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Fixing Refresh Rate Issue on 4K TV Monitor

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I diagnosed why, when using my 2019 TCL Roku TV as a monitor for a mini PC running KDE Plasma, I could only get a 30 Hz refresh rate at 3840 x 2160 (fortunately, I fixed the problem).

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I have a 55 inch TCL Roku TV that I purchased back in 2019 (model 55S525). I explained in earlier articles that I no longer allow my “smart” TV to connect to the internet. Instead, I performed a factory reset and now use it as a monitor for a Beelink mini PC – we can say that the mini PC provides the “smarts.” I will confess that I am not an expert on televisions and monitors, as I have documented in multiple articles about my TV soundbar struggles. Having previously tackled sound issues, today we move to display problems.

The best resolution for my TV as a computer monitor in terms of visual appearance is 3840 x 2160. I currently use a KDE Plasma desktop on the mini PC attached to my TV and it looks good at the 3840 x 2160 resolution with 200% scaling and with a few tweaks to the text size. However, I always had an annoying issue with the TV as a computer monitor – an issue which also affects my workstation when I occasionally use it with the TV. At the 4k resolution, my TV only supported a 30 and 24 Hz refresh rates. At 1920x1080, it supports 60 Hz, but 1920x1080 lacks the pixel density to look good on a 55 inch display.

The TV here is set to 3840 x 2160 resolution with a refresh rate of 30 Hz. This was actually after I fixed the issue, so the 30 Hz is for illustrative purposes. But before I fixed the issue, I 30 Hz was the maximum refresh rate at 3840 x 2160.

For a long while, I assumed that the lower refresh rate at 4k resolution was a limitation of my TV. I usually use my TV to watch things and play the occasional game – usually a visual novel – so the refresh rate issue was not a major concern of mine. But when I recently tried to play Pokémon Red on my TV using an emulator I ran into an issue – It was very choppy. I recalled that I had fixed this issue on my workstation computer by switching the resolution to 1920 x1080, which led me to conclude that the problem was most likely being caused by the lower refresh rate at 4k. Switching my TV back and forth is a pain because I changed more than just the resolution to make my TV work as a computer display and those changes do not translate well to 1920 x 1080. Thus, I decided to look into whether there was something I could do to get a 60 Hz refresh rate at 4k like I can at 1920 x 1080.

First, I needed to confirm whether my TV supports 60 Hz refresh at 3840 x 2160, also known as 4k, resolution. I found an old review of my TV on RTINGS.com which indicates that it does indeed support 60 Hz at 4k (scroll down to “Input Lag” and “Supported Resolutions”). The question was how could I unlock this.

My first thought concerned HDMI cables. I have learned within the past couple of years (certainly after the launch of The New Leaf Journal) that there are different grades of HDMI cables. I have been gradually replacing my HDMI collection with better cables. My TV was actually connected to a two-port HDMI switch (which ostensibly supports 60 Hz refresh at 3840 x 2160), but I was unsure about the nature of the cables I had used to connect the switch to my TV and the computer to my switch. I poked around my video cable box and pulled out an HDMI cable that I know should support at least 60 Hz at 3840 x 2160. I then removed the switch and used the new cable to connect my mini PC directly to the TV. I went back into my desktop and checked whether I now had a 60 Hz refresh option at 3840 x 2160. Alas, it still maxed out at 30 Hz.

I then decided to poke around my TV’s settings. I seldom go into my TV setting menus, having generally settled on a series of sensible picture defaults and otherwise not using my TV for anything besides a monitor. I found a promising field called “TV inputs”:

Long-time readers may recognize the mysterious character in the top left of the photo.

As you can see, all of my inputs are listed (note I am not using HDMI 4 for ARC). Unsurprisingly, my mini PC is connected to the input I labeled “Computer” (HDMI 1). I decided to open that.

It's still lurking.

I had three options. “Rename” and “Remove” were obviously not what I was looking for, but “HDMI mode” seemed to be over the target.

Our friend shows up more clearly in this photo. As I explain below, "Auto" was the default setting. I changed it to HDMI 2.0.

You can see that we have three options: HDMI 1.4, HDMI 2.0, and Auto. When I first found this menu, it was set to Auto, which it describes as “[a]utomatically tries to select the best HDMI mode to use for the device plugged into the TV.” Regarding HDMI 1.4, it states that “[m]aximim resolution is 30Hz.” Finally, for HDMI 2.0, the TV has the following description:

[O]lder devices may not work correctly in this mode. Maximum resolution is 4K at 60Hz and supports compatible HDR sources.

HDR is not an issue for me, but it is clear from these descriptions that I want HDMI 2.0 for my TV. I was certain that I had an HDMI 2.0 cable and that my computer, with onboard video from a 12th generation Intel N100 CPU, should support 60 Hz at 4k. (Note: The N100 is a low-level Intel CPU but it is quite capable for normal tasks and reasonably competitive with higher-end Intel CPUs from much older generations). I suspected that my TV was choosing HDMI 1.4 when it was set to “Auto” instead of HDMI 2.0. Thus, I selected HDMI 2.0 and then checked my computer.

Without rebooting or anything, KDE Plasma now offered 60 Hz as a refresh rate option at 3840 x 2160. I selected it and applied the change. My TV worked without issue. To see if my Pokémon issue was solved, I tried running Pokémon Red again with the Gambatte emulator. This time it worked without stuttering and without my needing to move off 3840 x 2160.

Another TV-as-computer-monitor mystery solved.

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With the help of an open source Adobe Flash emulator called Ruffle, we take a look at the original Flash version of a Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora (localized for al|together 2008 as May Sky).

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I reviewed 31 freeware visual novels which were localized from Japanese to English for the three al|together festivals in 2005, 2006, and 2008, as part of a long project here at The New Leaf Journal. With the exception of Crimsoness, all of the localizations were of Japanese novels that were written either in NScripter (al|together localizations of NScripter games are written in flavors of ONScripter) or KiriKiri 2/KAG 3. However, there are a few cases wherein the Japanese novel that served as the basis of an al|together localization was not the original version of said novel. I previously examined one such case in Tegami, which was localized as The Letter and submitted to the al|together 2008 festival. Today we will look at a similar and arguably more interesting scenario for another al|together 2008 piece: May Sky.

(Aside: I ranked May Sky as the best of the 31 al|together novels after carefully reading through each and every one. It also has a high aggregate reader rating on the Visual Novel Database. While that is not relevant to the current article, it should go without saying that I highly recommend reading it yourself for the low price of free.)

May Sky/Gogatsu no Sora Version History

(Note: I will generally refer to the original Japanese novel as Gogatsu no Sora and Insani’s English localization as May Sky.)

May Sky is the English localization of a Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora. While May Sky was released as part of al|together 2008, the original Japanese novel was first made available on August 31, 2005. However, what if I told you that this was not actually the first release of Gogatsu no Sora? For an explanation, I quote from Seung Park’s introduction to May Sky (Mr. Park is the head of Insani, which handled the May Sky localization, and he supervised and edited the localization, which was handled primarily by Irene Ying):

May Sky is a work with an unusual history. Originally written in Adobe Flash and released one chapter at a time online by Scrubbing in early 2005, it was converted into an installable NScripter-based distribution in August 2005, and has been well-regarded in the freeware novel game scene ever since. Unlike most Flash-based novel games, this one has substantial length — it takes about 2-4 hours to read through the entire piece. Independent novel game reviewer NaGIsa gives this piece a “recommended” rating, noting that while the scenario is strongly written and the music is well-chosen, for a supposedly romantic piece it doesn’t feel all that romantic.

The NScripter version of Gogatsu no Sora was released on August 2005, but the novel had originally been published online as a four-part Adobe Flash game in the preceding months.

Mr. Park added additional information in an introduction to Scrubbing, the doujin visual novel circle behind Gogatsu no Sora:

Scrubbing is a bit of an oddity in the freeware novel game development community. The vast majority of creators in this scene utilize scripting engines like NScripter, KrKr2/KAG3, or Yuuki!Novel as platforms for their stories. Scrubbing, on the other hand, favors Adobe Flash…

My understanding is that NScripter was the most popular visual novel scripting engine back in the day, and as I noted, this is reflected in the fact that the vast majority of al|together localizations were of NScripter novels. Both NScripter and KiriKiri are still used today (see recent example of the latter). I explored Yuuki!Novel, which is no longer being developed, in my article on Tegami. In the Tegami piece, I quoted from Mr. Park’s explanation that Insani would not have localized it for al|together without the creator reworking the original Yuuki!Novel piece in NScripter. Unsurprisingly given the absence of Adobe Flash localizations in al|together, it appears that Gogatsu no Sora being released as an installable NScripter game was a prerequisite to its being considered as an al|together candidate. I quote again from Mr. Park’s short introdution to circle Scrubbing:

[I]t is the only recent piece that Scrubbing has done in which the installable — rather than the Flash — version is considered definitive, and on top of that the scripting engine that the installable version uses happens to be NScripter — a far cry from the world of Flash indeed. It is certainly their longest piece, clocking in at 2-4 hours’ read time.

I for one am glad that Scrubbing made the wise decision to create a definitive and installable version of Gogatsu no Sora using NScripter. Had it not, I would have never had the opportunity to read it and review it here at The New Leaf Journal. But the fact that the original Flash version of Gogatsu no Sora was effectively superseded by the installable version did not cure me of my curiosity. What happened to this Flash version? Is it still out in the wild in the same way that the original Yuuki!Novel Tegami is? Let us investigate.

Finding the Gogatsu no Sora Website

Most of the circles behind the Japanese visual novels had websites. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly in light of the fact that the novels localized for al|together were all created somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years ago, most of those websites only “exist” today in the Internet Archive. Only a few of the developers – for example those behind Narcissu and A Dream of Summer, are still creating visual novels under the same name (noting it is possible some of the developers joined new circles or studios). Visual Novel Database only credits Scrubbing with Gogatsu no Sora (it was also released for Android and iOS in 2014) – apparently not including Adobe Flash games in its list. This seems like a recipe for a dead website. But, perhaps surprisingly, Scrubbing’s website for Gogatsu no Sora remains online despite seemingly not having been updated since 2006:

https://mukiryokukan.sakura.ne.jp/gogatsunoSora.htm

It turns out that May Sky is a subsection of a larger site run by who I presume is the original gentleman behind Scrubbing. We see that he has continued to release other novels throughout the years, and he maintains the site as what appears to me to be a portfolio and diary. But we are here to find the Flash games. To follow along, navigate to the original Gogatsu no Sora site.

I ran into an obvious issue: The whole site is in Japanese and as I always remind readers in my al|together articles, I cannot read Japanese. Fortunately we have Google Translate which, notwithstanding its limitations, usually does well enough to allow me to navigate a webpage like this and find what I am looking for.

The first thing I noticed is that Google Translate appears to translate Gogatsu no Sora as Distraction of garbage, which I imagine from having read Insani’s localization and supporting materials is probably not the best translation of the name. But we can set that aside and see that we have links to everything we are looking for on this page. Below a table of contents header, we see four banners featuring CG images from the novel under “Select the story you want to read.”

Clipped from the Gogatsu no Sora website. The first four banners correspond to the four chapters of the Flash version of the novel. The fifth banner links to a download for the NScripter version. The hyperlink below the banners, discussed in my next passage, links to the al|together 2008 page for the English localization of the novel, May Sky.

Below that we have another header which reads “-Download NScripter Edition-” with a link. I correctly ascertained that the top four banners link to the four chapters of the Flash version of the novel whereas the separate fifth banner was for downloading the NScripter release. Google Translate also reveals that below the NScripter banner is a link to the al|together 2008 page for the English May Sky release (lest anyone doubted the English version is an officially sanctioned localization). We will be able to download and play the Flash novels, but before that let us learn a bit more about them.

Gogatsu no Sora Visual Flash Novel Notes

Before we visit the individual pages for the Flash novel, the Gogatsu no Sora home page gives us some more information.

Firstly, according to the Gogatsu no Sora home page, the novel was first published online as an Adobe Flash game “weekly in May 2005.” I was curious if I could learn the exact dates in May 2005 that each chapter was published, but there were no publication dates included in the page source.

Secondly, the developer included a helpful table highlighting the differences between the Flash and NScripter versions of the novel for interested prospective players. For the Flash version, the developer noted that you can play in the web browser and, according to our Google Translate localization, it has a “mysterious karaoke mode” in the third of four Flash episodes (intriguing). Regarding the NScripter release, the site notes that the NScripter version has a bonus scenario after completing the main game (I discussed the bonus scenario in my May Sky review) and that it can be played in full screen mode.

Adobe Flash Troubles

With the introduction out of the way, let us try to play the Adobe Flash games. I opened the first chapter on the Brave web browser and, to no surprise at all, saw nothing where the embedded Flash game should be. I say “to no surprise” because modern web browsers do not support Adobe Flash, and Adobe itself discontinued Flash in 2020.

You can see the blank space where the Flash game would/should be.

Does this mean our journey is over? I think not.

From the outset, I note that I am not too familiar with Adobe Flash. I am sure that I interacted with Flash programs back in the day, but, to the extent I did, I did not think much about Flash. I recall that there was concern about preserving Flash games and media for posterity. I figured from that there must be some Flash solutions out there that do not require me to visit the Gogatsu no Sora site in an old web browser (possibly with old extensions) to see if the Flash games still work.

I conducted a quick online search for tools to run Flash programs. For potentially new readers, note that I run Linux so I wanted to find something that would work natively on my system. A quick search led me to an open source Flash emulator called Ruffle. I saw that it could be installed on Linux. I run EndeavourOS on my workstation, which is based on Arch Linux, and the Arch User Repository has several Ruffle packages. I went with ruffle-bin and it installed without an issue.

I only noticed after the fact that there are also Ruffle browser extensions for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers – but we will review those in due course.

Using the Ruffle App

I opened the Ruffle app on my desktop.

It asks for a file or URL. Noting again that I went into this not knowing much about Flash, I saw that it wanted a file ending with .swf. I looked at the visible text on the page with what was presumably the Flash game and saw no URL ending with .swf. But I figured one ought to be there somewhere. I checked the page source (right click and select “View page source” or press ctrl+u) and then searched the page source for a URL ending in .swf. It did not take long to find the URL I was looking for:

I copied the URL, http://mukiryokukan.sakura.ne.jp/Flash/Gogatsu_no_Sora.swf, into my Ruffle desktop app…

Then I hit “Start”…

As you can see, we reached the title screen. I confirmed that everything about the game works as one would expect. See the following screenshot from part one of the the first chapter of the Flash version:

That’s the aesthetically unique Minori I learned to love in the English May Sky. I will note from my brief survey of the Flash game (brief because there is only so much I can do without reading Japanese) that the assets appear to be the same as in May Sky.

Before continuing, I will note that the exact same process works for chapters 2-4 of the Flash Gogatsu no Sora.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Simply navigate to the applicable chapter and find the .swf file in the page source (parts 2-4 have the number corresponding to their part at the end of the same base URL used for 1).

Downloading Original Flash Game and Running Locally

With that out of the way – let us move on to a more interesting use of the Ruffle app. If you recall, Ruffle requests a URL or file. The problem with URLs is that a website that is up today may be down tomorrow. Perhaps the maintainer of the broader site on which the May Sky Flash novels is hosted decides to scuttle the site for one reason or another. It may live on in the Internet Archive, but the disappearance of the original could imperil the Flash novels. One way to ensure that the novels are always available is to run them locally. So, having already found and tested the URLs, I decided to see if I could run them locally.

