I was messing around on HoopsHype, looking at salaries, when I made the realization that even accounting for inflation, The Blazers are paying Andrew Nicholson more than they paid Clyde Drexler in the 1991-1992 season.
Former Blazer great, Andrew Nicholson, is on the Blazers' books for $2,844,429 each year until 2024. He was acquired in the Brooklyn Nets trade for Allen Crabbe back in 2017 and then he was waived and stretched for eternity. He's only 31 too, maybe he can replace Keljin Blevins at the end of our bench, who knows.
Current Rockets color commentator, Clyde Drexler, was paid $1,378,000 (adjusted for inflation is $2,612,090) for the 1991-1992 season. He was an All-star that year as well as being named All-NBA Second Team in 1991 and First Team in 1992. Another interesting note, Drexler's salary was good for the NBA's 83rd highest salary that year.
Obviously, this is more of a look into how much the game viewership, reach, and therefore monetization has changed over the last 30-ish years, but I thought it was interesting that one of the greatest shooting guards of all-time was so underpaid, even relative to his own league-mates at the time (i.e. Hot Rod Williams bringing home the NBA's 2nd highest salary that year behind Larry Bird at $3,786,000).
Riley wasn't the coach for the Heat in 2011 or 2012 but he was the team president.
I was too young to watch 1991 Finals at the time, but several years ago I’ve watched every game and created play by play with advanced box scores. I feel like it’s good time to share some information with Reddit (in the past I’ve published my analysis on one board). I’m going to focus on Bulls defense against Magic, because how he was doing vs Pippen and Jordan is always big deal in discussions.
First of all, if you don’t want to read whole thing and just want to know who defended Magic more: through 5 games Jordan defended Johnson more than 60% of Lakers offensive possessions, while Pippen 24%.
Johnson’s stats vs different defenders (per 95 possessions):
player poss TS% PTS AST TOV FGA FTA F drawn
Jordan 253 73,2 20,3 16,1 4,5 9,4 10,1 6,4
Pippen 102 64,9 20,5 11,2 4,7 12,1 8,4 7,5
no one 031 26,5 15,3 12,3 3,1 27,6 3,1 0
Horace 010 0,00 0,00 19,0 28,5 38,0 0,0 0
others 017 68,5 67,1 16,8 5,6 39,1 22,0 22,4
As you can see Magic was excellent vs both Bulls superstars, but was significantly better vs Jordan. The main difference was that Pippen needed less help from teammates, so overall Chicago’s team D suffered less and Magic hadn’t so many opportunities to make passes out of double to open man. That’s why Johnson had less assists and fouls drawn when defended by Pippen.
Overall Bulls team defense was outstanding, in some ways (rotations) reminds modern schemes and I think it was best shown in G1, when they have taken away Lakers strongest weapon: transition. LA had only 14 transition opportunities during that game and scored just 3 times, draw 1 foul (non shooting) and committed 5 turnovers (3 of them Magic's full court passes). Johnson had ball in his hands on 78 possessions and on 52 of them was defended by Jordan. (BTW, official box score says Magic had triple-double, but by my count he had 9 RBS; he also had one more missed 3PA than official box score says - at the end of 2nd quarter, when Pippen blocked his shot and also one tournover more.)
MJ alone played ok defense, but size and strength advantage were too much for him. He was great at pressuring ballhandler, but when Magic was below 3p line and started postup, then it was basically over and MJ needed help. Earvin was double teamed in basically every such situation. He had slightly above 20 postups and drawn double almost 30 times. Sometimes he was double teamed even
... keep reading on reddit ➡He averaged 31.2/6.6/11.4 in the series beating the lakers in 5 games. Only 2 other players have averaged 11+ assists in the NBA finals those being Magic and Bob Cousy. It seemed like Jordan had a point to prove here going against Magic proving all the haters wrong who said he was a selfish player who would never win
In that time frame:
- PG: Chauncey (1) Parker (1) = 2
- SG: MJ (6) Kobe (2) Wade (1) = 9
- SF: Iggy (1) Kawhi (2) KD (2) LBJ (3) Pierce (1) = 9
- PF: Duncan (3) Dirk (1) = 4
- C: Olajuwon (2) Shaw (3) = 5
Tony Parker: 24.5 pts/5 reb/3.3 ast/0.8 stl
Chauncey Billups: 21 pts/3.2 reb/5.2 ast/1.2 stl
Edit: Breakout with names.
