When It Comes to Comparing the Warriors and 1995-1996 Bulls, It's All About Age

Golden State will be going for history in the season finale against the Memphis Grizzlies. Having tied the record with a win at San Antonio, they need one more win to surpass the 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls for most regular season wins in NBA history.

This leads to direct comparisons between the two teams, connected by Steve Kerr, then a player, now the coach. The comparisons–often in the form of dismissiveness of the Warriors relative to the Bulls–have been coming since early in the season as Golden State got off to a 24-0 start.

Last Friday, in anticipation of Golden State approaching the mark, Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune wrote about comparing the two teams:

"Oh, please. Today’s Golden State darlings wouldn’t win a game against the Bulls of back when, so enough myth measuring. It has been overripe, this imitation rivalry between the indelible Bulls and the wishful Warriors, as hollow an option as paper and plastic, boxers and briefs, gluten and grain. Let’s see how many metaphors we can torture. The Bulls are the mansion on the hill and the Warriors are the double-wide in the driveway assuming it would be just as grand if it could only get as many bath mats."

Talk about a lede full of piss and vinegar, or whatever tortured grouchy old man metaphor you want to use. But I do admire the cock-suredness of moving it beyond “who’s better” to “they couldn’t even win a game.”

That allows Michael Wilbon to come in against that premise and argue that no, even though he covered that team, he doesn’t think they sweep. Clearly better, yes, but they wouldn’t sweep. As Wilbon points out, the Bulls didn’t sweep the Supersonics (it went 6, and they split in the regular season as well).

But here’s the thing about the Bulls-Warriors debate: It says a lot more about the opiner than anything else. The actual results are unknowable, and it is the safest form of fire-breathing takes, because no opinion will ever be proven wrong.

The league continues to evolve. Those physical Bulls versus these finesse, outside shooting Warriors? The Warriors starting lineup is both slightly taller (even though not huge for today’s standards) and bulkier. But that evolution is hard to quantify on a specific basis, even if we can see the clear difference when we turn on a black-and-white contest from 50 years ago.

Age plays a big factor. When it comes to sportswriters, they are a lot like musicians–well, except without the large groupie followings and fashion sense. That is to say, they tend to be older by about a generation than their core reader constituency and following. Wilbon was coming into prominence when the Bulls were owning the NBA (Lincicome’s bias is clearer, writing from Chicago).

Those reading and consuming the Bulls 20 years ago also think most highly of them. An ESPN poll has most readers favoring the Bulls to win the series. That changes with age, though, as it looks like your standard bell curve, with those who are now 35-44 favoring the Bulls the most at 77%. That’s the group that would have been between age 15 and 24, and thus more likely watching sports, but single, with more free time for sports pursuits, when the Bulls were at the best. The lowest support is in both the youngest (12 and under) and oldest (65+) age groups, where 57% favor the Bulls. (And that older group would probably swear by another team, like the 1972 Lakers, or Lakers or Celtics from the 1980’s).

Now, the truth is this, we simply don’t know how much the NBA has improved in 20 years, and that’s largely, again because of an age issue. One of my theories is that you can identify the points where a sport progressed–where that generation gap began to develop–by observing the ages of the top stars in the sport. If a group that were stars at young ages are then unable to stay at the top of the sport as they move into what should be their primes, then that’s some evidence that a new generation has supplanted them.

For example, the biggest leap, according to that theory, would have occurred in the first 20 years of the NBA’s history. Even though we didn’t have the “straight to the NBA out of high school” players then, the league was at its youngest in its early years. The young stars of those early years often didn’t sustain success, themselves supplanted by the Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson generation.

The next big leap would have been around the start of the ABA merger, through the early 80’s. Players like Adrian Dantley, David Thompson, Marques Johnson, and Walter Davis were among the top players in the league in 1978, all 23 or under. While they would continue to play, they weren’t the biggest stars in the league as they moved into their late 20’s, with the arrival of Bird/Magic, and then the historic 1984 and 1985 classes.

That generation from the mid-80’s was still at the top a decade later. Progress and development is not always linear. The 1995-1996 season had the 3rd-highest average age in NBA history, for the top 30 players by “wins produced”, and the following year was 1st. In fact, that stretch from 1994-1999 was an age bubble in the NBA, and the oldest stretch in the league history. Go look at the draft classes from the early to mid-1990’s, and you’ll see it gets pretty thin fairly quickly.

So part of the issue with the debate about the Bulls is this: How strong was an aging league by that time? I think there’s a decent argument that the 1992 version played a much tougher league, with many of the same top players, but all of whom were closer to their primes.

And the next big leap in terms of young talent? The mid-2000’s (LeBron and company), and maybe, just maybe, now. Don’t believe me? Look at the last few years and the number of young stars, and then look at this year’s list of the players with the highest “wins produced”. The list is populated by good players at the top who are between ages 25 to 30. It has several younger guys on it.

This might be the first year since 1958 that no player age 32 or older finishes in the Top 30 in wins produced. Pau Gasol is 34th, and Dirk Nowitzki at 38th, the only two in the Top 50 who are older than 31. LeBron is the only 31 year old. Old stars from the previous generation aren’t able to finish as highly as past generations.

I don’t know who would win between Golden State and Chicago. I think we can just enjoy it. But I do think it’s ridiculous to minimize what Golden State has accomplished and assume it’s come against inferior competition somehow. If anything, it looks like the NBA is entering a Golden Age of young talent entering its prime, and Golden State has been impressively winning against the best teams as we enter that age.

[photos via USA Today Sports Images]