Regular Season or Playoffs. 4,671 Total Games

https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/kobe-games-with-exactly-points-exactly-5-assists-and-exactly-5-rebounds-regular-season-and-playoffs

https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/michael-jordan-games-with-exactly-points-exactly-5-assists-and-exactly-6-rebounds-regular-season-and-playoffs

https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/lebron-games-with-exactly-points-exactly-7-assists-and-exactly-7-rebounds-regular-season-and-playoffs

Obviously, LeBron was phenomenal (duh). But that 2009 Cavs team were geniunely a very well-constructed team around LeBron where everyone played their roles perfectly. For anyone who never saw them live, people have been brainwashed to assume LeBron were surrounded by terrible players...

That 2009 Cavs team is one of the best teams to never win an NBA Championship.

1: Went up against literally the 4 best records in the NBA: 62 win Spurs, 60 win Jazz, 59 win Suns, 57 win Magic. Basically average opponent was a 60 win team. This is the highest sustained opponent difficulty ever.

2: Did not have home court in any round as the sixth seed and won a record 9 games on the road.

3: Won back to back winner-take-all games on the road against the Jazz and then the Suns. In fact won two elimination games on the road against the Suns down 3-1 in an OT game 5 followed by game 7.

4: Went up 2-0 on the road against the number 1 overall seed Spurs in the conference finals, and proceeded to win every game in Texas.

5: Swept the finals against the 1 seed in the east Magic that beat Jordan (sort of).

I know we talk about best solo star ring, but this is up there with best team championship ever.

Between 2008 and 2010, the Lakers were essentially a net neutral when Kobe was off the court as they were -1.7 per 100 in 2,890 minutes without him.

Of course, Kobe being Kobe, he elevated LA to a whopping +9.5 per 100 in the 8,988 minutes he was on the court during that stretch.

Stats via PBP Stats

The better one-year wonder?

What all time player, would make your team worse?

Rose? Melo? Mcgrady? Carter?

Every euroleague game is like this especially big derbies.

Outside of being under the NBA name, what stops ABA championships from being viewed as valid? Given how much basketball talent was divided between the two leagues, the teams from each league could clearly compete with one another.

One could argue that the number of teams was smaller, as the NBA had 12-17 teams from 1967-1975 and the ABA fluctuated from 11-10. However, many of Bill Russell’s championships came from a league which only had 8-10 teams, and that is rarely held against him.

Choosing to judge from the 04-05 season onward, as that season marks the addition of the final expansion team

For me, KD airballing in game 7 vs Bucks in 2021 and Jimmy losing to Boston AND Denver in the Finals is fine with me. The look of disappointment on their faces gets me everytime.

I'm a Pistons fan. The Bad Boys, in my opinion, are one of the greatest NBA teams in the history of the game. As Bill Simmons said, they were the first team to ever actually play defense.

In 1989-90, the world was properly introduced to one of the highest energy, spark plug defenders in the history of the game - Dennis Rodman. Mark Aguirre gave up his opening roster spot to Rodman when the team was in trouble early in the season, and he shot up the league as the greatest rebounder around, as well as a tenacious 2-way defender.

Chuck Daly said that Rodman was the most important player on the Bad Boys, in a team that had Thomas, Laimbeer, and Dumars.

But Hakeem deserved the DPOY that year.

Hakeem played 82 games, and averaged one of the most statistically significant seasons ever, dropping 24.3/14.0/2.9/2.1/4.6.

Yes, 6.7 stocks a game for 82 games. Absolutely crazy shit.

I will pay that the Rockets were not a talented defensive team across the board, and Akeem was essentially the entirety of their defense, but my god.

In contrast, Rodman was absolutely the most important defender on the best defensive team in the NBA, and that is essentially the entire reason he was given the DPOY.

But that season he averaged 0.6 steals, and 0.7 blocks. Of course, the raw numbers aren't everything, and in the era before any kind of significant advanced stat tracking - especially on defense - Rodman had that "you had to be there" quality.

But today, we do have advanced stat tracking, and that year, Hakeem led the league in Defensive Win Shares, DBPM, and Blocks. That season counts in the top 15 seasons all time for DBPM and DWS.

Even though DRTG is a flawed metric on it's own, Olajuwon was in his 4th straight season of leading the league in that category as well.

For reference, Rodman had a 0.9 DBPM to Hakeems 4.0, just to hone in the most important stat on this list for the era.

I don't know why this doesn't get talked about enough, i guess because Hakeem got his respect elsewhere in his career and was a dominant two way player rather than defensive specialist, but he was the most dominant defensive player of the late 80s, early 90s, in an era absolutely dripping with dominant big men.

Being able to witness in real time Kobe destroying all adversaries on the court with such an advanced skillset at such a young age was a sight to behold.