There is a well-known command line tool called GNU Wget that can, among many other things, download files from http sources. I have not used it for much beyond simple downloading, but that is all we need here. I opened my terminal emulator and entered the following simple command to download the first part of the Gogatsu no Sora Flash novel:

wget http://mukiryokukan.sakura.ne.jp/Flash/Gogatsu_no_Sora.swf

It worked exactly as expected. The swf was now downloaded onto my computer. Now let us try using Ruffle on the local .swf file instead of giving it an external URL for the file…

Then start…

It works again. I will submit for the record that running Ruffle on the local file led to a much quicker start-up than using a URL, although I did not note any difference after starting up (note: it was easier to capture the pre-title screen when starting from a local file). For those who are committed to preservation, downloading the .swf files protects against the possibility that the source go offline or be otherwise modified. I was able to download all four chapters, so I can confirm that this works for the whole collection.

(Note: I submit for the record that I am not recommending that people download and run random .swf files from the internet as a general matter.)

Before continuing, please know that you should not redistribute the Flash version of Gogatsu no Sora without the express consent of the creator – especially in light of the fact that he is still actively maintaining the website that includes Gogatsu no Sora and the associated .swf files. I am demonstrating how to download the files and run them locally for personal use only.

The Ruffle Web Extension

I only noticed after using the Ruffle App that there is also a web extension for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers. I decided to test the Chromium extension on Brave. Now recall that I posted a screenshot earlier showing that the Flash game window does not display by default on Brave because Brave, like all other modern browsers, does not support Flash. Let us return to that page with the Ruffle extension enabled…

The big “Play” button looks promising. I clicked it.

It works.

While I have not extensively tested the Ruffle extension, I can confirm that at a minimum it allows you to play Gogatsu no Sora in a web browser just like it is 2005.

Note that I understand Flash was discontinued in large part because it has significant vulnerabilities. While Ruffle explains in great detail how it is designed to mitigate many of the vulnerabilities associated with Flash.I am not an expert on the matter and have no opinion as to whether it is wise to use it on every extant old site with Adobe Flash media (the same can be said of the desktop app). But I can recommend it for our Gogatsu no Sora test case.

Extra Game?

I noticed two mysterious banners at the bottom of the Gogatsu no Sora website featuring references to the novel but coming after links to all four parts of the Flash novel, the NScripter download link, and a link to Insani’s May Sky. Both of these are additional Flash files.

The first is a neat Flash file with links to resources about Scrubbing and Gogatsu no Sora and some neat – dare I say surprisingly modern – effects.

Unsurprisingly, all of the materials are in Japanese, but from my cursory look it appears that most, if not all, of the links are still alive.

The second banner is of more interest to me as a fan of May Sky. The banner for it reads in English “After Summer Snow, Before Winter Firefly.” Sure enough, so does the first frame of the Flash media that banner links to:

This caught my attention because the NScripter-only epilogue (or extra) chapter in the main game is called August Snow in May Sky. I suspected that Summer Snow refers to that same epilogue – only that Insani opted to use August Snow in the localization (their choice makes sense since the epilogue does indeed take place in August). I kept clicking and was greeted with Minori in this Flash game, although not the Minori who is most often associated with May Sky.

In the main May Sky story, Minori is (almost) always wearing her miko (shrine maiden/priestess) robes. But in the Summer/August Snow episode, she is wearing casual clothes and sporting a somewhat different hairstyle. This Minori is in her August Snow outfit, which makes sense given that this Flash game/novel’s title begins with “After Summer Snow.” I clicked through the episode. We do not see Minori again, but there are two room backgrounds that do not appear in May Sky proper in what turns out to be a very short piece. I suspect that it is some sort of director’s commentary, but because I cannot actually read the textthis is just my idle speculation. I may investigate at some point to see if I can get anything out of it (unless someone who knows Japanese wants to translate it for me).

In any event, both of these Flash files can be rendered by Ruffle or even downloaded and run locally in the same way as the four chapters of the Flash version of Gogatsu no Sora.

Final Thoughts

I reviewed the al|together novels over a period of more than three years. Some of my later reviews covered issues involving the novels and their development that I overlooked in my earlier reviews. May Sky was a relatively early review (May 2022), and it came before some of my later articles on the version history of A Winter’s Tale and the early version of The Letter. Had May Sky been a later review, I may have examined the original Flash game along side my review of the al|together localization. But I suppose late is better than never. I credit the developer of May Sky for not only keeping the original website online for nearly two decades, but also for keeping it in working order. Thanks to that preservation, we can still enjoy and study the web version of Gogatsu no Sora – granting that full enjoyment requires knowing Japanese. Moreover, because of the nature of Flash files, I have demonstrated that we can preserve the original Gogatsu no Sora even if something were to happen to the original website. In the future.I may look into other extant Flash visual novels and try to figure out what the deal is with what appears to be an extra Gogatsu no Sora story.

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What began as an attempt to photograph a pretty pigeon in Forest Hills turned into an exciting photoshoot of a frantic nest-building bird.

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I took a long walk to and from Forest Hills, Queens, on May 26, 2024 (see a post on a photo I took early in the walk from Downtown Brooklyn). I reached Forest Hills proper after a bit more than two hours of walking. I had never been to Forest Hills before, so I took the time to take in the sites.

In a particularly scenic stretch of what must be one of the nicer neighborhoods in Queens, I came across a very pretty white and gray pigeon in a grassy front yard adjacent to a brick residential building. The pigeon reminded me a bit of a white and brown pigeon that I photographed in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn, back in 2021. I knew I had a photo opportunity, so I quickly readied my LineageOS-powered Google Pixel 6a camera and prepared to take a photo. Now before I present the first photo in this set, I want to make clear that the pigeon did not appear to be doing much more than existing when I readied my camera. However, as I took the picture, I noticed that our feral feathered friend was actually hard at work.

You can see that the pigeon is holding a stick in its beak. As I aimed the camera at the pigeon, it suddenly fastened its beak to the twig and yanked it out of the ground (violently, I might add). By the time I took the photograph, the pigeon was already off to the races. When I say off to the races, I mean the pigeon literally started racing.

This is what I would describe as back-foot pigeon photography. When I set up the first photo, I had no idea that something big was happening. After quickly realizing that the pigeon was holding a twig, I tried to get another photo. I barely got the photo because the pigeon broke out into a full sprint after securing the twig. I have seen pigeons run across the street dodging death by tire, but I dare say I never saw a pigeon run as fast as this pigeon did once it had its twig. You would almost think it was hiding knees somewhere.

I suspected the pigeon had a nest somewhere. I quickly (probably not as quickly as the sprinting pigeon) followed it along the fence. As soon as it turned the corner seen in the first picture, it took flight – but it did not have far to fly. Its destination was just around the bend.

The pigeon had a nest right above the entrance to this building. This pigeon and its pigeon spouse (I did not catch the spouse) appear to have done a fine job building a nest on the downward slope of an arch.

What began as a plan to photograph an aesthetic pigeon in Forest Hills turned into something of a nature special.

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I invite readers to catch up on the Sound! Euphonium anime series for free on Tubi TV before I cover the third and final TV season in my 2024 anime review at the end of the year.

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I published year-end anime reviews with my personal best-of rankings in each of the last three years (see 2023, 2022, and 2021). While some of my anime articles have done well in recent months – notably some entries in my understanding anime hair color series – my year-end reviews never made much of an impression on our overall rankings. This makes me sad because those reviews are a pain to put together. I suppose one reason, for example, that my short article on height differences in a 2023 anime performed much better than my full 2023 anime review is that, while I sometimes write about anime, The New Leaf Journal is not actually an anime website. Much of our audience (perhaps you) have no particular interest in anime. Perhaps some readers who enjoy my writing skim over my anime content and find one show or another that looks interesting but do not know where to start. Today, about five months before you can expect to see my 2024 anime year-in-review (spoiler: it looks like we will have a good ranking this year), I am inviting readers to take an easy path to catching up on what will be one of the featured series in my ranking: the third season of Sound! Euphonium.

The protagonist of the series, Kumiko Oumae, knocks on a door in an episode from the third and final TV season.

(If you already know about Sound! Euphonium and are interested in watching the movies where they are freely available, feel free to skip ahead to my notes on their availability on Tubi TV.)

2024: The Year That Is

I think my anime year-end review pieces are more fun when I hold my cards close to my chest. For example, in 2023 I wrote three full-length reviews of new anime series, but none of these three series ended up in my year-end top six. I bucked that trend this year with my reviews of the second season of The Dangers in My Heart, which I noted would have been my anime series of the year in 2023 and is an early contender for top spot in 2024, and of the excellent A Sign of Affection, which, while already eliminated from the anime of the year race, looks to be a strong contender for a good ranking when the dust settles. (I also reviewed the second season of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun which had its moments but is already relegated to the honorable mention category.) The anime year is broken into four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall – and a single season of an anime usually has 11-13 episodes. The three 2024 series that I have reviewed thus far were all from the winter season. The spring season had some strong shows although at the moment [I have no immediate plans to review any of them individually. One of those strong shows is the third season of Sound! Euphonium. While I will decline to give away my the full scope of my current anime of the year thinking, I will submit for the record that the third season of Sound! Euphonium will certainly feature in my year-end ranking.

(Ulterior motive for this article: By getting some of the Euphonium introduction out of the way here, I can reduce the amount of work I will have to do in December!)

Introducing Sound! Euphonium

The Sound Euphonium! anime series is based on a long-running novel series by Ayano Takeda. It focuses on the high school concert band of a fictional Kyoto high school, Kitauji High School. The protagonist and principal view-point character of the series, Kumiko Oumae, plays the euphonium (surprise!) and begins the series as a freshman member of the band (note: high school in Japan is three years so by “freshman” we mean 10th grade student).

Kumiko holding her euphonium in the first season.

Sound! Euphonium had a long run from start to finish. The first TV anime season aired for 13 episodes in 2015 and the second season aired for 13 episodes in 2016. Recap movies condensing the first and second TV seasons aired in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The first two TV seasons and their corresponding recap movies covered the first year of Kumiko’s tenure at Kitauji High School. The third and fourth movies were released in 2018 and 2019. These two movies both covered events in Kumiko’s second year at Kitauji High School. The first of the two movies – Liz and the Blue Bird, is unique in that Kumiko and the other most prominent characters in the series faded into background roles while two second-tier characters who featured in one of the main story-lines of the second season took center stage. Liz and the Blue Bird was also crafted in such a way that prior knowledge of the series was not a barrier to entry (with that being said – I think that Liz and the Blue Bird is best watched by people who are familiar with the material covered by the first two Euphonium TV anime seasons or their respective recap movies). The fourth movie, released in 2019, covered the same year that Liz and the Blue Bird did but from the perspective of Kumiko and the main story. While I recommend watching both Liz and the fourth movie, only the fourth movie is required viewing for the third TV season. There was a theatrical original video animation covering events after the conclusion of the 2018 and 2019 movies released in 2023 (between the length of an episode and a full movie). Finally, the third and final season of the TV anime aired for 13 episodes from April 7 through June 30, 2024. The final season covers Kumiko’s senior year in high school and as a member of the concert band.

See the list below for a full breakdown of all of the TVs and movies.

Kumiko's First Year in High School

Sound Euphonium TV Series 1 (2015, 13 episodes) and 2 (2016, 13 episodes)

The first movie, Welcome to the Kitauji Concert Band (2016) is a condensed and re-mastered version of the material from the first TV season.

The second movie, May the Melody Reach You (2017) is a condensed and re-mastered version of the material from the second TV season.

Kumiko's Second Year in High School

The third movie, Liz and the Blue Bird (2018) takes place during Kumiko's second year of high school but focuses on two second-tier characters instead of the main cast.

The fourth movie, Our Promise: A Brand New Day (2019) covers the events of Kumiko's second year in high school from the perspective of Kumiko and the main cast. It is the direct sequel to the events of the second TV season/second movie.

Ensemble Contest Arc (2023) is an original video animation story that takes place after the events of the two second season movies but still during Kumiko's second year of high school.

Kumiko's Third Year in High School

TV Series Season 3 (2024, 13 episodes) covers Kumiko's third and final year of high school. This follows directly from the fourth movie and the Ensemble Contest Arc OVA and completes the main series.

Note: I learned while reading for this article that the author of the novels extended the series beyond covering Kumiko’s first year due in large part to the success of the anime adaptation.

Anime studio Kyoto Animation is behind all of the Sound! Euphonium TV seasons and movies. Kyoto Animation has been one of the most notable anime studios over the last two decadeds, not only distinguishing itself for some of its productions (see e.g., The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and anime adaptations of Key visual novels, including Kanon and Clannad, and the A Silent Voice movie), but also for its tendency to keep the anime production pipeline in house. Kyoto Animation was thrust into international news for reasons unrelated to its actual anime. On July 18, 2019, an arsonist set fire to Kyoto Animation’s main studio, murdering 36 (including several staffers with worked on the Sound! Euphonium series) and injuring many others. Remarkably, the studio persevered. The season three of Sound! Euphonium is its third full-length anime series since the 2019 arson attack (it also released several movies in the past five years). See Kyoto Animation’s full list of works – Kanon (2006-07), Clannad After Story (2008-09), and Hyouka (2012) are my three non-Euphonium favorites on the TV broadcast side.

While I cannot speak for the underlying novels, almost all of the TV anime and movies – with the notable exception of Liz and the Blue Bird – is seen primarily from Kumiko’s perspective. We meet Kumiko as an indecisive girl who has a slight self-loathing streak owed in large part to her self-awareness that she is indecisive and lacks a strong internal drive to do anything. Despite having played the euphonium for many years, including in her middle school band – she begins the first episode of season one ambivalent about continuing with music in high school. Moreover, she has some angst tied to a falling out she had had with her friend and middle school co-band member, a very talented trumpet player named Reina Kousaka when Kumiko was not sufficiently upset about their middle school band not winning an award in their final competition. But Kumiko is very quickly dragged into the band (almost literally) by two new friends she meets on her first day of school, and there she discovers that Reina is also attending Kitauji and joining the concert band. (Kumiko’s childhood friend and fellow band member from middle school, Shuuichi Tsukamoto, also joins the high school band). Kumiko had hoped to at least take up a new instrument, but those hopes were dashed when the biggest personality in the high school band, vice president and drum major Asuka Tanaka, discovered that Kumiko, like her, played the euphonium.

The moment early in the first season when Asuka (right) discovered that Kumiko (left) had been concealing the fact she plays the euphonium.

While the series focuses on Kumiko and her first year friends, it is not monofocused. Viewers are quickly made aware of the fact that Kumiko and her friends are joining a band with its own preexisting circumstances. For example, Kumiko notices that the band has a distinct dearth of second-year members, which is addressed in the first TV season. Another key point is that Kumiko and her friends are not the only additions to the band – also joining is first-year instructor Noburu Taki, who delivers one of the series’ early defining moments when he asks the band to vote on whether they want to play for fun or train to win honors in the national competition. The band’s decision to take the latter, more difficult pathsets in motion the major events of the three years covered by the three seasons and the movies.

