As the postseason heats up and a heavyweight clash between the Warriors and Spurs becomes more likely, I wanted to do a post that contrasts how these two teams win. But before highlighting how they’re different, I wanted to visualize how ridiculously dominant they were during the regular season. Both finished near the top all time in multiple team season statistics including MOV, SRS, Net Rating, and Adjusted Net Rating. I’ve charted these stats along with a “Meta Score” (which is simply the geometric mean of these stats along with wins) for the ’16 Warriors and Spurs against the averages for the NBA Finals champions from 1986-2015. As you can see, both teams are well above what an average champion would look like.

The Warriors and Spurs dominance has been evident since late December, but it bears repeating: these were (probably) two of the top 5 regular season teams we’ve seen in the last 30 years. Yet with that said, what’s even more interesting to me is that they dominated in completely opposite ways.

THE KATYUSHA VS THE TANK

A lot’s been written on this topic, and while this list isn’t comprehensive, for this post I’ll highlight three major differences:

Offense vs Defense: the Warriors were first in the league in offensive efficiency (as well as assists, effective field goal percentage, three pointers, and almost every other shooting metric) and were (arguably) the greatest offense of all time. And while the Spurs were no slouch on the offensive end (they were 3rd in offensive efficiency), their defense led the league in efficiency along with several other defensive shooting statistics.

Pace: The Warriors played at the second fastest pace (101.6) while the Spurs were tied for fourth slowest (95.7).

Starters vs Bench: The Warriors’ combination of Draymond Green and Steph Curry was (statistically) the best 1-2 punch in the league this year, leading all player pairs in terms of Real Plus Minus, Win Shares, and Box Plus Minus (even compared to Westbrook and Durant). But unlike the Thunder, the rest of the starters weren’t slouches as you can see below:

The Warriors starting lineup had a Net Rating of 15.4 which led the league. And while the Spurs starters posted the 2nd best Net Rating at 12.4, as 538 pointed out, their bench played at the level of a solid playoff team.

Manu Ginobli and company posted a Net Rating of 10.9, which was 3.9 points better than the 2nd best bench (Raptors at 7.0) and 5.8 points better than the Warriors bench (5.1, which was 3rd in the league). In fact, the Spurs’ 10.9 was better than the Thunder’s starters (9.9), the NBA’s 3rd best starting unit.

I’ve tried to visualize this difference in one chart by looking at average in-game point differential. Now you may be asking “what the hell is average in-game point differential?” On average, the Warriors scored 114.89 points per game and their opponents scored 104.13, which translates to an average margin of victory (or average point differential) of 10.76; for the Spurs, these numbers were 103.54, 92.90, and 10.64.

While both teams had different winning strategies, the outcomes (at least in terms of average margin of victory or MOV) were pretty similar; they both won by a little over 10.5 points per game. But we don’t need to limit average point differential to end of game. We can look at it in-game as well. For example, here’s the MOV after each quarter for both teams:

As you can see above, differences emerge when you look in game (for example: the first quarter), and they become more stark when you look at MOV for each second of the game.

I think the above chart does a good job visualizing the differences in how these teams win. The Warriors generally control the 1st quarter, as their league-best starters come out raining hellfire, and once the 2nd quarter starts, the Warriors are up by a comfortable amount. And not only are the Warriors good at getting a lead, but they’re one of the best teams ever at keeping them; until their loss to the Timberwolves on April 5th, they’d won an NBA-record 114 straight games when they were up by 15 or more.

The Spurs path is different. Their separation starts about halfway through the first quarter as their bench units enter the game, and from midway of the 1st to the beginning of the 4th, their average MOV climbs from 0.62 to 8.63 as their bench thrashes the other team’s 2nd unit and their slow pace and stifling defense slowly grind their opponents into dust.

In a way, these two teams remind me of different types of military weaponry. The Warriors open up and rain points on their opponents like the WW2 Soviet Katyusha,

(sans the mass-scale murder)

while the Spurs methodically grind you like a tank.

How the Memphis Grizzlies probably feel

While both look and behave differently, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of either (and if you’re saying to yourself “Did this guy just reference in-game margin of victory and World War II weaponry in the same post?”, the answer is yes).

THIS IS POTENTIALLY ONCE A GENERATION EVENT

Anyway, while the Warriors and Spurs have nearly diametrically opposed strategies for success, they both work: these two campaigns are probably two of the top 5 regular seasons of all time of the last 30 years (not to mention, the Warriors and Spurs did this while shouldering the 1st and 4th toughest road schedules in the NBA). So when I finished up this post, I couldn’t help but wonder, how often do you get two teams this good in the same season? There have been 877 seasons since 1985, so if you agree that the Warriors and Spurs had two of the top 8 regular seasons of the last 30 years, that means both teams are One-Percenters. I ran 10,000 simulations to get a sense of how often you’d have two (or more) 1% teams in a given season, and I found this occurred 3.4% of the time. In other words, we would only expect two teams of this calibre in the same season once every 30 years.

Assuming Steph’s able to return to 100%, and both teams take care of their 2nd round matchups (knock on wood!), I’ve never anticipated a non-Chicago non-championship series so intensely in my life as this potential Western Conference Finals. You would have two all-time great teams playing nearly opposite styles backed by strong organizations and led by great coaches. If this comes to pass, I’m going to be like a #basic millennial betch listening to Beyonce’s Lemonade: literally dyyiinng.

APPENDIX A: TOP 10 TEAMS SINCE 1986 BY REGULAR SEASON META SCORE

I wanted to see who were the top 10 teams of the last 30 years based on this meta score, and those results are below. At least one of the Spurs or Warriors will end the season with the ignominious title of “Best Non-Championship Squad” (currently held by the ’09 Cavs … sorry Cleveland).

APPENDIX B: TEAM RATINGS

I use abbreviations for team statistics, and just in case you wanted to know more about what those mean, I’ve listed brief definitions below.

MOV (Margin of Victory): This is a team’s average point differential (average points they scored minus average points they give up).

SRS (Simple Rating System): This is MOV adjusted for strength of schedule (more explanation here).

Net Rating: this is an estimate of point differential per 100 possessions. This metric will improve for slower paced teams like this year’s Spurs- although the Spurs had a lower MOV than the Warriors, this is partly because they played at a slower pace, and in fact, had a distinctly higher Net Rating.

Adjusted Net Rating: This is net rating adjusted for team strength (similar to how SRS is adjusted MOV).