2015-16 NBA Regular Season (part 2) - Mr D Fish Yr Girl

insider is the worst thing its true.

sounds like a good idea except i'd probably change the password to DickandBalls69 within 10 minutes of you sharing the login

i woulda thought that was the password to start tbf

on that game winning shot at the end, kobe pushed off on his defender with both hands HARD to get free. i think he prob coulda just punched him and it would've been okay.

lmao

xp

that last game for the warriors really did a number to all their numbers.

record record.
steph 400.
steph 50 45 90 club (5 threes per game too).
steph over 30ppg.
got them over SA for point differential.

wondering how long that 402 will hold

This article was updated after Wednesday's games.

With the Golden State Warriors knocking the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls from the record books by winning their 73rd game in Wednesday's season finale against the Memphis Grizzlies, the question of Warriors vs. Bulls is on everybody's mind.

Which one is the greatest team of all time? We have an answer.

Without the benefit of a time machine, there's no way to definitively settle the argument. But we can get closer to an objective answer by comparing two factors: how the two teams performed relative to the rest of the league, and how the league as a whole has evolved in the past two decades.

Answering the first question is fairly easy. Despite Golden State's chance at the superior record, Chicago was actually more dominant in 1995-96, beating opponents by an average of 12.2 points per game. Because they've relied on pulling out close games with strong clutch play, the Warriors' margin of victory is a relatively less impressive 10.6 points per game.

Figuring out how to adjust for league quality is much trickier, and more interesting as far as what it says about the NBA now as compared to two decades ago.

The NBA's growing player pool

The Bulls won 72 games not only in an expansion year, but at the conclusion of a stretch where the league grew quickly from 23 teams in 1987-88 to 29 by 1995-96. Since then, the NBA has added only one expansion team (Charlotte, in 2004-05) in the last 20 seasons.

EDITOR'S PICKS

Pelton's picks: MVP, All-NBA, All-Rookie
Who should finish No. 2 behind Steph Curry for MVP? Which players belong on the All-NBA teams? And what about coach of the year? Kevin Pelton gives his award picks for the season.
Meanwhile, the pool of players from which NBA teams can choose has grown rapidly. While Chicago benefited from the contributions of international rotation players Toni Kukoc, Luc Longley and Bill Wennington, such imports were relatively rare two decades ago.

In 1995-96, only six percent of the league's minutes were played by players raised abroad. That rate has jumped to 20.4 percent this season, narrowly surpassing last season's 20.3 percent to set another NBA record.

To estimate the size of the NBA's player pool, I've divided the size of the U.S. population by the percentage of NBA minutes played by American players. This suggests there are now about 400 million people available to the NBA, as compared to around 280 million in 1995-96.

Kevin Pelton
Obviously these estimates aren't to be taken literally, since they include women, children and men far past basketball retirement age. But their relative size is meaningful. There are now far more potential NBA players per professional team than at any point since the ABA emerged as a rival league in 1967.

Estimating quality of play

Naturally, more than just the number of available players goes into league quality of play. Factors like injuries, retirements and ebbs and flows of talent can also make a difference.

When I was creating my championships added metric to evaluate NBA players historically, I developed an estimate of NBA quality by looking at how returning players saw their minutes per game change from one year to the next. Increased playing time suggests a less competitive league, while an improving NBA means existing players see their minutes per game decrease.

That yielded the following estimates of quality of play over time relative to the 2015-16 season, which show steady improvement over time.

Kevin Pelton
What's interesting is how well the two measures match up. Since the league caught up with the effects of the ABA merger, changes in quality of play can largely be explained by expansion and the growth of the player pool. (The 2015-16 season, naturally, is in the top right.)

Kevin Pelton
Having established two different ways that the league has gotten better over the last two decades, let's zoom in on this graph of NBA quality over the last two decades to see how much play has improved.

Kevin Pelton
Don't tell Scottie Pippen and the rest of his teammates on the 1995-96 Bulls, but this method suggests that the post-expansion league they dominated was nearly 20 percent weaker than the one the Warriors are competing in now. In fact, because of expansion, the NBA in 1995-96 rated only about as strong as it did a decade earlier when the Boston Celtics went 67-15.

Bulls vs. Warriors, adjusted for league

Before dismissing Chicago's accomplishments against a watered-down league, keep this in mind: Even with the more aggressive adjustment for quality of play, the 1995-96 Bulls still rate as better than any NBA team before this season by the method I used to rank the top 50 teams ever last June.

However, the adjustment is big enough to push Chicago behind this season's Golden State team in terms of regular-season performance. Multiplying the Bulls' actual point differential by the estimate of league quality in 1995-96 suggests Chicago would outscore 2015-16 opponents by 10.1 points per games -- similar to last season's 66-16 Warriors (plus-10.1), but now behind this season's Golden State team (plus-10.6).