The first season deals primarily with Kumiko settling into her new band and reestablishing her friendship with Reina. From a broader perspective, we see the band deal with the tension caused by its quest to be nationally competitive and by the effect that the addition of several talented freshman – some of whom may be more talented than their upperclassmen – have on the band’s culture. We see Kumiko, who initially was not motivated to do much of anything, become invested in the band, her own performance, and in the problems of some of her fellow band-members. The second season builds off the first, but here we see Kumiko, who comes to be seen as someone others can rely on, taking a problem solving role (whether she is seen as helpful or meddlesome depends on one’s perspective). From Kumiko’s perspective, her second year in high school was lower key than her first and second, which is perhaps why its events were confined to a single movie (the fourth movie chronologically) instead of a full length TV series – albeit it was the defining year for some other characters, such as the starring duo of Liz and the Blue Bird. The third and final TV season is the culmination of the journey of Kumiko and her peers who we were introduced to as first year students, as we see them go from new band members to the student leaders of the Kitauji Concert Band.

Kanade Hisaishi, Kumiko's underclassman who is introduced in the fourth movie, talking to Kumiko in the third season of the TV anime.

Sound! Euphonium is confident in its focus and themes. While it is set in a high school, its school focus is limited entirely to the concert band and its members. There is little drama about in-school tests and we never see the band members interact with classmates who are not in the band. Appreciating Sound! Euphonium requires appreciating that what are quaint problems from an adult perspective – for example who gets to play a solo part in a competition – are potentially all-consuming problems from the perspective of a 16-18 year old who is dedicating his or her formative high school years to a concert band club. But to the show’s great credit, it avoids a trap that bedevils similar high school club-focused anime. It recognizes that the importance of the club, the concert band, is tied to a specific point in the lives of the characters. Prior to Kumiko’s senior year (covered by the third TV season), we see her upperclassmen, especially Askuka Tanaka in the second TV season and the two main characters of Liz and the Blue Bird in that movie, grapple with thinking about their futures beyond high school while simultaneously trying to focus on their club performances. Another notch in Euphonium’s belt is that it never forgets about the characters who graduate after the fact. The band members who continue after their seniors have graduated consider what they have learned as they themselves become seniors dealing with their younger band members. As for the graduates themselves, we see them occasionally return – either to watch their former juniors perform or to offer advice – but we also see how they are growing as college students and moving on with their lives beyond high school. Euphonium strikes the balance about as well as any anime between depicting that something like a high school concert club is the most important thing to characters while they are in the club, but also that there is life beyond the concert club and that someday – soon in the case of characters who only have three years in the club and in high school – it will fade into memory. Euphonium also does an exceptional job in tying the musical performances into these broader themes.

Scene from one of the concert band's performances in the first season. In the foreground is the back of Reina Kousaka's head.

I also appreciate how Sound! Euphonium deals with issues involving effort and talent. For example, in the first season, we see the effect of Kumiko’s having played the euphonium for many years and being a well-above average euphonium player on her ability to quickly find a place in the band. Conversely, Kumiko’s friend and classmate, Hazuki Katou, plays catch-up as she tries to find a place in the band while learning how to play the tuba on the fly. In some cases we see the hard work of a character rewarded, and in other cases we see hard work take a character to the limit of his or her abilities only to come up short of his or her ambitions. In certain cases, these issues of effort and talent are relevant to a character’s consideration of his or her future beyond high school. There are also rarer cases such as that of Kumiko’s best friend, Reina Kousaka, whose overwhelming talent, work ethic, and supreme confidence are obvious to everyone around her – both for better and for worse.

Reina Kousaka playing her trumpet in the first season.

The series also benefits from having one of the defining characters of the last two decades in anime (I cite myself as the source, having watched many of the most notable anime of the last two decades) in Kumiko. I found her to be a compelling lead character from the outset because she was a well-written and distinctly feminine take on the more commonly male protagonist. But Kumiko is not static. We watch her grow – while never abandoning her core personality – throughout her first year at Kitauji High School. The Kumiko by the end of the second season is capable of things – both as a musician and as a person – that she would not have been capable of at the start of the year. Over the course of the fourth movie and final anime season, we see Kumiko grow still further, becoming a trusted senior to new band members and an advisor to her own seniors in her second year, She evolves into a true leader of the band as a senior, evincing everything she had learned during her first two years. We see how Kumiko is influenced by others, chiefly her best friend Reina Kousaka and her senior, Asuka, but she also influences those around her, including Reina and Asuka (in turn), but also many of her same-year peers.. Those who benefit include a girl named Natusuki Nakagawa who also plays euphonium and is one year Kumiko’s senior, and the underclassmen who come to look up to Kumiko who join in her second and third years. But Kumiko’s growth, as striking as it is, realistically comes in fits and starts. The final anime season shows that Kumiko still has to grapple with the weaknesses that caused her to dislike herself when we first met her. Moreover, as a third-year student, Kumiko finds herself facing down the challenges that her mentor in the first two seasons, Asuka Tanaka, and the dual protagonists of Liz and the Blue Bird, had to confront before her.

Another notch in Sound! Euphonium’s belt – and one that makes it worth watching for people with an interest in anime who may not be drawn to its very distinct themes of high school students living in the moment while contemplating their futures -- is its aesthetics. Kyoto Animation has long been known for its artisanal, high-quality animation work in its adaptations, even for series that are not supported by the strong writing and characters of a Sound! Euphonium (see e.g., my animation honorable mention work for its previous TV series, the second season of Tsurune, in my 2023 year-end review, as an example of Kyoto Animation putting together an aesthetically impressive piece that was let down by a mediocre-to-decent story.) Sound! Euphonium’s first season in 2015 was most likely the prettiest visual production of the year, and it generally kept up that quality in 2016. Liz and the Blue Bird is an audio-visual masterpiece and the apex of the series in both regards (to be fair – movies have some obvious production pipeline advantages over TV series), and it stands as one of the most aesthetic anime pieces ever produced.

Yoroizuka Mizore, who is one year ahead of Kumiko, playing the oboe in Liz and the Blue Bird.

As impressive as the first and second TV seasons were, the third stands above them visually – I found myself thinking while watching the fifth episode in May that the third season of Sound! Euphonium may be the prettiest – not the most dynamic, but the most visually aesthetic – TV anime I have watched. Sound! Euphonium’s detail regarding band performances here is impressive even to an amateur like me. Enough care goes into the musical performances that it is easy to distinguish them and tell when the band is playing well and when it is struggling. This was most significant in the first season but it comes through at some very key points in both Liz and the Blue Bird and in the latter stages of the third and final TV season.

With all my praise noted – the first two seasons of Sound! Euphonium, while excellent on the whole, fall slightly short of what I typically look for in an anime of the year level show. The first season was the best of the first two and it came in third on my list of best anime of 2015 (trailing My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU! Too and Shirobako, albeit 2015 was admittedly a strong year at the top, and Euphonium’s first season was probably better than my 2023 anime of the year choice). I found the first season impressive but its key drama was more band-centric than later seasons and the broader perspective that would come to define the later stages of the series was not yet in the forefront. The second season is my runner-up choice for best anime of 2016 (behind the first season Showu Genruku Rakugo Shinju – which was one of the better shows of the decade), but I thought it was a bit weaker than the first, lacking some of the standout musical performances and tight writing of the first season and having what I found to be some pacing issues in the early going. But with those caveats granted – the second season was very good in a vacuum and began to more distinctly explore the idea that the high school concert band is an ephemeral thing in the grand scheme of the lives of its members. Liz and the Blue Bird was, pound for pound, the strongest individual piece of the series and, having watched the final season, I will note that its themes fit in very well despite being a side story. The other movie covering Kumiko’s second year was strong, albeit, as I said, it is more of a transitional piece since Kumiko’s second year was not quite as dramatic as her first.

As for the third and final TV season which aired in 2024, I will reserve my thoughts on that – beyond the thoughts I noted above – for my year-end review in 2024 anime.

My Sound! Euphonium Story

I watched the first TV season of Sound! Euphonium when it aired in 2015. For one reason or another, I did not get around to watching the second TV season until 2022, notwithstanding the fact that it first aired in 2016. This is strange because I liked the first season enough to include it as an honorable mention selection in December 2020 on my list of recommended anime series for general audiences that aired in the 2011-2020 decade, but I had to include a note explaining that the recommendation did not encompass the second season or the subsequent movies since I had yet to watch them.

Go figure.

Thanks to The New Leaf Journal, I know that I began re-watching the first TV season in April 2022 (it had been seven years, after all) and I was entirely caught up with the second TV season by May 4, 2022. I noted in my May 2024 Leaflet that I had ordered the latter two movies so I could fully catch up with the series (note I have never watched the first two movies because while I am sure they are fine recaps, I had watched the full TV seasons that they recapped). I do not recall when I learned that there would be a third and final anime season, but after some more unexplained foot-dragging, I caught up on Liz and the Blue Bird and the fourth movie shortly before the beginning of the third and final TV season in April 2024.

How You Can Catch Up For My Eventual Year-End Review

All three seasons of Euphonium and all of the movies are currently, as of the publication date of this article, available on Crunchyroll. For those not in the know, Crunchyroll is the biggest legal (as in they actually pay for the rights to the anime they stream) player in anime streaming outside of Japan, vacuuming the lion’s share of new shows while smaller players in anime streaming such as HiDive and Netflix get the rest.

(For whatever it is worth, I will note that my 2022 anime of the year and first and second 2023 runner-ups aired on HiDive instead of Crunchyroll, as did my first anime of the year candidate for 2024, the second season of The Dangers in My Heart. So Crunchyroll does not get everything worth watching.)

It would be easy for me to tell readers to just subscribe to Crunchyroll and watch Euphonium there, but making an account is a process and Crunchyroll is not the cheapest service – especially for taking a flier on the recommendation of the editor of The New Leaf Journal. Moreover, I am sure many readers are already subscribing to and paying for other streaming services. Since I would not tell readers to find Euphonium through other means (admittedly doing so would be easy enough without much help), I needed a different solution.

I was inspired to write this article because I only discovered today that Sound! Euphonium is streaming for free on Tubi TV – with a couple of caveats regarding the definition of Sound! Euphonium. I use Zotero to bookmark interesting articles and to save potential future writing topics for future reference. I bookmarked an article about Sony, which owns Crunchyroll, folding a former anime streaming service and publisher called Funimation into Crunchyroll and then hiking Crunchyroll’s prices. To be sure, there are some monopoly concerns about Crunchyroll – but I have mixed feelings on the subject that go beyond the scope of this article. The following quote caught my attention:

Some legal alternatives for users who don’t want to switch to Crunchyroll could be HIDIVE, Tubi TV, or the anime selection on Netflix, although it must be admitted that Crunchyroll currently has almost a monopoly in the anime streaming services in terms of content.

I subscribe to HiDive and obviously know of Netflix, but I was unaware that Tubi TV, which I was tangentially aware of, has an anime library. I figured I may as well see what was going on over at Tubi TV. I discovered that Tubi Tv has a decent little anime collection focusing mostly on movies but also having a small number of TV series. As I scrolled through it, I noticed that Tubi TV has all four Euphonium movies. This did not mean much to me at first since I had already seen the entire series – including the final 2024 anime series. But then it occurred to me that I could highlight the movies for readers who may be interested in (A) trying a very good anime (B) in a format that is both free and officially licensed.

Below, you will find the links to the movies on Tubi TV in order:

Sound! Euphonium: The Movie - Welcome to the Kitauji High School Concert Band

Sound! Euphonium the Movie: May the Melody Reach You!

Liz and the Blue Bird

Sound! Euphonium: The Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day

Before continuing, note that this is up to date only as of the publication date of this article. I did not know that Tubi TV had anime prior to a couple of days ago, much less all of the Euphonium movies. I have no knowledge of how long they will be available on Tubi, so if you want to watch – I would recommend visiting sooner rather than later. I do not plan to regularly check on Euphonium’s Tubi TV status but I will update the article if I become aware that there is some change.

(Disclaimer: I am only recommending that people watch the Euphonium movies on Tubi TV because they are freely and legally available there and I will be writing more about the series in the future. Rest assured I have no other interest in whether you watch Euphonium or anything else on Tubi.)

I have a few notes about the Euphonium movies on Tubi TV.

Firstly, the first two movies on Tubi TV have Japanese dialogue with English subtitles while the latter two movies are available only in the English dubbed version. I have not watched a dubbed anime in a long time and it goes without saying that I prefer Japanese dialogue with subtitles, but I know that many people prefer dubs. Unfortunately, there is no choice on Tubi TV at the moment, so viewers will have to take the movies as they come and both dub- and sub-partisans will have some reason to be unhappy. (Crunchyroll has both options for all four movies.)

Secondly, the first two movies are condensed versions of the first two anime seasons. I have not watched them – having already watched the full seasons. Euphonium is not a show where so much happens that I think condensing six episodes into just under two hours would be an issue – especially in the case of the second season, which I previously noted had some pacing issues. I am sure there are some notable little things that had to be cut, but they movies were certainly crafted with all of this in mind, so I am reasonably confident that going through all four will give viewers all of the major story points.

Thirdly, there is the matter of Liz and the Blue Bird, which takes place in parallel with the fourth movie but focuses on two relatively minor characters (its stars play a key role in the first half of season two, or the second movie here, but they are not on par with Kumiko and Reina in terms of significance). For those actually watching the full series instead of checking out Liz in isolation, Liz and the Blue Bird should be reserved for after the second movie. I personally recommend watching it before the fourth movie, but one could watch it and the fourth movie in either order.

Finally, Tubi TV does not have the original video animation mini-movie that aired in 2023, but that is not necessary for catching up for the final season.

If you are not a regular anime watcher but enjoy my articles and want to know what I am talking about in my 2024 anime year-end review this December, I invite you to make use of Tubi TV to catch up on everything in the Euphonium! series prior to the final 2024 season. That you can watch the first two TV seasons in the form of two movies instead of 26 TV episodes lowers the barrier to entry before we even consider the fact that Tubi TV is free. If you take me up on the free offer and enjoy it, you should have time to watch the fourth season (perhaps with a Crunchyroll trial – if they still do those – or short-term subscription) before it finds its way somewhere in my 2024 ranking here on The New leaf Journal. (I will note additionally that another 2024 show which I wrote seven articles about, A Sign of Affection, is also available on Crunchyroll.)

Even if the themes and characters of Euphonium! do not land for every viewer (entirely possible), it is worth watching just for its top-of-the-line production values and attention to detail. On both counts, it represents the best that Kyoto Animation has to offer.

Other New Leaf Journal-noted series on Tubi TV

Tubi TV has a decent number of shows and movies worth considering given its small library. I will take the time to note two that have made New Leaf Journal appearances – again with the caveat that this note is up to date as of the publication of this article and I am sure that Tubi TV’s lineup is subject to change.

Usagi Drop: Usagi Drop is about a single salaryman in his 30s who decides to take care of a young girl who is apparently his late grandfather’s daughter. I wrote a full article explaining that despite thinking Usagi Drop is, in a vacuum, a borderline anime of the year-quality piece with appeal to viewers who have no interest in anime per se, I did not include it in my list of recommended series for general audiences from 2011-2020.

Kimi ni Todoke (seasons 1 and 2: Kimi ni Todoke is a high school-based romance that aired for 39 episodes from 2009-2011. I wrote an article about hair color in Kimi ni Todoke when I got around to watching it 10 years late. To my surprise, it has unexpectedly received a third season announcement (which was good for the view count of my prior hair color analysis), and that third season will begin on Netflix in August 2024 (13 years after the second season – that has to be some kind of record).

