the teams from the past, is that teams from the past valued players from their own country and didn't feel the need to largely stock their rosters with euro-trash foreigners(though to be fair, no self-respecting american-born free agent wants to live in the cesspool that is SA, so that's pretty much their only real option for players).

Bottom line, no other fan base should be more appreciative of those champions from the past than spurs fans. Time to wake up and embrace the fact that the sport was played before 1999 fellas.

This guy is pretty sore.

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Well to be fair, the only common factor between the 99 Spurs and now is Duncan.

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Not just wrong, but terribly wrong.

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Not just wrong, but terribly wrong.

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Obviously was considering just players, not Pop.

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Another similarity is that most of the general public outside of south Texas couldn't name the spurs as today's NBA champion, just as a majority of the general public didn't know who won back then (though past teams had the excuse of nationally televised games being virtually non-existent that the spurs can't fall back on today).

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And this is not true. I live on the East Coast and every time I went out to watch a finals game, the bar would be full and people would be cheering on the Spurs. (Or cheering against the Heat.)

Repeating the question for Emerson Biggins:

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Q: Which is more difficult: [1] winning a Western Conf Championship in 2014 or [2] winning an NBA title in 1960?

A: ?

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