The San Antonio Spurs won their 5th championship in 15 years, but there are those who don’t consider their 15-year run a dynasty, because during this stretch they have never won back-to-back championships. Is this assessment really fair?
The Spurs have been playing some of the best basketball of recent memory, but its hard to put a finger on what makes them so special compared to other dynasties. One of the first things that comes to mind about what makes them different is their stability. Compared to the recent dynasties, they have had a stability that those teams could not. The 1991-98 Bulls dynasty was interrupted by Michael Jordan’s baseball stint. The 2000-04 Lakers dynasty was cut short when Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant could not coexist with each other. San Antonio’s, on the other hand, has been going on for 15 seasons and are arguably the top contender for winning the finals next season.
Can stability really be measured outside of the length of the Spurs run? The Lakers (3/5) and Bulls (6/8) had better ratios of championships to wins than the Spurs (5/15), so an argument can be made that Chicago and Los Angeles could have dominated for a longer stretch, if off-the-court matters hadn’t stopped the runs. In this case, the Spurs would be an off-the-court dynasty, a team that has managed to be good for a long time but cannot be considered one of the elite teams. So to really prove the greatness of San Antonio, the matter has to be proven with how they performed on the court.
I made it my task to examine the stability of a team, analytically. To examine this, I made a model to predict wins using post-game statistics from basketball-reference.com. The model worked by taking all of the data from a particular season of a team and over-fitting the model on the data. It predicts wins using post games stats at 100-percent accuracy. This over-fitted model can be run on the teams next year and give a predicted number of wins. In turn, this predicted number of wins is indicative on how the team performed the previous year.
For example, consider a team who won 90% of their games where their TS% was above a certain mark, if in the next season they only win 50% of these games, some dynamic of the team changed. It could be that shooting well is not enough for them, because their defense isn’t as constant as it was the previous year. The reverse is also true. A team could go from winning 50% of these games in the previous year to 90% in the next year. These are the type of scenarios in which the model will highlight.
The best dynasties should improve from year-to-year, and on average they should beat have more wins than they were predicted. When this procedure was run over the length of the Spurs, Bulls, and Lakers’ dynasties, the Spurs improved more per year than the Lakers and the Bulls.
Spurs Consistency
| Year | Actual Wins - Predicted Wins |
|---|---|
| 2000 | -13 |
| 2001 | 6 |
| 2002 | 9 |
| 2003 | -3 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2005 | 12 |
| 2006 | 9 |
| 2007 | 2 |
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2010 | 2 |
| 2011 | 11 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2013 | -8 |
| 2014 | 5 |
Bulls Consistency
| Year | Actual Wins - Predicted Wins |
|---|---|
| 1992 | 1 |
| 1993 | 1 |
| 1994 | 5 |
| 1995 | -11 |
| 1996 | 25 |
| 1997 | -5 |
| 1998 | 0 |
Lakers Consistency
| Year | Actual Wins - Predicted Wins |
|---|---|
| 2001 | -7 |
| 2002 | -1 |
| 2003 | -3 |
| 2004 | 4 |
The Spurs beat last years model on average by 3.33 games a year, the Bulls by 2.29, and the Lakers performed worse by 1.75 games. San Antonio performed worse than the predicted model only 12 out of 15 years, the Bulls four out of seven, and the Lakers one out of four. Los Angeles actually performing worse than the model shows that stability on the court is not an easy feat.
San Antonio’s high score in this regard shows consistency and the ability to improve in the areas they were lack in. That is the rarely looked upon mark of a dynasty, the ability to adapt.
This can be attributed to many factors, coach Gregg Poppovich, the types of players the big three are and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the team, or the teams knack for picking up role players. Regardless of what has led to the team’s sustained success, it is what makes this team a dynasty — one that is geared up to be successful for many years to come.
This is my first article and I hope it was an enjoyable read. I would like to thank Evan Sidery, Analytics Game’s Managing Editor, for giving me this opportunity, and any feedback, both good and bad, is helpful.