Toradora! Subtitled and Dubbed: Toradora! is a 24-episode high school romantic comedy (and occasional melodrama) that aired from 2008-09. I noted it in my essay about height differences in anime romances (Toradora! is a textbook case), as an example of a series that uses wacky hair colors to aesthetically distinguish characters, and as a point of comparison to a 2023 anime I reviewed called The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten.

Of the three, Usagi Drop is the best series and of the most potential interest to non-anime reviewers, granting the caveats and baggage I discussed in my essay about the show. Kimi ni Todoke and Toradora! are more conventional anime/manga/light novel romances, with the former being of interest because of its unique heroine and the latter because, granting its flaws and passion for occasional eruptions of angsty melodrama, it is a fun show and arguably educational for people who want to get a feel for anime and specifically late-2000s anime. There are of course other interesting shows on Tubi TV that I have not, as of yet, had an occasion to discuss in these pages. I will single out the artistically impressive Millennium Actress as a movie that can be appreciated without any specific interest in anime.

Final Thoughts

Upon discovering Sound! Euphonium on Tubi TV, I was inspired to point readers to it in light of the fact that I will certainly have more to say about the final season of the TV anime adaptation come December 2024/January 2025. It is a very good series on the whole, and I encourage readers to give it a try for the aesthetic animation, overall solid writing, and for making it easier to follow along with my upcoming discussion of the piece in a few months.

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Making the case for maintaining a clear distinction between traditional search engines and generative AI tools masquerading as search tools.

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I came across a February 19, 2024 research summary published by Gartner titled Gartner Predicts Search Engine Volume Will Drop 25% by 2026, Due to AI Chatbots and Other Virtual Agents. I do not have a strong opinion on whether this will prove to be an accurate market assessment or whether Gartner’s projections are typically sound (I never heard of the organization before seeing this article). On one hand I am skeptical that ordinary internet users will prefer “AI” chatbots to entering brute force search terms into Google. On the other hand, I hear that the big tech players including, but not limited to, Google and Microsoft, are very aggressively pushing their large language models and chatbots at users.

But regardless of whether Gartner’s prediction is accurate, I do find the trend of conflating generative “AI” with traditional search concerning. Back when we were randomly blacklisted by the Bing search engine, I wrote an article expressing my concern that language models being integrated into search engines were borrowing from writing by humans without proper attribution. Moreover, I noted that even in the cases where the search engine-language model duo cites its sources, Google, Microsoft, and the like are incentivized to design things in such a way as to keep users on their portals instead of on sites linked from their portals.

One quote from Mr. Alan Antin, a Vice President Analyst at Gartner (I have a feeling this Gartner company has many Vice Presidents), struck me as particularly interesting:

Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines. This will force companies to rethink their marketing channels strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise.

Let us key in on Mr. Antin’s use of the term “answer engine.” An answer presupposes the existence of a question. The implication here is that these GenAI “solutions” exist to answer questions. That is generally consistent with my understanding of the main purpose of these GenAI tools insofar as they are integrated with traditional search engines and tools.

Speaking of traditional search engines, I highlight that Mr. Antin appears to distinguish the concept of an answer engine from a traditional search engine. This is the correct approach. One can ask a search engine questions – and search engines have increasingly integrated non-search features such as instant answer functionality to prioritize delivering responses to questions instead of delivering searchers to an external source that may answer their question. But the concept of a search engine extends beyond answering questions. For example, just earlier today (on the day I am writing this draft – not the day it is published), I wanted to find a specific quote on Project Gutenberg. I used a site-specific DuckDuckGo search to search gutenberg.org for the quote (placing the quote in quotation marks) and found one result. One could say I was implicitly asking DuckDuckGo a question – to find all examples of a specific quotation in resources on gutenberg.org. But this was not a question as the term would be understood in ordinary interaction. I simply pointed DuckDuckGo at a domain and gave it an exact term to return results for.

It is important to resist conflating GenAI tools with traditional search engines. From the perspective of someone who runs a small, humane (as in by a human for other human beings) website, I prefer search engines – properly conceived – because they ideally point searchers toward internet writing responsive to their queries instead of trying to answer questions based on third-party writing. From the perspective of someone who enjoys reading thoughtful and informative writing around the web, I prefer a tool that points me toward good writing rather than one that tries to replace it. (Note that for the purpose of the instant discussion – I am only focusing on GenAI as a quasi-replacement for search, as as a tool to do things such as generate photos.)

None of this is to say that traditional search engines are in the best place at the moment. The biggest search engines are run by ad companies, which most likely negatively affects results. The use of GenAI for writing – Gartner euphemistically noted that “GenAI [is] driving down the cost of producing content” – is already making it more difficult to find humane “content” through big tech search. As I learned last year, arbitrary and capricious decisions by one search engine against a legitimate website can have significant downstream search effects because most of the alternatives to the Google-Bing duopoly use Google’s or Bing’s search index. Moreover, search engines have been slowly adding functionality to keep searchers in their portals before the GenAI fad – one such feature being instant answers-type additions. I note this all only to say that I think there are problems in search today for small website owners and people who want to find interesting things on the internet that pre-date and go beyond GenAI.

There is no easy solution to all of this for people who want others to find their humane websites or searchers who want to discover humane websites. But I think there are ways to zag while big tech and big GenAI insists you zig. One should always be an active searcher. If using a big tech search engine or derivative thereof, consider how the search engine interprets search queries and how it can be manipulated to deliver more interesting and/or responsive results. Understand the sort of junk results that it may favor for one query or another. Regarding GenAI or other similar integrations, stick to trying to use a search engine as a traditional search engine – that is as a means to finding an interesting external resource instead of the end in and of itself. As I did in 2021, I recommend using different search engines and tools for different purposes. For example, the free and open source Marginalia Search engine is a terrific tool for finding small web sites and older sites and forums that would never turn up with bigger indexes. Rely on internal and external links within articles on good sites. Sometimes the best solution is either to use a website’s own on-site search functionality or to use a bigger, generalist search engine to conduct a domain-specific search of a particular website. I have over time come to favor more and more searching individual websites I like or trust for information. If you incorporate this last tip into your repertoire, I will note that The New Leaf Journal’s internal search – while not the most sophisticated – should turn up some good results from our 1,000+ articles.

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Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships

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I compare the offensive and defensive ratings of the last 51 NBA champions to the league average in their years to see if it is true that "defense wins championships."

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“Defense wins championships” is an old basketball (and, more generally, sports) mantra. It was around when I first watched NBA basketball in 1997 and it persisted through when I last closely followed it in 2016. In the 2000s, when I perhaps most closely followed basketball (with the caveat that I was still a kid for most of that decade), it was used in conjunction with the idea that “jump shooting teams don’t win championships” to denigrate the chances of the Dirk Nowitzki-era Dallas Mavericks and the Steve Nash-era Phoenix Suns. The Mavericks would eventually win a championship in 2010-11 (albeit with a more defensive squad than some of their early 2000s teams), and the Suns were not far off in 2006 and 2007. While that mantra was always more than a bit silly – for example take note of Michael Jordan’s shot chart in the 1997-98 season along with that championship Bulls team’s lack of high usage interior scorers – we can safely say that the Golden State Warriors put the idea to rest in the mid 2010s. For fun, I decided to conduct a quick study to assess whether defense does win championships.

(I will concede that I have an ulterior motive in that the chart I am making for this article will allow me to substantially shorten another article I am working on.)

Understanding Our Project

I found a few statistical assessments of whether defense wins championships. Courtney Williams assessed which aspects of a team’s defense are most meaningful to championship prospects. In 2014, Adam Fromal found that defense wins championships… but so does offense. I will confess I had an idea before searching for articles and one article I found was somewhat in line with my idea:

Another key equation involved a team’s defensive rating, which means how many points they allow per 100 possessions. He compared the team defensive rating of championship teams versus non-championship teams [from 2010-11 through 2019-20]. He found that championship teams had a mean team defensive rating of 104.22, while non-championship teams had a mean of 107.60. The lower the number, the better the team defense, inferring that team defense is important to winning a title.

Offensive rating measures points scored per 100 possessions. Defensive rating measures points allowed per 100 possessions. These per-possession stats are useful because they adjust for pace in a way that raw points per game and points allowed per game do not. A team that plays at a fast pace is likely to score more but also give up more points than it would if it walked the ball up the court and soaked up the shot clock.

To illustrate the significance of per-possession stats vs raw stats, let us examine the case of the 2014-15 champion Golden State Warriors. That was the first of three championships in four years for the Warriors during which Golden State broke another long-held mantra that fast-paced jump shooting teams were not championship material. Let us examine the Warriors’ regular season rankings that year. There were 30 teams in the NBA in 2014-15, just as there are today. The Warriors averaged 110.0 points per game and allowed 99.9. Their 110.0 points per game was first in the NBA while the 99.9 points they allowed was 15th. From these stats alone, one may imagine that the Warriors were a great offense and a mediocre defense. That belief would be half-correct – but to understand why we must consider pace. The Warriors averaged 98.3 possessions per game, which led the NBA that season. When we factor in pace, the Warriors averaged 111.6 points per 100 possessions, which was actually second best in the NBA. The Warriors allowed 101.4 points per 100 possessions, which was the best mark in the league. It turns out the Warriors were the NBA’s best defense and second best offense on a per-possession basis, not withstanding the raw points per game totals.

But were the Warriors a better offense than defense? That is a different question. In terms of a straight ranking, the answer would be yes since the Warriors were ranked first in defensive efficiency and second in offensive efficiency. However, what if we instead considered how the Warriors offensive and defensive efficiency compared to the league average offensive rating in the 2014-15 NBA season. I was inspired to try this approach by an old Bleacher Report list of the best offenses in NBA history. That list did nothing but figure out which NBA teams had the biggest positive differential between their offensive rating and the league average for the season in question. Under this approach, we find that the 2014-15 Warriors offense was actually slightly better compared to the NBA’s average that season than its defense (+6.0 vs -4.2). Of course, that Warriors team was dominant on both ends – but rankings aside, their offense was a bit more formidable than their defense in the regular season.

I decided to apply this approach to every NBA champion. For this survey, I will take the league average offensive rating and then look at how each NBA champion compared to the average for both offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency. Since both of these depend on pace, I decided to see whether each NBA champion played faster or slower than the league average since the idea that NBA champions should not play at a high pace (mostly debunked by the 2014-15 and 2016-17 Warriors championship teams) was also popular back in the 2000s. However, we will not be able to apply this approach to every NBA champion. We have full offensive and defensive rating numbers and pace statistics only going back to 1973-74 (when turnovers were first tracked). Thus, I will examine every NBA champion since 1973-74. It is worth noting that the pre 73-74 stats would likely skew things toward defense since all available evidence indicates that the 11 Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics teams had historically great defenses and generally mediocre offenses. But to keep things consistent – we will start with 1973-74.

NBA Champions Rated By Relative Offensive and Defensive Ratings and Pace

Below, you will find a chart of how every NBA champion from 1973-74 through 2023-24 compared to the league averages in offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, and pace in their championship years. Note that these statistics only encompass the regular season, not playoffs. I obtained the league averages for offensive rating and pace from Basketball Reference. I then used Basketball Reference to look at the champions for each season and compared their individual offensive and defensive efficiency ratings and pace to the league average for their championship year.

Season

NBA Champion

Relative
ORtg

Relative
DRtg

Relative
Pace

1973-74 | Boston Celtics | +0.9 | -2.6 | +1.2
1974-75 | Golden State Warriors | +2.7 | -0.4 | +3.1
1975-76 | Boston Celtics | +0.6 | -1.6 | +1.4
1976-77 | Portland Trail Blazers | +3.7 | -1.5 | +1.5
1977-78 | Washington Bullets | +0.4 | -0.4 | +1.4
1978-79 | Seattle SuperSonics | -1.1 | -3.7 | -2.4
1979-80 | Los Angeles Lakers | +4.2 | -1.4 | +1.0
1980-81 | Boston Celtics | +4.4 | -2.9 | -1.0
1981-82 | Los Angeles Lakers | +3.3 | -1.4 | +2.2
1982-83 | Philadelphia 76ers | +3.6 | -3.8 | -0.4
1983-84 | Boston Celtics | +3.3 | -3.2 | -1.7
1984-85 | Los Angeles Lakers | +6.2 | -0.9 | +1.1
1985-86 | Boston Celtics | +4.6 | -4.6 | -0.9
1986-87 | Los Angeles Lakers | +7.3 | -1.8 | +0.8
1987-88 | Los Angeles Lakers | +5.1 | -0.7 | -0.5
1988-89 | Detroit Pistons | +3.0 | -3.1 | -5.1
1989-90 | Detroit Pistons | +1.8 | -4.6 | -3.9
1990-91 | Chicago Bulls | +6.7 | -2.7 | -2.2
1991-92 | Chicago Bulls | +7.3 | -3.7 | -2.2
1992-93 | Chicago Bulls | +4.9 | -1.9 | -4.3
1993-94 | Houston Rockets | -0.4 | -4.9 | -0.1
1994-95 | Houston Rockets | +1.4 | -0.9 | +1.3
1995-96 | Chicago Bulls | +7.6 | -5.8 | -0.7
1996-97 | Chicago Bulls | +7.7 | -4.3 | -0.1
1997-98 | Chicago Bulls | +2.7 | -5.2 | -1.3
1998-99 | San Antonio Spurs | +1.8 | -7.2 | -0.3
1999-00 | Los Angeles Lakers | +3.2 | -5.9 | +0.2
2000-01 | Los Angeles Lakers | +5.4 | +1.8 | +0.4
2001-02 | Los Angeles Lakers | +3.9 | -2.7 | +1.4
2002-03 | San Antonio Spurs | +2.0 | -3.9 | -1.0
2003-04 | Detroit Pistons | -0.9 | -7.4 | -2.2
2004-05 | San Antonio Spurs | +1.4 | -7.3 | -2.0
2005-06 | Miami Heat | +2.5 | -1.7 | +1.1
2006-07 | San Antonio Spurs | +2.7 | -6.6 | -2.1
2007-08 | Boston Celtics | +2.7 | -8.6 | -2.5
2008-09 | Los Angeles Lakers | +4.5 | -3.6 | +2.6
2009-10 | Los Angeles Lakers | +1.2 | -3.9 | +0.1
2010-11 | Dallas Mavericks | +2.4 | -2.3 | -0.8
2011-12 | Miami Heat | +2.0 | -4.4 | -0.1
2012-13 | Miami Heat | +6.5 | -2.1 | -1.3
2013-14 | San Antonio Spurs | +3.9 | -4.4 | +1.1
2014-15 | Golden State Warriors | +6.0 | -4.2 | +4.4
2015-16 | Cleveland Cavaliers | +4.5 | -1.9 | -2.5
2016-17 | Golden State Warriors | +6.8 | -4.8 | +3.4
2017-18 | Golden State Warriors | +5.0 | -1.0 | +2.3
2018-19 | Toronto Raptors | +2.7 | -3.3 | +0.2
2019-20 | Los Angeles Lakers | +1.4 | -4.3 | +0.6
2020-21 | Milwaukee Bucks | +4.9 | -0.9 | +3.0
2021-22 | Golden State Warriors | +0.5 | -5.1 | +0.2
2022-23 | Denver Nuggets | +3.3 | -0.1 | -1.1
2023-24 | Boston Celtics | +7.9 | -3.7 | -1.3

It became obvious as I was putting the list together that the previous 51 NBA champions did not have a general preference for defense over offense. The last 51 NBA champions have averaged approximately 3.5 points better than the league average in offensive efficiency and 3.3 better on defense (the 3.3 is rounded up – it is 3.53 vs 3.26 if we go one extra digit). Moreover, I found that more NBA champions than not (28 to 21) rated better relative to the league average on offense than defense. Two champions, the 1977-78 Washington Bullets (statistically the weakest of the 51 champions in our survey) and the 1985-86 Boston Celtics (one of the strongest champions) were equally strong relative to the league average on offense and defense down to a single decimal. I decided not to try to break those ties since that was not consistent with how I was conducting the survey as a whole to a single decimal point, so we end up with 28 champions with relatively stronger offenses, 21 with relatively stronger defenses, and two champions that rated equally strong relative to the league average on both sides of the court. Taking the median of each category tells a similar story: the median offensive and defensive ratings are both 3.3 points better than the league average.

