This year’s NBA Finals are close to ending and it looks like, for the first time since 1999, the Spurs will be the champs. Since this will be the Spurs second title it bears stepping back and comparing it to the first title. It’s funny that fours years have passed, but it seems like the Spurs first title came and left with little reflection. The main thing the 1998-99 Spurs were remembered for were winning the shortened lockout season (it was only 50 games long as opposed to the usual 82 games). It has been suggested by some, Phil Jackson most notably, that the Spurs shortened season championship was less legitimate than if it had been won after a longer season. From this criticism, the “asterisk” debate has arose. How legitimate is the asterisk debate? How good were those Spurs? How did the 1998-99 Spurs compare to this year’s edition? There are a bunch of questions that are worth looking into a little more.
The Asterisk: How Good Were The 1998-99 Spurs?
A lot of the criticism of the 1998-99 Spurs’ title is unfocused, there are implications that it was illegitimate because the conditions were different that season. However, neither Phil Jackson nor any other naysayer has given a focused reason why the Spurs should get the asterisk. Since we have no stated rationale we should at least examining the implied rationales. Here’s what I can come up with:
Possible Raps on the 1998-99 Spurs
1) Since the season was 50 games long, a team could position itself for the playoffs with a nice run and not have to withstand the last 30 grueling games after the All Star break.
1a) As a corollary to the first argument, a decent team could get hot at the right time (the playoffs) and win/steal the championship in this short season.
2) Because of the lockout, the quality of play was down in the league. There was little to no training camp and many players came in out of shape (remember seeing the fat Shawn Kemp for the first time?) so the winner of the league won in an inferior environment.
3) The Bulls won the last three championships and were broken up by force when they should have still been playing.
Responses to the Raps
1) All right, let’s go through the arguments one by one. With regards to the first argument, that the season was so short that a team could build up a good record without enduring a long season, I see little merit. Most years, the top playoff teams are set by the fiftieth game and there is little shifting of the top teams. At the very least, teams might shift slightly, rarely will teams fall from a top two seed to a four seed or below. There is no reason to think that the Spurs would have collapsed in the last 30 games. It is possible but not probable.
Looking at the Spurs record indicates they were a very good team and not a likely candidate to collapse. The Spurs went 37-13 for a .740 winning percentage, the best in the NBA (tied with the Jazz) which is roughly the equivalent of going 61-21 in an 82 game season. In addition the Spurs outscored opponents by 8.1 points per game which means that the Spurs expected win-loss of 40-10 which is really like going 65-17 in an 82 game season. So the Spurs were pretty good during the 50 games season.
1a) The notion that a mediocre team could get hot and make a run in the playoffs is really not applicable to the Spurs because they had the best record in the league. On the contrary, the Spurs playoff run was in accord with their performance in the regular season. The Spurs Finals opponent, the Knicks, were another matter (they were an eight seed who went on a run to the Finals after going only 27-23).
2) The argument that the standard of play in the lockout season is the best asterisk argument against the Spurs. The NBA really was below par in most of the 1998-99 regular season. All the players were locked out from October until January so the players missedthe five to six months of training that they usually receive. The numbers bear that point out. Scoring and shooting averages were down markedly that year from the years in between. Look at the league averages from those years:
Year PPG FG%
1997-98 95.6 .450
1998-99 91.6 .437
1999-00 97.5 .449
The 1998-99 season sticks out like a sore thumb, shooting and scoring were way down. It is unlikely that this was a result of improved defense and more a result of rust. On the other hand, a look at the stats seems to indicate that the teams started out slowly and reached normal levels of play by the end of the regular season. That being the case, the lower competition level argument is overstated. By playoff time, the good teams were playing as well as they would in any other season. In fact, there is an argument that because the season was shorter, all the teams were closer to full strength than they normally are at playoff time, which would make the playoffs even harder. I am not suggesting this was definitely the case but, at the very least, I think the notion that the quality of play was much lower than normal is given too much weight.
3) After the 1997-98 season, the second leg of the Bulls dynasty was broken, which definitely lowered the quality of play in the NBA for the 1998-99 season. The question people ask is whether the Spurs of 1998-99 could have beaten the Bulls if they brought MJ back for another run. I have no idea. I have my suspicions but we can’t know. Nor can we really indulge in hypotheticals too much. The Spurs beat the teams in front of them. This included sweeps of the Kobe-Shaq Lakers and the Blazers (who were very good). The Spurs had an easy Finals opponent in the Knicks but that is true of the Eastern Conference teams that the Lakers played in the Finals the next three years (with the exception of the Pacers). So, the Spurs Finals run was pretty impressive even without MJ.
Who is Better: 1998-99 Spurs or 2002-03 Spurs?