To truly surpass the 1995-96 Bulls, the Warriors still have to back up their strong regular season by winning a championship. If Golden State can do so, the quality of the league it has dominated means the Warriors deserve to be considered the best team in NBA history.

wondering how long that 402 will hold

One year.

hah, idk man i don't see curry getting better again. would be happy to be proven wrong obv

thanks kevk

yeah thx, it's been kinda weird hearing this 'you have to remember the context of the league they were playing in' argument in favor of the bulls cuz for years i'd heard that the bulls broke the record that year partially cuz the league was so down talent wise (and also cuz nick anderson pissed off jordan), enough that i'd believed that one of the teams from the first threepeat (whichever one almost broke the lakers regular season record) was actually the best bulls team. it's insane to me to think the nba was better or deeper or even more loaded at the top twenty years ago than today, but i've heard it lately.

they should change the rules so that you can just shoot instead of inbounding the basketball. then curry will get 500.

When I was creating my championships added metric to evaluate NBA players historically, I developed an estimate of NBA quality by looking at how returning players saw their minutes per game change from one year to the next. Increased playing time suggests a less competitive league, while an improving NBA means existing players see their minutes per game decrease.

Not sure that using average playing time per player (?) can be isolated from things like Pop-resting.

yea some of that article is just reaching but there are some interesting points. league expansion being one.

402 will hold for at least a decade imo

good story for and about messy bitches who live for drama

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/why-george-karl-s-firing-won-t-fix-kings-165249640.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma

lol 'why one fire extinguisher probably wouldn't have been enough to put out the hindenburg'

i think its also pretty inarguable that defensive schemes have improved markedly since 2002

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-one-record-the-warriors-cant-take-from-the-bulls-1460498500

“I’ve been to one basketball game in my entire life,” Alan Parsons said in an interview this week. “It was a Lakers game probably 20 years ago. I don’t actually remember who it was against.”

There was nothing to suggest that “Sirius” would be one of the most famous arena tracks ever when it was released in 1982 by the British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. “I wasn’t considering sports whatsoever,” Parsons said. As soon as it was associated with the Bulls, however, “Sirius” became an inescapable stadium earworm. Parsons was an audio engineer on The Beatles album “Abbey Road” and the Pink Floyd album “The Dark Side of the Moon,” but it’s possible that more people know this short instrumental composition with only a synthesizer and echoing clavinet than anything else he has ever produced or performed.

How that happened was even more unexpected. The Bulls were still using the theme from “Miami Vice” and the opening from “Thriller” when Jordan came to Chicago. (It was the 1980s.) But it became clear to public-address announcer Tommy Edwards that Jordan’s teams demanded something more distinctive. He happened to be in a Chicago theater waiting for a movie to begin when he heard “Sirius” playing in the background. Edwards called Bulls management not long afterward. “I think I’ve got it,” he said.

Edwards was right. By the early 1990s, even before the Bulls were taking a blowtorch to NBA records on their way to the 1996 title, the tune that had been background music in a movie theater was suddenly a cultural phenomenon to the point that even newly married couples in Chicago were using it for their wedding introductions.

There was such pageantry in the Bulls’ starting-lineup introductions—lights out, “Sirius” on, Edwards uttering: “And now…”—that it has endured as a touchstone. The Warriors don’t have a song that has reached such iconic status. The music that accompanies their starting lineups is a remix of Tupac Shakur’s “California Love” they have used for years. This season, they have been coming out to the court to a D.R.A.M. song called “Cha Cha,” as requested by Curry. “If Steph wants it,” said DJ D Sharp, the team’s in-house DJ, “we play it.”

i never understood why california love is the most popular tupac song

it bangs

you're probs not from California then

xp

the track hits yr eardrum like a slug to the chest

^

but that remix they use is NOT good

oh is it the version on the record bc thats much worse than the single version

no its this BS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHHgUhBi_hc

the two musicians i will always most associate with the nba with are alan parsons and john tesh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxTryUZs_XE

lol smh xp

starts at about 1:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZlPEoStjE

that is a deeply embarrassing version of california love
like sub-Dance Dance Revolution embarrassing

I remember going down a youtube habit hole years back watching a ton of john tesh live videos cos i found him to be really funny, not intentionally funny tho.

if we are talking generally about tupac odes to cali then "to live & die in LA" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "california love"

nah man naaaaaaaaaaah

roundball rock is a true classic yes

*rabbit hole eps to myself

http://tlcvr.tumblr.com/post/142140273413

^very very close to the SNL sketch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdkaFZVyGc

among the pieces of music i most strongly associate with my childhood

john tesh live at red rocks is the ultimate tesh multimedia experience for the true tesh fan