On the whole, we can dispense with the idea that there is some general rule that defense wins championships as opposed to offense and replace it with a rule that should have been obvious – most champions are well above average on both sides of the ball.

48 of the last 51 NBA champions had a better offense than the league average. The three exceptions were the 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics, 1993-94 Houston Rockets, and 2003-04 Detroit Pistons. The Sonics had the best defense in the NBA in a weak 78-79 season, while the Rockets and Pistons were second best in 93-94 and 03-04 respectively. The Pistons of course had what may well have been the greatest defensive performance in NBA history in the comically slow, low-scoring 2003-04 NBA playoffs, which I wrote about extensively in a separate article.

50 of the last 51 NBA champions had a better defense than league average (I suppose that is a notch in the “defense wins championships” belt). The lone exception is the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers, which cruised to a 56-26 regular season before going on a 15-1 rampage through the playoffs that may well be the greatest postseason run in NBA history. Oddly enough, the Lakers had won the championship the previous season with a defense that rated solidly better than their well-above average Shaquille O’Neal-driven offense.

NBA Champions Rated By Offensive Efficiency Against NBA Average

Because we have all these numbers handy, we can look at the top and bottom 20 percent champions in offensive and defensive efficiency relative to the league average for their respective seasons. First, the top 10 and bottom 10 in terms of offensive efficiency vs the league average:

Rank | Team | ORtg vs Avg
1 | 2023-24 Boston Celtics | +7.9
2 | 1996-97 Chicago Bulls | +7.7
3 | 1995-96 Chicago Bulls | +7.6
4 | 1991-92 Chicago Bulls | +7.3
4 | 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers | +7.3
6 | 2016-17 Golden State Warriors | +6.8
7 | 1990-91 Chicago Bulls | +6.7
8 | 2012-13 Miami Heat | +6.5
9 | 1984-85 Los Angeles Lakers | +6.2
10 | 2014-15 Golden State Warriors | +6.0

The current NBA champion Boston Celtics had the best offensive rating vs league average – which I suppose is impressive in light of the fact that 2023-24 had the highest average offensive rating of any NBA season. Four of the six Jordan-led Bulls teams make our top-10 on offense, and I have reason to believe we will be hearing from a few of them again in short order. The dynastic trend continues with two of the five Magic Johnson-led Lakers champions and two of the four Stephen Curry-powered Warriors champions in the top 10. The second of the two “big three” Heat championship teams makes the list in eighth.

Now for the weakest offense champions:

Rank | Team | ORtg vs Avg
51 | 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics | -1.1
50 | 2003-04 Detroit Pistons | -0.9
49 | 1993-94 Houston Rockets | -0.4
48 | 1977-78 Washington Bullets | +0.4
47 | 2021-22 Golden State Warriors | +0.5
46 | 1975-76 Boston Celtics | +0.6
45 | 1973-74 Boston Celtics | +0.9
44 | 2009-10 Los Angeles Lakers | +1.2
41 | 2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers | +1.4
41 | 2004-05 San Antonio Spurs | +1.4
41 | 1994-95 Houston Rockets | +1.4

The latter half of the 1970s saw the five fastest pace seasons and least efficient seasons in our sample. It was also a parity stretch – with four of the champions rating as not much better (or worse, in the case of the 78-79 Sonics) than the league average offensively. One fun note is that we see teams led by Stephen Curry (21-22 Warriors) and LeBron James (19-20 Lakers) on the weakest offense list after they combined to place three championship teams on the best offense list. Another notable is that both of the back-to-back Houston Rockets champions in 93-94 and 94-95 were bottom-tier championship offenses. The 94-95 team was weak in the regular season on the whole (46-36) but managed to topple four consecutive teams that had won between 57 and 62 games in the playoffs en route to the title. The 93-94 champion Rockets were stronger in the regular season for reasons you will see on our next chart.

NBA Champions Rated By Defensive Efficiency Against NBA Average

Now let us turn the page to defense and take a look at the best 20% championship defenses relative to the league average (note that minus is good in the context of defense).

Rank | Team | DRtg vs Avg
1 | 2007-08 Boston Celtics | -8.6
2 | 2003-04 Detroit Pistons | -7.4
3 | 2004-05 San Antonio Spurs | -7.3
4 | 1998-99 San Antonio Spurs | -7.2
5 | 2006-07 San Antonio Spurs | -6.6
6 | 1999-00 Los Angeles Lakers | -5.9
7 | 1995-96 Chicago Bulls | -5.8
8 | 1997-98 Chicago Bulls | -5.2
9 | 2021-22 Golden State Warriors | -5.1
10 | 1993-94 Houston Rockets | -4.9

The Boston Celtics lead both of our lists – but in this case we have the Kevin Garnett-led 2007-08 championship team instead of the more recent 2023-24 champion. They are followed by the much-talked about (on this site, at least) 2003-04 Detroit Pistons and then three of the five Spurs championship teams in spots 2-5. It is worth noting for fun that the Spurs in 2003-04 ranked ahead of the Pistons on defense in the regular season – but they ended up losing in the second round of the west playoffs. The 03-04 Pistons, 04-05 Spurs, 21-22 Warriors and 93-94 Rockets also appeared on the worst offense list, so now we see how those teams overcame their deficiencies with the ball. I was a bit surprised to see the 1999-00 Lakers so high on this list. When I think of that team, I think of Shaquille O’Neal throwing his fellow NBA-caliber seven-footers around like ragdolls on his way to a historically great single campaign. But the statistics show that Lakers team had a more dominant defense than offense – at least in the regular season.

The 1995-96 Bulls are the only one of the last 51 champions to rank in the top 20% in both relative offense and defense. The 2016-17 Warriors, which are often mentioned as the main challenger to the 95-96 Bulls claim as the greatest team of all time, just missed making it two teams with an 11th place finish on defense.

Now for the champions that had the weakest defenses relative to the league average in their championship years.

Rank | Team | DRtg vs Avg
51 | 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers | +1.8
50 | 2022-23 Denver Nuggets | -0.1
48 | 1977-78 Washington Bullets | -0.4
48 | 1974-75 Golden State Warriors | -0.4
47 | 1987-88 Los Angeles Lakers | -0.7
44 | 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks | -0.9
44 | 1994-95 Houston Rockets | -0.9
44 | 1984-85 Los Angeles Lakers | -0.9
43 | 2017-18 Golden State Warriors | -1.0
41 | 1981-82 Los Angeles Lakers | -1.4
41 | 1979-80 Los Angeles Lakers | -1.4

Having noted that I was surprised to see the 1999-00 Lakers rank as the sixth best championship-defense relative to the league average, I was less surprised to see the 2000-01 Lakers rank as the worst defense by this metric (although I would not have expected them to be the worst by such a dramatic margin). As I noted above, that Lakers team played some uninspiring basketball in the regular season before a brilliant run through the playoffs to its second consecutive championship (conversely, the 1999-00 Lakers had a dominant regular season and were actually outscored in both the Western Conference and NBA Finals despite winning both series). The 2000-01 Lakers were much better on defense in the playoffs, going from having a 104.8 defensive net rating in the regular season to a stifling 97.8 rating in its 15-1 postseason run. The 94-95 Rockets were somewhat similar to the 00-01 Lakers (albeit more extreme) in having an uninspiring regular season leading into a remarkable playoff run – but it is hard to believe that a team anchored by the great Hakeem Olajuwon could ever be so close to the league average defensively.

Only two teams – the 1977-78 Washington Bullets and the 1994-95 Houston Rockets – rank among the weakest champions in both offense and defense. The Johnson/Abdul-Jabbar Lakers champions may be the strongest offense wins championships case – with three of the five championship teams ranking just slightly above average on defense but two of those three teams ranking among the top 10 offenses.

Overall Net Rating

Finally, lest anyone walk away with the wrong impression about these teams, let us look at the best, and worse, by net rating (by “net rating” we mean the differential between offensive and defensive ratings).

Note: In general, you can get a team’s net rating by subtracting the the net difference defensive rating against league average from the offensive rating. However, I did not strictly do that for my charts below. In order to get the offensive and defensive ratings vs league average, I looked up the league-average offensive rating for each season and then compared that year’s champion to the average. However, Basketball Reference also includes the net rating for every NBA team in every season we have sufficient statistics. In some cases, the Basketball Reference net rating is 0.1 better or worse than the rating you would get from just using my chart. What gives? The issue is likely based on the fact that I did my math using a single decimal point whereas Basketball Reference may round to get a slightly more accurate Net Rating. I decided to go with the more accurate Net Rating numbers from Basketball Reference and note cases wherein we had a 0.1 difference between that and just using my charts.

Rank | Team | Net Rtg
1 | 1995-96 Chicago Bulls | +13.4
2 | 1996-97 Chicago Bulls | +12.0
3 | 2023-24 Boston Celtics | +11.6
3 | 2016-17 Golden State Warriors | +11.6
5 | 2007-08 Boston Celtics | +11.2
6 | 1991-92 Chicago Bulls | +11.0
7 | 2014-15 Golden State Warriors | +10.2
8 | 1990-91 Chicago Bulls | +9.5
9 | 2006-07 San Antonio Spurs | +9.3
10 | 1985-86 Boston Celtics | +9.2

(The 2007-08 Celtics went from +11.3 to +11.2 and the 1990-91 Bulls from +9.4 to +9.5 using Basketball Reference’s Net Ratings instead of my charts. It did not ultimately change any spots in the top 10.)

The top 10 tilts toward the offense, not defense, wins championships theory – at least for the most dominant regular season teams to win a championship. Six of the top 10 had better relative offenses than defenses, with the 1985-86 Celtics being exactly even (+4.6 on both sides) and only the 2006-07 Spurs and 1999-00 Lakers being better on defense. One thing this very small sample may indicate is that in terms of being a historically dominant team – especially in the double-digit positive net rating tier – there is usually more room to far exceed the league average on offense than defense. Of course – to have these sorts of net ratings, a team has to be good on both sides of the ball.

The 1995-96 Bulls team stands apart from the rest in terms of net rating, and it is the only team in our sample to have led the NBA in both offensive and defensive rating in the same season. The 1990s Bulls dominate the ranking, two entries from their first and second runs of three consecutive championships in the top 10 (the 92-93 bulls and 97-98 Bulls were well off the pace at +7.8 and +7.9). The 2016-17 Warriors, which are often put in the best team of all time debate with the 95-96 Bulls, unsurprisingly come in tied for third in overall net rating (one point in favor of the Warriors is their 16-1 playoff record with a net rating of +13.5, which was a touch better than the 95-96 Bulls going 15-3 with a net rating of +12.1 in the postseason).

The Celtics did well to make the ranking three times with champions that had nothing in common with one another. The 2023-24 Celtics, which featured the best relative offensive ranking of the last 51 champions, and the 2007-08 Celtics, which featured the best relative defensive rating, both made the top five in overall net rating. The top-10 was rounded out by the best of the three Larry Bird-led champions, which could not have been much more balanced being 4.6 points per 100 possessions better than season average on both sides of the ball. The only non Bulls-Warriors-Celtics entrant is the 2006-07 Spurs, which due to the lack of drama in its championship run after a contentious second-round victory over a championship caliber Phoenix Suns team, may be the least memorable of the five Spurs championship teams. But net rating suggests that the 2006-07 Spurs have a case for being the best over some strong internal competition (the Spurs also take spots 12, 13, and 15).

Now for the weakest 20% of champions in terms of net rating.

Rank | Team | Net Rtg
51 | 1977-78 Washington Bullets | +0.9
50 | 1975-76 Boston Celtics | +2.2
49 | 1994-95 Houston Rockets | +2.3
48 | 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics | +2.6
47 | 1974-75 Golden State Warriors | +3.0
46 | 2022-23 Denver Nuggets | +3.4
45 | 1973-74 Boston Celtics | +3.5
44 | 2005-06 Miami Heat | +4.2
43 | 1993-94 Houston Rockets | +4.5
42 | 2010-11 Dallas Mavericks | +4.6

(Note: The Bullets are 0.1 better and the Mavericks 0.1 worse than my list based on Basketball References Net Rating numbers.)

Half of the bottom 10 spots feature 1970s champions – which is not too surprising since the NBA went through a parity period before the Celtics and Lakers dominated the 1980s. The 1977-78 Bullets were the worst by a wide margin, but it is worth noting that the team they beat 4-3 in the Finals, the 1977-78 Sonics, would have also been the worst champion at a slightly better +1.5 net rating (the Sonics would win the rematch against the Bullets in the 1978-79 Finals). The only one of the 1970s champions that is missing is the 1976-77 Trail Blazers, which posted a solid-but-unspectacular +5.2 net rating, and are not present on any of our top- or bottom-10 lists.

I found the presence of both the 2005-06 Heat and 2010-11 Mavericks humorous. In 2006, the Heat, with a middling net rating of +4.2, upset the Mavericks (+6.2) in the NBA Finals. In 2011, the Mavericks with their +4.6 net rating pulled off a bigger upset against a Heat team that at +8.2 would not have been a better than average champion by this metric. It is worth noting however that the 2010-11 Mavericks were significantly better in the postseason than they were in the regular season (the 05-06 Heat rated as only slightly better).

Relative Pace of the NBA Champions

Readers may remember after all of these charts that I also studied the pace NBA champions have played at relative to the league average. Here, I found that 26 champions played at an above average pace and 25 champions played at a below average pace. Taken together, the average pace is 0.2 points (or 0.156 if we extent the decimal) slower than the league average. The median pace is 0.1 possessions slower than league average. I think we can safely conclude that there is no dramatic fast-paced or slow-paced bias among the NBA champions. I will note that the Pistons, Bulls, and Spurs played at a below-average pace for 13 of their 14 championships (the Bulls in all 6) which helped even things out after the early part of our chart favored relatively faster teams. Since we came this far, let us look at the fastest and slowest teams (relative to league average, not in a vacuum) in our survey.

First, the champions that played much faster than their peers.

