Author: Chris

All-Time NBA Franchise Tournament Rules

Here are the All-Time NBA Franchise Tournament Rules:

1. There are 12 players on each all-time franchise team.

2. Players must have played at least four years and 200 games for a franchise to be eligible for inclusion.

3. This tournament considers only the contribution that each player made for the particular franchise in question. For example, Wilt Chamberlain played five seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, and only those years are considered for his involvement with the all-time Lakers franchise team. His four years with the 76ers are the only years considered for his involvement with the all-time 76ers franchise team, and the same for his six seasons with the Warriors.

4. I’m not too dogmatic about positions. Starting lineups have an appropriate mix of big men, wings, and ball-handlers.

5. During the tournament, each franchise competes in a hypothetical best-of-seven series against their opponent. I first construct a detailed description of each team; then, after each team is constructed, the matchups begin, where I use research, analysis, and informed opinion to choose a winner.

6. All statistics are courtesy of the great http://www.basketball-reference.com/. The cumulative statistics for each player are listed. I avoid listing per-game statistics when any years are missing (steals per game and blocks per game were not officially tracked until the 1973-74 season, for example).

7. Franchises are seeded by the total number of championships won (first tiebreaker – NBA, BAA, and ABA all count), and by franchise longetivity (second tiebreaker). An online randomizer was used as a third tiebreaker.

8. Here is a guide to the acronyms used in each team’s chart (each is for the player’s time with the franchise under consideration):
PPG – Points per game
RPG – Rebounds per game
APG – Assists per game
SPG – Steals per game
BPG – Blocks per game
FG% – Field goal percentage
3FG% – Three point field goal percentage
FT% – Free throw percentage
PER – Player Efficiency Rating
WS/48 – Win Shares per 48 minutes
All-Star Games – Number of all-star games made
All-NBA – Number of all-NBA teams made (1st, 2nd, or 3rd team)
All-NBA Defense – Number of all-NBA defensive teams made (1st or 2nd team)
ROY – Rookie of the Year
MVP – Most Valuable Player
DPOY – Defensive Player of the Year
ASG MVP – All-Star Game Most Valuable Player
SMOY – Sixth Man of the Year
MIP – Most Improved Player
Finals MVP – NBA Finals Most Valuable Player

(Still) Love the Game

In 2008, my oldest friend decided to start a blog. He invited me to write about sports, and I couldn’t have been any more excited to do it. In my first post, I stated that “blogging allows me to pursue my dream in a half-assed manner, getting close enough to the action to discuss it in a public forum, but far enough that I don’t have to deal with any of the people involved.” The blog was disorganized, unfocused, and didn’t have any regular readers, but I loved working on it. Unfortunately, work, graduate school, and life caused me to stop, and I figured my sports blogging days were over.

A few months ago, I started to list the all-time greatest players for each franchise on a spreadsheet. This isn’t anything new; a Google search for ‘greatest players for each NBA franchise’ returns 123 million results. However, I’ve always been fascinated with tournaments, real or fake, and couldn’t help but wonder how each franchise would fare in this type of competition. What would the all-time Pistons starting five look like? Wouldn’t the all-time Suns be impossible to defend? How would the players from the different eras of Bulls basketball fit as a team? Would anybody be able to beat the Lakers?

I started poring through basketball-reference.com to build a 12-man team for each franchise. It turns out that choosing players, constructing starting fives, and seeing how the pieces fit together is incredibly fun for me. It’s even more fun to compare franchises to determine who has the greatest 12-man unit. You might think the results are inevitable, since the Celtics and Lakers have a combined 33 championships, but it’s amazing to see how good other franchises, such as the 76ers, Warriors, and Spurs are.

I love history, and I particularly love basketball history. I work as a researcher, so you can be sure that I’ll take the time to construct logical arguments here on this blog. Over the next few months, I’ll be profiling every current franchise (save for the newest expansion teams), and showing how they would fare in this all-time tournament. There are many more ideas that I’ll write about for this blog, but this tournament will be the primary focus for the foreseeable future. I’ll read every comment that you post, so please add to the discussion when you see fit. Thank you, and enjoy.