If Worthy is 100%, the Bulls would have to focus a lot more attention him, as he would have been just as big of a threat as Magic. An injured Worthy allowed the Bulls to take their focus off him and put it all on Magic, but a 100% healthy Worthy would force the Bulls to focus their attention on both Worthy and Magic.
Worthy is playing much better if he's healthy. A healthy Worthy would result in the series going to 7. However, I still see the Bulls pulling off the victory.
This is what I think? What do the rest of you think?
Ok so June 12th is an amazing day in NBA history.
June 12, 2002:
With a 113-107 victory at New Jersey, the Los Angeles Lakers completed a sweep of the 2002 NBA Finals and won their third consecutive title. The Lakers became the fifth team in NBA history to win at least three straight titles.
I was fairly young during their 80s run, but maybe I just always attached it to Kareem being the "elder statesman" of sorts with the team then and thought they were all older. In the '91 Finals James Worthy & Byron Scott were 29, AC Green 27, and Magic missed the 20's bar but was only 31 and finished 2nd in MVP voting after winning the previous 2 awards. Magic logged triple doubles in games 1 & 5, including a 16-11-20 dime game in the closeout loss.
(Keep in mind Gamescore is box score dependent and was only instituted after 1984, so it looks at primarily modern box score performance. But this does mostly align with the best Finals performances of the modern NBA.)
1) Shaquille O'Neal, 2000 NBA Finals: 38.0 ppg, 16.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, 1.0 spg, 2.7 bpg, 61% FG. Game Score of 30.6.
Arguably the most dominant performance on this list from beginning to end. With Kobe Bryant dragging a bum ankle for most of the series (15.6 ppg on only 36.7% shooting), Shaq put up dominant performance after dominant performance. His free throw shooting was awful, but he also attempted 26 free throws a game!
43-19 in Game 1 on 67.7% shooting. 40-24 in Game 2 on 18 field goal attempts (Shaq took THIRTY-NINE free throws in Game 2, as the Pacers hacked away). 33-13 in Game 3, 36-21 in Game 4 before fouling out, 35-11 in Game 5, then clinched his first title with 41-12-4 (blocks) in Game 6.
Pair that with his MVP, and you could make a case that 2000 Shaq is the most dominant basketball player ever.
2) Shaquille O'Neal, 2002 NBA Finals: 36.3 ppg, 12.3 rpg, 3.8 apg, 2.8 bpg, 59.5% FG. Game Score of 30.1.
Probably the biggest mismatch in Finals history. Shaq was matched up against Todd Macculloch and Aaron Williams and feasted. Moreover, he actually shot his free throws well in this series (66.2%). With Kobe chipping in with 27-5-5 a night, Shaq was unstoppable.
- Game 1: 36 points, 16 rebounds, 4 blocks.
- Game 2: 40 points, 12 rebounds, 8 assists.
- Game 3: 35 points, 11 rebounds, 4 blocks.
- Game 4: 34 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists.
3) Michael Jordan, 1993 NBA Finals. 41.0 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 6.3 apg, 1.7 spg on 50.8% FG, 40% three. Game Score of 29.6.
MJ at the peak of his powers. Barkley put up 27-13-5.5 on a nightly basis and it didn't matter. This is t
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Free SGA
Presti isn't even top 5
The Warriors are the favorites, so if they were to win, they would be the first team since the famous Michael Jordan Bulls to get to the Finals all for the first time and win it on their first shot. It's been a long time.
Examples
2014: Everyone on the 2013 Spurs
2013: Everyone on the 2012 Heat
2012: LeBron, Wade, and Haslem on the Heat
2011: Dirk, Terry, and Kidd on the Mavericks
2010: Everyone on the 2009 Lakers
2009: Everyone on the 2008 Lakers
2008: James Posey & Sam Cassell on the Celtics
2007: Everyone on the 2005 Spurs
2006: Shaq on the Heat
2005: Everyone on the 2003 Spurs
2004: Lindsey Hunter on the Pistons
2003: Duncan and Robinson on the Spurs
2001-02: Everyone on previous Laker teams
2000: Shaq, Horry, Harper on the Lakers
1999: Mario Elie on the Spurs
1997-98: Everyone on previous Bulls teams
1996: Jordan/Pippen on the Bulls
1995: Everyone on 1994 Rockets
1994: Hakeem on the Rockets
1992-93: Everyone on previous Bulls teams
1991: Fresh slate! Everyone in their first Finals