Rank | Team | Pace vs Avg
1 | 2014-15 Golden State Warriors | +4.4
2 | 2016-17 Golden State Warriors | +3.4
3 | 1974-75 Golden State Warriors | +3.1
4 | 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks | +3.0
5 | 2008-09 Los Angeles Lakers | +2.6
6 | 2017-18 Golden State Warriors | +2.3
7 | 1981-82 Los Angeles Lakers | +2.2
8 | 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers | +1.5
9 | 2001-02 Los Angeles Lakers | +1.4
9 | 1977-78 Washington Bullets | +1.4
9 | 1975-76 Boston Celtics | +1.4

Three of the five Golden State Warriors championship teams swept the top three spots in the fast-pace ranking. I was heartened to see that in order to complete the sweep, the Stephen Curry-led Warriors teams needed help from the Rick Barry-led championship team from four decades earlier (the 1974-75 Warriors were the fastest champion in absolute terms – accounting for the overall higher pace of play in the 70s). The 2014-15 and 2016-17 Warriors are the only two teams among the 10 fastest to also be among the top 10 in net rating.

I noted earlier that the top six fastest seasons in our sample are 1973-74 through 1978-79. Despite the generally high pace of play, four of the six fastest teams relative to the league average are from those seasons. Perhaps playing fast was the correct approach given that those years also have the lowest offensive efficiency numbers in our sample.

I will note one minor surprise: I did not expect to see the 2008-09 Lakers on the list. I did not think of that team as playing especially fast – but the NBA’s overall pace was still relatively slow in 2008-09 – so I suppose it is all relative.

Now for the slowest champions relative to league average.

Rank | Team | Pace vs Avg
51 | 1988-89 Detroit Pistons | -5.1
50 | 1992-93 Chicago Bulls | -4.3
49 | 1989-90 Detroit Pistons | -3.9
47 | 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers | -2.5
47 | 2007-08 Boston Celtics | -2.5
46 | 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics | -2.4
43 | 2003-04 Detroit Pistons | -2.2
43 | 1991-92 Chicago Bulls | -2.2
43 | 1990-91 Chicago Bulls | -2.2
42 | 2006-07 San Antonio Spurs | -2.1

The Pistons are to the tortoise list what the Warriors were to the rabbit list. Noting that this list is relative to the league average, the 2003-04 Pistons are the slowest champion of the 51-year sample, having played 2.2 possessions slower than the league average in the second slowest season in our sample (1998-99 was the slowest season, followed by 2003-04). Having noted that most of the 70s champions played faster than the very high league average, the defense-first 78-79 Sonics bucked the trend, playing at what was then the slowest pace in the league. Finally, we see the first three Bulls championship teams on the list, but not the latter three. The second set of three also played slower than the league average, but the NBA as a whole slowed, so perhaps that affected their relative ranking. The 1990-91 and 91-92 Bulls are unique for being on the slow pace and best offense rankings. The 2007-08 Celtics, 03-04 Pistons, and 06-07 Spurs have the more typical combo of being on the slow pace and best defense lists.

Slow teams fare a bit better on our top 10 rating chart than fast teams: The 1990-91 and 91-92 Bulls, 2006-07 Spurs, and 2007-08 Celtics made both the best net rating and slowest pace charts.

Conclusion

Any conclusions we take from my survey must recognize its limitations.

First I only looked at teams that actually won the NBA championship instead of championship caliber teams (however one might define that). For example, two NBA Finals runner-ups, the 1996-97 Utah Jazz and the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, had net ratings that would have placed them among the ten best champions of the last 51 seasons. The 96-97 Jazz, which lost in six close games to the Bulls in the Finals, and an overall net rating of +9.7 and an offensive rating 5.9 points better than the league average, both of which would have been top-10 marks had they defeated the Bulls in the Finals. The 15-16 Warriors had an overall net rating of +10.7 and an offensive rating of 7.9 points better than the league average, both of which would have been top-10 and the latter mark would have been tied for the best offense relative to the league average with the 2023-24 Celtics.

I also only looked at how these teams performed in the regular season and did not consider postseason performance. While I think the regular season gives us plenty to go off of, there are some edge cases such as the 1994-95 Rockets, 2000-01 Lakers, and 2022-23 Nuggets where champions performed dramatically better in the playoffs. Conversely, some dominant regular season teams such as the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls, 1999-00 Los Angeles Lakers, and 2007-08 Celtics significantly underperformed in the playoffs compared to the regular season.

Again noting that the regular season provides valuable data, especially when we are looking at 51 champions, our survey does not account for specific in-season circumstances. For example, the 1994-95 Rockets and 2003-04 Pistons were greatly buttressed by midseason trades, in the former case the acquisition of Clyde Drexler and inthe latter the addition of Rasheed Wallace. Some champions were hindered by in-season injuries: Shaquille O'Neal missed a combined 23 games in 2000-01 and 2001-02 (the Lakers were not very good when Mr. O'Neal was absent). Tim Duncan missed 18 games in the Spurs' 2004-05 championship season. Finally, some teams were so good that they were often far ahead going into the fourth quarter and rested their starters. The 2008-09 Cleveland Cavaliers were one of only two teams to post a double digit net rating in the regular season (+10.0 in that case) and not make the NBA Finals (the other was the 2015-16 San Antonio Spurs, which were bounced in the second round after posting an astronomical +11.3 net rating in the regular season). That Cavaliers team put so many games early that LeBron James, their then-24 year old star and the run-away MVP that season, played what was at the time a career low in minutes per game (37.7).

Finally, I only looked at three metrics – relative offensive rating, defensive rating, and pace. There are many other statistics that could be considered and that may yield interesting conclusions.

Having noted some caveats about my survey – I think my basic methodology has the benefit of making generally fair cross-era comparisons. There is a case to be made – as Nate Silver did about a new player-rating statistic called RAPTOR – that retroactively applying modern advanced statistics inspired by contemporary conditions to players from different eras does not necessary give a picture of how those players would have performed under modern conditions or how today's players would have played under prior conditions. In the context of teams, I think this would be a strong argument against using offensive or defensive rating in a vacuum to compare teams across different eras. However, regardless of the era, rule changes, or different styles of play, NBA teams set out to score more than their opponents, and we can say as a general matter that a team’s scoring margin relates to how good it is. Thus, by comparing the offensive and defensive ratings of NBA champions first to their peers before other champions, we can better – albeit not perfectly – hedge against applying newfound metrics designed for the NBA of today to the players of yesterday. The point of this survey is not to determine who would with a mythical matchup between the 1995-96 Bulls and 2016-17 Warriors or the 2023-24 Celtics and their 2007-08 predecessors, it is simply to see how they compared in terms of offense, defense, and pace against their actual peers.

My main take-away from the survey is that, taking into account a big enough sample, NBA champions tend to be a bit more than three points better than the league average on both sides of the ball and tend to play at close to the average pace. However, because the ultimate goal of basketball is to outscore the opponent and, as a general matter, elite teams tend to outscore their opponents more decisively than good teams, there is more than one way to crack an egg. We have some extreme cases such as the 2003-04 Pistons and the first four of five Spurs champions that were far better on defense than offense and a few of the Johnson/Abdul-Jabbar Lakers teams that had elite offenses and slightly above-average defenses. Moreover, there are some odd cases such as several mediocre champions from the 1970s and 2020s and teams such as the 1994-95 Rockets and 2000-01 Lakers that dramatically raised their level in the postseason.

My survey was simple and someone with more time, interest, and resources could build off the ideas and make some more interesting discoveries (the concept can also be extended to other sports). For example, I did notice that there was a general – albeit not universal – preference for defense-first champions from 1998-99 through 2007-08, which featured some of the slowest seasons on record. Recent years, which have seen a faster pace than the 2000s and the most efficient offenses in NBA history, have more of a bias toward offense. One could explore these trends and even expand the survey to include more teams than just the ones that happened to win the NBA championship. After all, these rules are not absolute. All six Chicago Bulls championship teams from the 90s played slower than the league average – and the league was quite slow for the second set of three consecutive championships – but four of the six Bulls championship teams ranked among the 10 best offenses out of 51 champions.

Speaking of the Bulls, I suppose we have time for one last take-away: Those 1990s Bulls championship teams were not too shabby. While Michael Jordan’s case as the greatest player of the last 51 years (at least) appears to be sound, it took some great teams to post four of the net best championship ratings of the last 51 years over the span of just seven seasons.

Corrections?

If you see any error in my data, feel free to let me know. I caught one error I made with the 1993-94 Rockets while I was editing my draft, so I am sure they may be some others lurking.

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Celebrating Fourth of July with a bombastic (and endearing) inflatable Uncle Sam decoration in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

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Uncle Sam last appeared in the pages of The New Leaf Journal on May 4, 2020. In the subsequent four years, he had more articles about Uncle Susan than Uncle Sam. Today is July 4, 2024, Independence Day in the United States and the birthday of the 30th President of the United States, John Calvin Coolidge. If there is any day to remedy our distressing dearth of Uncle Sam content, today is the day. Our first Uncle Sam article featured in a inflatable Uncle Sam seen in the scenic Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens. I see no reason to break from tradition (tradition can now be established by a single article published in May 2020), so I present to you a new inflatable Uncle Sam decoration seen in Carroll Gardens.

I respect the fact that the small inflatable flag appears to have all 50 stars.

Here we have Uncle Sam riding a rocket (probably fireworks) while holding an American Flag in his right hand. This is both very patriotic (despite the fact I have a sneaking suspicion it was made in China) and very America. This is a country that celebrates the Fourth of July and other big events with a bang.

(With that being said, I am glad the fireworks show is over the Hudson instead of the East River this year. Let Manhattan deal with the people.)

While this inflatable Uncle Sam is in Carroll Gardens just the same as the first inflatable Uncle Sam I featured in these web pages, it is in a less scenic part of Carroll Gardens. The first Uncle Sam was in what I would describe as the inner part of Carroll Gardens, which has quiet streets lined by imposing brownstones. This Uncle Sam was found on Hicks Street, which I have noted in other articles is bisected by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. For the reference of long-time readers, it was not far from the foot of the Summit Street Bridge.

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Stumbling upon a retired 2000 New York City cow parade statute on a long walk in Manhattan.

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On October 26, 2021, I wrote an article about walking to Manhattan with a friend to see the August-September 2021 New York City Cow Parade. That article included three photos of Cow Parade cows. The last cow parade cow I saw was at the Herald Square Macy’s in 2021. The 2021 Cow Parade wrapped up and has not since returned to New York City (to the best of my knowledge). Little did I expect that I would happen upon a cow parade cow in Manhattan on May 30, 2024:

I was curious when this cow participated in the Cow Parade. New York City has hosted two Cow Parades, the first being in 2000 and the second 2021. (I do not remember seeing any of the 2000 Cow Parade statues but the cow parade sounded vaguely familiar to me when I heard about the 2021 edition.) Before doing any research on the cow I came across on May 30, I suspected that it came from the 2000 edition (assuming arguendo it was from one of the two New York City Cow Parades). One could venture that it is a bit worn in some places – suggesting that it is not new. But the reason why I ventured 2000 is because the cow’s aesthetic, from the colors to the shapes – feels very late 90s-turn of the millennium to me. I was a kid when the 2000 Cow Parade hit, so I have enough of a frame of reference of New York City urban aesthetics at the time. I dare say the bull made me think of the classic Metro Card machine aesthetic.

I found a full list of the cows of the 2021 New York City Cow Parade and noted the absence of the bull I photographed in May 2024. This resolved clearly and beyond doubt that the bull was not part of the 2021 Cow Parade, but not that it was part of the 2000 New York City Cow Parade. I had to do a surprising amount of digging to find the full list of 2000 Cow Parade participants before coming across a YouTube video by Mr. Douglas Andersen which consists of a slideshow of all of the cows (or in some cases, bulls). I recognized our bull at the 1:09 mark of the video. I felt a moment of self-satisfaction for having discerned that the bull was part of the 2000 Cow Parade from its turn-of-the-century artistic design sensibilities.

Unfortunately, I was completing what turned out to be an 11-mile round-trip walk, so I did not note the precise location of the retired Cow Parade bull. I recall that my good friend and New Leaf Journal colleague Victor V. Gurbo noted when we had walked past City Lore not long before or after I saw the retired cow parade cow, so you can search the general area if you want to find it too.

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Introducing My Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus

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I introduce readers to my nearly-30 year old Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus.

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I recently wrote an article about my memories of acquiring Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life back in June 2004. That article was inspired by a piece by Luke Plunkett in Aftermath called I’ve Had The Same PC Speakers For 20 Years, Almost My Entire Adult Life. Mr. Plunkett’s small reference to pre-ordering A Wonderful Life inspired my article, but as the title of his post indicates, GameCube’s finest Harvest Moon entry (I tip my hat to the very good runner-up, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody) was not the main point of his article. His article was about how he continues to use the Logitech X-530 computer speakers he purchased in 2004, notwithstanding tthat they were released to middling reviews. It is a good post and it fits in with my praise for tech with long shelf lives. While the first thing that caught my attention about the post was Harvest Moon, it occurred to me that I have my own ancient tech story. I previously wrote about the Logitech K310 keyboard that I have been using for more than a decade, but that is not my oldest continuously-owned piece of tech.

I present my Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus.

Meet my Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus.

This power switch is old. It is quite a bit older than Mr. Plunkett’s X-530 speakers. We got this with a Windows 95 back in 1996 or 1997, so the switcher is going on about three decades. It was last used in service of powering an actual desktop computer somewhere in the early 2010s. Since then I have put it to smaller, less critical use-cases. For example, I had been using it to power my modem, router, and access point until a couple of weeks ago, but I had to switch it out because my new ARRIS modem has a plug that goes sideways (my old modem had a smaller connector) and I added an ethernet switch which also had a long plug. I moved the faithful switcher to the front room where it now powers two laptop computers that have been converted to “desktop” service (one of which because I spilled water on it a couple of weeks ago) and a few other knickknacks.

I can report that the Switcher 2000 Plus works as well today as it did in 1996 (caveat: its surge protection prowess has not been put to the test). All of its outlets work, as do its switches. It actually has one outlet on the back that is not connected to the switches and is always up when the switcher is on. I cannot recall ever having had a problem with it, so while I no longer use it for heavy-duty work, I credit Newpoint for building a very high quality power device.

A cursory web search shows that there are plenty of Switcher 2000 Plus devices floating around on Ebay. I would personally recommend picking up a newer surge protector if you do not happen to have a nearly 30-year old Newpoint standing by, but the option to acquire one is there. One site indicates that Newpoint trademarked the Switcher 2000 Plus name on July 29, 1996 (trademark no longer active), which establishes that it was a new product when mine was purchased.

The Switcher Plus is the oldest electronic device that has been with me continuously (I no longer have my original Sega Genesis, which I received in 1994, or my original Game Boy, which I received in 1995). If we count video game consoles – which I do not think we should since it goes against the spirit of the Logitech speaker post – I have a Sega Master System that I received second-hand around 1999 that is much older than the Switcher Plus. I know this for a fact because I played it at the home of the person who gave it to me as early as 1993. (The Master System is probably also a little bit older than me, although I do not know my console’s exact manufacturing date.)

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On finding the 132nd Pokémon, Ditto, on Cheever Place in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (without a phone app).

