Draymond Green has claimed in a series of tweets that the 2017 version of the Golden State Warriors beat Michael Jordan and the Bulls dynasty of the 1990s. However, the dubs star also emphasized that such comparisons are pointless.
“I’m watching the 1998 Finals between the Bulls and Utah… It struck me that our 2017 team would have beaten those Bulls and even beat the Jazz by 40 points playing that style of basketball,” Green wrote on Twitter added: “And that’s why it’s stupid to compare different eras.”
Basketball was played very differently in the 1990s than it is today. For example, in the 1998 Finals, when the Bulls clinched their second three-peat with MJ, Chicago attempted 88 total three-pointers (29.5 percent 3FG) — mind you, in the full six-game series against Utah. The Warriors had 186 long-range attempts (38.2 percent batting rate) in five games against Cleveland in the 2017 Finals.
For the 2016/17 season, Kevin Durant joined the existing Warriors Big Three around Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Green. Last year, without KD, Golden State had set a new regular-season record with 73 wins and just nine losses, beating that of the Bulls (72 wins). However, Golden State lost the Finals to Cleveland, but a year later the dubs with Durant plowed through the postseason to the championship.
Green claims the Warriors beat both the Bulls’ ’98 and ’96 teams, but called for an end to “unnecessary debates.” “When people compare different eras, do they also take into account the drastically changed styles of play? Whatever the answer, it’s stupid to compare one era to the next.”
The ’96 Bulls are widely regarded as one of the greatest teams of all time. MJ and Scottie Pippen’s team won 72 regular-season wins, setting the stage for the second threepeat in franchise history after Jordan led Chicago to three titles from 1991-93. The Warriors won their first title of the Curry era in 2015, followed by two more with Durant in 2017 and 2018, and in 2022 Golden State won again without KD but with the old core around the Splash Brothers and Green.