The two Spur champions are very different. The first team was built around veterans while this year’s team is actually very young. However, the teams had almost identical winning percentages (1998-99 was .740 and 2002-03 was .732) and both had the best record in the league. Let’s look at the key players from each team:
| 1998-99 | 2002-03 | |||||||||||||
| Player | Age | PPG | RPG | APG | TOPG | FG% | Player | Age | PPG | RPG | APG | TOPG | FG% | |
| Tim Duncan | 22 | 21.7 | 11.4 | 2.4 | 2.92 | 0.495 | Tim Duncan | 26 | 23.3 | 12.9 | 3.9 | 3.1 | 0.513 | |
| David Robinson | 33 | 15.8 | 10.1 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 0.509 | David Robinson | 37 | 8.5 | 7.9 | 1.1 | 1.3 | 0.469 | |
| Sean Elliott | 30 | 11.2 | 4.3 | 2.3 | 1.42 | 0.411 | Tony Parker | 20 | 15.5 | 2.6 | 5.3 | 2.4 | 0.464 | |
| Mario Elie | 35 | 9.7 | 2.9 | 1.9 | 1.3 | 0.471 | Stephen Jackson | 24 | 11.8 | 3.6 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 0.435 | |
| Avery Johnson | 33 | 9.7 | 2.4 | 7.4 | 2.24 | 0.473 | Bruce Bowen | 31 | 7.1 | 2.9 | 1.4 | 0.9 | 0.466 |
The 1998-99 team was a very veteran team and this year the team (with the exception of David Robinson) is very young. So which team is better? There are many methods to compare the two teams. One method is the position vs. position method. It is imprecise if the teams are relatively close but sometimes this method help illustrate the differences between teams that you might not see:
Positional Breakdown Method
Tony Parker v. Avery Johnson: Parker is the young gun who can shoot and score while AJ was a the general who could pass but was weak from the perimeter. Quite a contrast in styles. Parker outscored AJ by almost six ppg but AJ out assisted him by about 2 apg. In about three years, Parker will be better than AJ ever was but between AJ of 98-99 and Parker of this year Parker’s scoring ability gives him only a slight edge here.
Stephen Jackson v. Mario Elie: Again, an old vet is pitted against the erratic youngster. Elie was a pretty average player by the time he got to the Spurs while Jackson is also pretty average. The difference is that Jackson has some potential explosiveness while Elie brings some consistency and savvy. Elie’s experience may give him a slight edge but Jackson also should include his backup Manu Ginobili who is also about as good as the other two players (though he will get better). In all, Elie of 1998-99 gets a slight edge over the current two guard based on his defense and experience.
Bruce Bowen v. Sean Elliott: Elliott was starting to feel the effects of his kidney problems that year (he would have a transplant in the off-season). However, he was great in the playoffs (remember his three point barrage against Portland on Memorial Day?). So, Elliott’s numbers look worse than they actually were. In addition, Bowen is not a great player. He really should be a backup. (Ginobili also can play here too). Elliott was clearly a better player.
Tim Duncan v. Tim Duncan: Hmm. I’d say they are both pretty good players. Seriously, Duncan, like most players, is a better player at 26 than he was at 22. Of course, he was MVP caliber even at 22. The edge goes to the current Duncan but the difference is not that huge.
David Robinson v. David Robinson: This is really David Robinson 98-99 versus Old Man Robinson and Malik Rose. This is where the 1998-99 Spurs have the biggest advantage. Robinson was still an All Star back then while now he his a nice 20-25 minute player. Rose is pretty good but he too is far inferior to the younger Robinson.
Going position-by-position reveals a slight edge for the 1998-99 but only because Robinson was so much better back then. However, this is all guess work let’s see what we can do with some actual numbers.
Point Differential Method
Another interesting method for evaluating a team is by checking the points differential. The more you outscore your opponents the better you are likely to be. In that respect, the 1998-99 Spurs were much better. That team, as we already mentioned, outscored its opponents by 8.1 ppg. This years Spurs outscored opponents by only by only 5.4 ppg. That is a huge difference and strong indicator that the previous Spurs were better.
There are some arguments to undercut the impact of the differentials. First, you could argue the NBA is better today than it was in 1998-99. This is not a strong one as Portland, Los Angeles, and Utah were all very good in 1998-99 (not to mention Houston). A better argument is that the Spurs may be experiencing one of those hiccups were point differential somehow got skewed and that the Spurs were a better team but by luck their point differential does not reflect their dominance. Indeed, in 2000-01 the Lakers point differential was similarly unimpressive, yet the Lakers were clearly the best team in the NBA. So maybe the Spurs less impressive differential this year is a fluke but it certainly does not strengthen their case against the 1998-99 team.
Playoff Dominance Method
For a last method we can compare the playoff records of the two Spurs teams. I recognize that this method is flawed in that it depends on a number of factors (health, competition, and even luck all in a small sample size) but let’s see if it reveals anything. The 1998-99 Spurs had a great playoff run. They went 15-2 losing only once in the first round and once to the Knicks in the Finals. This years Spurs, conversely, have lost two games in every round of the playoffs. Currently, they are 15-8 (and soon to be 16-8). This a good team but nowhere near as dominant as the Spurs of 1998-99.
Overall
Pretty much every method for comparison has yielded that the older Spurs team was better. The team was more dominant in the regular season and in the playoffs. The only major difference between the two teams was that DRob was still very good back then and that is reason the older Spurs were better.
A Side Note on Rebuilding
Despite the fact that the current Spurs were not as good as the veterans of 1998-99, we would be remiss if we didn’t credit the management for being able to rebuild this team on the fly. Somehow, the Spurs are full of young players with some upside. The credit has to do with drafting and free agency. Gregg Popovich has picked up these players essentially for free. Parker was a late first round pick, Ginobili was a second round pick, Jackson and Rose were free agents. That is pretty impressive. Within in the next five years, I expect the Spurs to win a few more championships and to have a better year than they did in 1998-99.
A Final Thought on the Asterisk Spurs
I guess the Spurs are forgotten as much because they were sandwiched between two three-peats (the Bulls and the Lakers) as because of the lockout championship. Still, this was a very good. It was as good as any of the Western Conference teams that the Bulls played in the Finals during the 1990s. I expect that as the Spurs continue to win, the 1998-99 team will viewed from a different historical perspective. Now they are seen as a bump in the Lakers’ road. But as Spurs continues to win, that year will be remembered as the first of many championship runs by Duncan.