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I was walking down Cheever Place, a quaint one- block street connecting Kane Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, to Degraw Street, which is where Cobble Hill turns into Carroll Gardens. I noticed a construction dumpster across the street from me just as I was about to reach Cheever and Degraw. Dumpsters are common graffiti targets and graffiti has a tendency to linger on them – making them less-than-aesthetic visitors to pretty neighborhoods. This dumpster was unsurprisingly covered in graffiti. I ordinarily would not have thought twice about it, but there was a certain prominent pink blob with a face that caught my attention and caused me to ready the camera on my LineageOS-powered Google Pixel 6a phone. For the first time in my life in Brooklyn, I stumbled upon what I believe to be Pokémon graffiti. I think that pink blob is a Ditto.

Click to expand.

Let us take a closer look.

I determined while trying to ascertain the meaning of the more common BLOB DYLAN graffiti seen around New York City that understanding what goes through the heads of graffiti taggers and “artists” is not easy. But in this case, I can say with high confidence that our artist spray-painted this pink blob on a dumpster with the subjective intent to depict the 132nd Pokémon in the original Pokédex. Compare the graffiti to the real thing.

This Ditto not only has the correct shape, but also the right eyes and mouth. Ditto’s design has not changed much over its near-30 year lifespan, so it is not clear which model the Ditto artist had in mind.

Ditto is one of the most unique Pokémon. It was one of the original 151 Pokémon, coming in at number 132 in the original Pokédex.

(I dare say that makes this Ditto sighting sentimental graffiti. I will give imaginary brownie points to anyone who gets the localization reference without looking.)

Ditto stands out for two reasons. Firstly, it is a friendly-looking pink blob. Secondly, Ditto is a one-trick pony with a memorable trick (Ditto can also become a pony if it copies a Ponyta). Most Pokémon can learn many different attacks and moves to use in battle. Ditto comes with one move: Transform. It does not learn any move other than Transform. As the name suggests, Ditto can use Transform to become a near-perfect copy of the opposing Pokémon. Ditto keeps its own subpar HP-stat when transformed but otherwise copies the target Pokémon in all respects (there were a few technical oddities to Ditto’s transformation in the first generation games, but those are beyond the scope of the instant article). Ditto had very limited utility in the early Pokémon games because it had to actually use transform to transform, but it was so slow that it would be hard to transform without being attacked first. However, generation 5 provided Ditto with the ability to instantly transform upon hitting the field and gave it some interesting options in terms of items. This gave it some fun practical use-cases in the modern games.

(Generation 1 Ditto made a cameo appearance in my article on a major stat change between the first two generations, see below.)

I captured and nicknamed this Ditto in 2019. The inspiration for the name can be found below.

Outside the games, Ditto was the subject of a memorable Pokémon episode, so memorable that it is one of the episodes from the original set that I would be able to follow fairly well despite not having seen it somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-century. Ash and his companions meet a girl named Duplica in episode 37 of the television series. Duplica had a Ditto, but her Ditto had an unfortunate flaw. Duplica’s Ditto kept is face while transforming into otherwise perfect copies of Pokémon (or non-Pokémon in the case of the anime). While Duplica’s Ditto was unique (the games do not feature similarly transformation-challenged Dittos), it became associated with the Pokémon despite only appearing in one additional anime episode (episode 174, which, if I saw it, I no longer remember it). In 2016, nearly 30 years after Duplica’s Ditto made its first of two anime appearances, the Pokémon company released a set of stuffed Dittos where Ditto is transformed into a different Pokémon while keeping its face. (The Muk in wave 8 of the stuffed Pokémon series made me laugh.)

I conducted a quick internet search to see if there have been any other reports of Ditto graffiti in New York City. While it is possible that some may turn up on one of the social media platforms, I did not come across any reports of Ditto specifically. Moreover, a reverse image search did not turn up any results that were plausibly Ditto. It seems at least possible that the Ditto of Cheever Place is one of a kind.

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Rafael Nadal was only defeated on the court in 4 of the 19 French Opens he entered. I examine what transpired for the four players who won three sets out of five against the King of Clay at Roland Garros.

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An 18-year old up-and-coming tennis star by the name of Rafael Nadal entered his first French Open in 2005. Mr. Nadal had participated in tennis’ other three majors on five occasions from 2003-2005, advancing at least one round in all five but never advancing past the fourth round. But clay would prove to be his home. Mr. Nadal eliminated the then-number-one ranked player in the world, Roger Federer, in the 2005 French semis en route to his first French Open win. Mr. Nadal repeated the feat in 2006-2008, defeating top-ranked Mr. Federer in the Finals in all three editions. After a shocking loss in 2009, Mr. Nadal rebounded to win five consecutive French Opens from 2010-2014 and then, after a two year break from dominating on clay, won four consecutive from 2017-20 and one more for good measure in 2022.

Taken together, Mr. Nadal has won the French Open 14 times. That is the tennis record for most wins at a single tournament, much less one of tennis' four grand slams. Speaking of grand slams, prior to 2009, the record for most total grand slam wins was Pete Sampras’ 14. Mr. Nadal ran up 14 of his 22 total slams at one of the four tournaments.

(While there is still some debate as to whether the greatest tennis player of the open era is Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, or Roger Federer, there is no serious debate that Mr. Nadal is the greatest clay court player in tennis history.)

Mr. Nadal competed in 19 of the last 20 French Opens, losing only 5 times. When it is news that a tennis player does not win a grand slam tournament, you know he must be doing something right. I have not followed tennis too closely for about 10 years, but I thought of this when I saw that Mr. Nadal was bounced from the first round of the 2024 French Open by Alexander Zverev, who in turn made it all the way to the Finals, where he finished runner-up to Carlos Alcaraz. In all fairness, Mr. Nadal was not expected to win in 2024. He is now 38 years old (37 at the start of the 2024 French) and has not played much in the last couple of years due to a series of injuries. It may well have been Mr. Nadal's final French Open, although he left the door open to returning in 2025. He reportedly acquitted himself well against Mr. Zverev, the current fourth-ranked player in the world (as of June 17, 2024), in a competitive straight set loss.

But what caught my attention more than Mr. Nadal’s loss was the fate of Mr. Zverev. I had in my mind the vague recollection that beating the near-invincible Rafael Nadal at the French does not guarantee final victory. My use of the word “final” victory was deliberate. Let us see how the only four players to have defeated Mr. Nadal at the French ended their tournaments. Wait. Did I not write that Nadal lost at five French Opens? Let us set that aside for the moment.

2009: Robin Söderling

Def Rafael Nadal in 4R (6-2, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6)

Lost Finals vs Roger Federer (1-6, 6-7, 4-6)

2015: Novak Djokovic

Def Rafael Nadal in QF (7-5, 6-3, 6-1)

Lost to Stan Warinka in Finals (6-4, 4-6, 3-6, 4-6)

2021: Novak Djokovic

Def Rafael Nadal in SF (3-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-2)

Won Finals vs Stefanos Tsisipas (6-7, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4)

2024: Alexander Zverev

Def Rafael Nadal in 1R (6-3, 7-6, 6-3)

Lost Finals vs Carlos Alcaraz (3-6, 6-2, 7-5, 1-6, 2-6)

Mr. Nadal entered and did not win the 2016 French Open. However, he was injured and withdrew in advance of his third round match against Marcel Granollers, who in turn lost in the fourth round. My interest was in the fate of players who won three sets out of five against Mr. Nadal on the French clay, so I decided to discount the 2016 French as being outside the scope of the instant survey.

All four players who beat Mr. Nadal at the French Open ultimately made the Finals. That was only inevitable in 2021 when Mr. Djokovic beat Mr. Nadal in the semifinals (inevitable in that case because the winning semi-finalists play in the Finals). Now one may naively think that if you beat the King of Clay, there is little left between you and the Coupe de Mousquetaires. But as we can see, those who beat Nadal at the French went on to go 1-3 in French Open Finals.

I remember 2009 well because I was a Roger Federer partisan. Mr. Federer had been the dominant tennis player from his Wimbledon win in 2003 through the 2007 U.S. Open, winning 12 of 18 major championships. However, none of Mr. Federer’s 12 wins were the French Open – and Mr. Nadal was the cause of Mr. Federer’s Paris demise in 2005 (semifinals) and 2006 and 2007 (Finals). Mr. Nadal finally ascended to number won in 2008 after defeating Mr. Federer for the fourth consecutive year at the French and then following that up by ending Mr. Federer’s streak of five consecutive Wimbledon championships in what may well be the greatest match ever played. But the path opened for Mr. Federer in 2009 when a slightly hobbled Mr. Nadal stunningly lost in the fourth round to Robin Söderling, who had never before made it to the fourth round of a major in 23 previous appearances, much less threaten to defeat the greatest clay court player of all time at Roland Garros. Mr. Söderling’s charmed run continued all the way to the French finals where he ran into Mr. Federer. Alas for Mr. Söderling, his magical run would end in straight sets as Mr. Federer completed the career grand slam and matched Pete Sampras for the then-major championship total of 14 majors, which has since been far surpassed by Messrs. Federer (20), Nadal (22), and Djokovic (24). (Note: Mr. Federer had won the 2008 U.S. Open after losing to Mr. Nadal in the French and Wimbledon Finals, which put him at 13 majors going into the 2009 French Open.)

(For his part, Mr. Söderling returned to the French Open Final in 2010, after defeating Mr. Federer in the quarterfinals and ending Mr. Federer’s still-record streak of 23-consecutive grand slam semifinal appearances. Alas for Mr. Söderling, he was dropped in straight sets in the Final by a much healthier Mr. Nadal than the one he had encountered in 2009.)

Novak Djokovic, who now stands as the most decorated men’s tennis player of all time with a record 24 major championships, decisively bounced Mr. Nadal in the French Open quarterfinals in 2015. Mr. Djokovic was widely viewed as the best player in the world at the time and Mr. Nadal was injured and not on his best form, so all things considered it was as expected as someone who had won 9 of the 10 previous French Opens not winning could be. Mr. Djokovic was expected to win his next two matches and, like Mr. Federer in 2009 and Mr. Nadal in 2011, complete his career grand slam. Mr. Djokovic took care of business in a tough five-set battle against the third ranked Andy Murray in the semifinals, but in what was a major (pun intended) upset, he lost in the Finals against Stan Wawrinka, who had never previously been present in a major Final. What made it more shocking was the way Mr. Djokovic, then already an eight time major champion, was defeated. After Mr. Djokovic won the first set, Mr. Wawrinka generally overpowered Mr. Djokovic and hit him off the court in the next three, not only toppling the number one player and delaying by one year his French Open triumph, but doing so with surprising ease.

(Mr. Wawrinka returned to the French Open Final in 2017. However, standing between him and a second trophy at Roland Garros was Mr. Nadal. You can guess the result.)

Mr. Djokovic toppled Mr. Nadal for the second time at the French Open in 2021 (note Mr. Djokovic’s overall record against Mr. Nadal at the French Open is 2-8, so this survey is necessarily cherry-picking his successes at Roland Garros) and, on that occasion, was able to convert his win into what was his second of three French Open triumphs in the next round. However, Mr. Djokovic came perilously close to extending the streak of converting beating Mr. Nadal into runner-up finishes, having to come from two sets down to defeat Stefanos Tsisipas in the five-set final.

Finally, we have Alexander Zverev in 2024. He defeated Mr. Nadal in the first round, meaning he had a long path post-Nadal to the Finals. But Mr. Zverev would make it to the Finals and there, he took a two-sets-to-one lead over Carlos Alcaraz. He was close to evening the Finals record for those who beat Mr. Nadal at 2-2. However, he would win only 3 of the final 15 games of the match en route to a five-set loss, leaving the record for those who beat Mr. Nadal at the French at 1-3 in Finals.

There is no great significance to this survey. If anything, the notable take-away is that Mr. Nadal lost so rarely in his 19 French Open starts that we can take the time to carefully study the fates of those who beat him. But for fun, we can try to take something scientific from the survey:

Mr. Nadal was not on his best form in any of his four French Open losses. Noting that Mr. Nadal won eight non-French Open majors (for perspective, Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, and Jimmy Connors ended their great careers with 8, 7, and 7 major championships respectively), only in 2009 did Mr. Nadal make the semifinals in another major in a year where he did not win the French Open (he won the Australian Open a few months before the French and made the U.S. Open semis in the summer). Mr. Nadal, again injured, ended up not contesting the latter two majors in 2021 after losing to Mr. Djokovic in the French semis.

While the evidence suggests that one could benefit from Mr. Nadal not being at his best at the French, the fact that all four players who beat Mr. Nadal at Roland Garos ended up in the Finals suggest that one had to be in strong form to beat even a diminished version of Mr. Nadal on clay. Even in the case of 2024 – where Mr. Nadal was not the favorite against Mr. Zverev in their first round match – Mr. Zverev ended up making his first French Open finals after three consecutive losses in the Semifinals (one of which was against Mr. Nadal in 2022).

But as we see, while beating Mr. Nadal suggested French Open-winning form, it did not guarantee winning the French Open. Mr. Söderling converted his stunning upset of Mr. Nadal in 2009 into a Finals appearance, but there he returned to Earth against the runner-up in the three previous editions, Roger Federer. Mr. Djokovic was the heavy favorite in the 2015 Final, but he did not have enough left in the tank after tough wins against Messrs. Nadal and Murray in the quarters and semis to hold up against the big hitting Mr. Wawrinka. Mr. Djokovic had to make a historic comeback to win the French final in 2021, and Mr. Zverev was the victim of a slightly less dramatic comeback in the 2024 French final.

It seems to be more likely than not that 2024 was Mr. Nadal’s final French Open. But he left the door open, so if his body allows him to continue at a high level – perhaps someone will have the opportunity to add his name to the very select list of players who managed to defeat Mr. Nadal at the major he has more-or-less owned for two decades.

Or, perhaps even more improbably at this stage, Mr. Nadal will show that he has one final winning run in Paris left in him.

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Pistons, Lakers, and the 2004 NBA Finals

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I look back on the 2004 NBA Finals wherein the Detroit Pistons upset the Los Angeles Lakers and examine whether the Lakers should have been favored.

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I recently wrote an article using my memories of the 2004 NBA Finals between the Detroit Pistons and Los Angeles Lakers to help me pin down when I received a specific video game. Putting together that post brought back memories of the strange 2004 NBA season, which served simultaneously as the apex and the last gasp of the slow-paced, defense-first era in the NBA that began taking hold in the mid-to-late 1990s and that would be eviscerated by rule changes and offensive innovations beginning with the 2004-05 season. No team captured the essence of 2003-04 more than the Detroit Pistons, which ground its way to the NBA Finals with an historically great defense and a slightly below-league average offense (even by the grim standards of offense in 2003-04). The star-studded Los Angeles Lakers, winners of three of the previous four NBA Championships, were heavily favored going into the Finals. As we know looking back, the Pistons crushed the favored Lakers in five games (4-1) wherein only one game, the Lakers’ fortunate overtime win in game two, was meaningfully in doubt in the final minutes. I pulled up a few articles about the series for my previous article in order to provide context for the majority of readers who are likely not familiar with the details of the 2004 NBA Finals. That inspired a topic: Should the Lakers have been favored at all?

Context Going Into the Series

To begin, let us look at the path of the Pistons and the Lakers to the NBA Finals. While the Lakers have a tendency to get the lion’s share of attention, I will lead with the Pistons – that is the team that actually won the championship.

I discussed the 2003-04 Pistons in detail in a related article about their peculiar 2003 Draft, when, despite having been an excellent team in 2002-03, they wound up with the second overall draft pick (usually reserved for bad teams) thanks to an unsung trade from 1997. The Pistons used the pick to draft Darko Milicic, who then barely saw the floor in just over two seasons with the Pistons, over three current and future Hall of Famers who were taken at picks 3-5. While the pick is often derided, I made the case for Milicic – not because of Milicic’s contributions to the Pistons, but instead because we know that the result of the pick was the 2004 NBA Championship.

The Pistons were coming off a 2002-03 season wherein they finished with a 50-32 record and made the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pistons returned their top three players from 2002-03: center and Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace and their leading scorers, guards Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton. They would be joined in the starting lineup by two returning players, Mehmet Okur (a sharp-shooting big man who would later make an All Star team, albeit not with the Pistons) and second-year forward Tayshaun Prince. While the Pistons saw some shuffling around of their opening game starting line-up, their biggest change was in the coaching department. They fired Rick Carlisle, who had done an admirable job taking over what had been a losing team (32-50) in 2001-02 and guiding the Pistons to consecutive 50-32 seasons and three playoff series wins in three seasons. The Pistons replaced Mr. Carlisle with Larry Brown, whose coaching resume is too long to detail here, who was coming off a stint with the Philadelphia 76ers (which the Pistons had eliminated in the 2002-03 Eastern Conference Semifinals) that included an NBA Finals appearance in 2000-01.

The Pistons were seen as a good team going into 2003-04. While preseason betting odds are an imperfect metric (to put it mildly), the Pistons were given the seventh best championship odds (tied with the Indiana Pacers) and second best in the Eastern Conference behind the two-time defending conference champion, the New Jersey Nets. This is in line with my recollection of NBA commentary at the time.

As I noted, 2003-04 was a very slow-paced, low-scoring season. This seemed just right for the Pistons, which were built around a ferocious defense. The Pistons started the year well but unspectacularly, having a 34-23 record through their February 20, 2004 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. One day prior, the Pistons had completed a trade for Rasheed Wallace, a two-time All Star and one of the better power forwards in the NBA. Mr. Rasheed Wallace joined Mr. Ben Wallace in the starting lineup (relegating the excellent Mehmet Okur to the bench), and the Pistons transformed, finishing the season on a 20-4 spurt to end the regular season with a 54-28 record that was the Eastern Conference’s second best record (the Pistons were technically the third seed because they were second in their division, but they had home court advantage in the second round against the second seed on account of their better record.)

The Lakers went into the 2003-04 season with significantly more fanfare than the Pistons. After having their run of three consecutive championships ended in a disappointing 2002-03 second round playoff expert to the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs, the Lakers added two future Hall of Famers in the twilight of their careers – then-second all time leading scorer and two-time MVP Karl Malone (a young 41 years of age) and long-time elite point guard Gary Payton – to its core duo of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Mr. O’Neal was, without question, the best center in the NBA, and although Tim Duncan of the Spurs and perhaps the eventual 2003-04 NBA MVP Kevin Garnett had surpassed Mr. O’Neal as a player by 03-04, he was at worst the third best player in the NBA and still its most dominant offensive force when healthy. Mr. Bryant was considered by most to be the best perimeter player in the NBA (although Tracy McGrady of the Orlando Magic had a strong case going into 2003-04) and was one of the top six or seven players in his own right. The Lakers were widely hailed as championship favorites with the additions of Messrs. Malone and Payton to what was, without question, the NBA’s best star duo.

The Lakers initially lived up to expectations – beginning the season with an 18-3 record. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a team relying on some older pieces, the Lakers began to have injury problems. The 40-year old Karl Malone missed 40 games after having missed only 10 games in the previous 19 seasons (not a typo). Mr. O’Neal, whose physical conditioning left something to be desired in 2003-04, missed 15 games. Mr. Bryant – who was mixing playing basketball with preparing for a trial in Colorado to face rape charges (the charges were dropped during the NBA offseason) – missed 18 games. The Lakers found themselves at 31-19 on February 11, 2024 after a 13-16 injury-filled stretch before regaining their health and going 25-7 the rest of the way to finish with a 56-26 record.

The particulars of the Lakers in 2003-04 are beyond the scope of this article, but that team had more melodrama than a soap opera. I noted Mr. Bryant’s serious ongoing criminal matters. On one occasion Mr. Bryant accused Mr. Malone of making a pass at his wife. Mr. O’Neal and Mr. Bryant continued to bicker in public (including some ugly allegations related to Mr. Bryant’s arrest in Colorado). Mr. O’Neal, as I noted, was not entirely in shape and openly dissatisfied with the Lakers. People gathered throughout the season that the O’Neal-Bryant duo was unlikely to survive another season (Mr. O’Neal demanded and received a trade after the season). The Lakers’ legendary Coach, Phil Jackson, had secretly decided to quit at the end of the season (after which he had some choice words about coaching Mr. Bryant) – but he would return in 2005-06 and eventually lead two very different-looking and more functional Lakers teams led by Mr. Bryant to championships at the end of the decade.

(Maybe the surprise is that the Lakers circus somehow managed to win 56 games.)

The Pistons entered the Eastern Conference playoffs as the number two seed. While they had the NBA’s second best defense in the NBA’s best defensive season in history in the regular season, we will see shortly that they ratcheted things to another level in the playoffs.

The Pistons did away with the seventh-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in a five-game gentleman’s sweep in the first round.

In the second round, the Pistons faced what would turn out to be their stiffest playoff test against the team that had swept them in the 2003 Eastern Conference Finals, the Jason Kidd-led New Jersey Nets. The Pistons won by a gag-inducing score of 78-56 in game one and then won game two 95-80 to take a two-game lead.

(The 134 points scored in game one of the Eastern Conference Semifinals set a new second-place mark for the fewest points scored in an NBA playoff game since the introduction of the 24-second shot clock in the 1954-55 NBA season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the record involved the 2001-02 Pistons in a 66-64 loss against the Boston Celtics. The second-place mark has only subsequently been tied once... but more on that shortly.)

However, here it is worth noting that while the Pistons were the second-best defense in 2003-04, the Nets were fourth and had been the top-ranked defense in the two previous seasons. The Nets showed why, winning game three 82-64 and game four 94-79 to even the series. Game 5 would be the only time the Pistons would give up 100 points in the playoffs. After being tied at 88 in regulation, the Pistons and Nets fought through three shockingly high scoring overtime periods. In the end, the Nets prevailed 127-120, giving them an opportunity in game six at home to eliminate the Pistons for the second year in a row. The Pistons, facing elimination, narrowly broke serve in the Meadowlands, winning game six 81-75 (it had been 60-58 after three quarters) to force game seven at home. Apparently done with the scares, the Pistons dominated the Nets 90-69 in game seven to win the series 4-3.

The Pistons next met in the East Finals the top-seeded Indiana Pacers, which were coached by a certain Rick Carlisle (remember him?) to a 61-21 record in the regular season, (This was months before their infamous – so infamous it has an article on History.com – “Malice at the Palice” brawl the next fall). The Pacers were led by Jermaine O’Neal, Defensive Player of the Year Ron Artest (who would later start on two Lakers championship teams in 2008-09 and 09-10 under the name Metta World Peace), and future Hall of Fame guard Reggie Miller. The East Finals proved to be perfect basketball for anyone who does not like putting the basketball through the basket. The Pacers held serve in game one at home 78-74. Game two produced the iconic moment of the playoffs. The Pistons led by two with 24 seconds to go as Mr. Miller had a clear path for a go-ahead layup. Second-year forward Tayshaun Prince came from behind and used his very long arms to steal away Mr. Miller’s layup in what was then the most famous chase-down block in NBA history (since surpassed by LeBron James’ block of Andre Igoudala late in game seven of the 2016 NBA Finals). Mr. Prince saved the Pistons lead (and possibly season)and the Pistons held on to win by a riveting score of 72-67 (if you think 72-67 is bad…). The Pistons and Pacers split the next two games in Detroit, with the Pistons winning the highest scoring game of the series in game three (85-78) before being blown out in game four (83-68). Game four would be the last time the Pacers won a game in 2004 and the last time they would score more than 65 points. The Pistons won game five on the road 83-65 and then finished off the Pacers 69-65 in game six (I did not lie when I suggested that 72-67 was not the low-water mark).

(The Pistons and Pacers combined for 134 points in game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals. That tied the record for second fewest points scored in an NBA playoff game since the introduction of the 24-second shot clock in 1954-55. The second-place mark had of course been set less than one month earlier by the Pistons and Nets. If that were not already enough offensive offense, the Pistons 72-67 win over the Pacers in game two remains fourth on the distinguished list.)

The Lakers had a somewhat higher scoring path to the finals. Entering as the second seed (with the third best-record, but they had the second seed because of the divisional ranking), the Lakers defeated an overmatched Houston Rockets team in five games in the first round.

(Note that the Lakers’ 72-71 win over the Rockets in game one was, at the time, the third lowest scoring playoff game in the shot clock era, trailing only a second round game between the Knicks and Heat in 2000. The Pistons would, as I noted above, win three lower scoring slogs later in the playoffs.)

The Lakers then faced the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, who had defeated them the year before, in round two. Here, although the Lakers were the second seed and Spurs third, the Spurs had home court advantage by virtue of their one-game-better record. The Spurs, led by the best player in the NBA at the time Tim Duncan, held serve at home, winning games one and two 88-78 and 95-85. (Note: While I describe Tim Duncan as the best player in the NBA in 2003-04, Kevin Garnett had the best regular season by every meaningful measure and was the deserving MVP.) The series then moved to Los Angeles where the Lakers held serve, blowing out the Spurs 105-81 in game three and winning game four 98-90. Game five would provide the defining moment of the Lakers’ run. The Lakers were down by a Pistons-esque score of 73-72 four-tenths of a second remaining when Derick Fisher managed to catch the ball, shoot, and hit the buzzer-beater to win 74-73 (there is no way that was actually in 0.4 seconds). Having won on the road, the Lakers finished off the Spurs with a convincing 88-76 win in game six.

The Lakers faced the West’s top-seed, the Minnesota Timberwolves, in the Conference Finals (this would be the last time the Wolves won a playoff series until 2023-24). The Timberwolves were led by NBA MVP Kevin Garnett, who had one of the most genuinely brilliant regular seasons in NBA history but had seen his numbers dip a bit in the playoffs. The Lakers won game one on the road 97-88 before dropping game two in ugly fashion (89-71). After having suffered injury problems all season, the Lakers got a break the other way when the Wolves’ All Star point guard Sam Cassell left game three with injury (some say self-inflicted in the previous round), which the Lakers won 100-89 (this was a problem for the Wolves not only because Sam Cassell was an excellent player but also because they were severely lacking in the backup point guard department). The Lakers went up 3-1 with a 92-85 win in game four. Minnesota narrowly avoided elimination by winning 98-96 in game five, but the Lakers made it a perfect 9-0 at home in the playoffs in game six, eliminating the Timberwolves with a 96-90 win.

(Note: The Pistons also benefited from injuries in the East Finals. The Pacers’ best or second-best player, Jermaine O’Neal, was battling a knee injury – although he did not miss time. Pacers point guard Jamaal Tinsely, who had struggled throughout the playoffs, left early in the decisive game six. Mileage may vary on how significant these injuries were, although the absence of Mr. Tinsely was less critical than the absence of Mr. Cassell.)

The Team Stats

The Lakers went into their Finals matchup with the Pistons as heavy favorites. There are many reasons for this and I admitted in my previous article referencing the Finals that I was among the people at the time who thought the Lakers would win. But before we explore the reasons why the Lakers were favored, let us look at the stats. Perhaps there was a statistical justification for the Lakers being near-prohibitive favorites.

First, let us review the regular season stats. I will use record, offensive rating, defensive rating, and net rating. See below.

Team | Record | OFF Rtg | DEF Rtg | Net RTg
Pistons | 54-28 | 102.0 (18th) | 95.4 (2nd) | +6.6 (2nd)
Lakers | 56-26 | 105.5 (6th) | 101.3 (8th) | +4.2 (7th)

Offensive and defensive ratings adjust the team’s scoring and points allowed per 100 possessions. In this way, the rating stats account for pace in a way that the raw scoring and points allowed numbers do not. The Pistons played at a much slower pace (87.9) than did the Lakers (92.3), which affects their raw stats. The Lakers averaged 98.2 points to the Pistons’ 90.1, but the Pistons, helped in part by their slow pace, only allowed 84.3 while the Lakers allowed 94.3. But while the Lakers were much better offensively than the Pistons and the Pistons were even more dramatically better defensively,pace makes the differences look more extreme than they were.

The significant point is that over the course of the season, the Pistons were better than the Lakers in terms of their net margin. While we need not get too far in the weeds here, scoring margin is a better indicator of success than the raw win/loss total, which is subject to randomness. (The 2006-07 case of the 58-24 champion Spurs having a better margin than the 67-15 Dallas Mavericks (eliminated in the first round) is a fun, albeit extreme, example case.)

am with the superior regular season net rating in the NBA Finals.

We know that the Lakers had injury problems all season and the Pistons were dramatically better after acquiring Rasheed Wallace. Had the Lakers not been healthy in the Western Conference playoffs and had the Pistons not traded for Mr. Wallace, we would have likely been looking at a Spurs-Nets rematch or a Spurs-Pacers (I think it would have been the Nets – but I can say with more certainty that the NBA’s high-paying advertisers would not have been satisfied with either of those outcomes). I noted before that the Pistons and Lakers finished the final leg of the season at 20-4 and 25-7 respectively . For fun, let us compare their last 24 regular season games. Note that here I will use their raw statistics instead of efficiency ratings – so focus on the margin instead of the raw totals.

(In this case – calculating the net ratings would require more work than I am inclined to do. The raw margins give enough of an idea here.)

Team | Record | PPGF | PPGA | Margin
Pistons | 20-4 | 91.4 | 78.2 | +13.2
Lakers | 18-6 | 97.9 | 93.9 | +4.0

While this sample is not entirely fair to the Lakers since it cuts out a good chunk of their late season run – a bigger positive Lakers sample does little to narrow the gap to the Pistons’ post-Rasheed Wallace stretch. If we include the Lakers’ full 25-7 run, we see that their margin grows to +4.8 – good, but not spectacular. Conversely, no team has had a +13.2 margin for an entire season, although the legendary 72-10 1995-96 Chicago Bulls managed +12.3 in raw margin with a +13.4 net rating over 82 games. But while the Pistons were certainly not the 95-96 Bulls, they were playing championship-quality basketball in the regular season’s home stretch. I previously noted that the Lakers began the season at an 18-3 run. There, their raw margin was +9.1. While that would be a championship-quality margin and then some over 82 games, we see it is still well off the Pistons’ late season level.

Returning to the significance of full season net rating, I put together a chart comparing the records and net margins of every NBA Finals from 1999 through 2010 (we have five finals before and after the Pistons-Lakers matchup in 2004):

YEAR | EAST CHAMP | WEST CHAMP | RECORD DIFF | NetRTg DIFF | SERIES RESULT
98-99* | New York Knicks | San Antonio Spurs | Spurs +10 | Spurs +7.8 | Spurs 4-1
99-00 | Indiana Pacers | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +11 | Lakers +4.2 | Lakers 4-2
00-01 | Phiadelphia 76ers | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +0** | 76ers +1.1 | Lakers 4-1
01-02 | New Jersey Nets | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +6 | Lakers +3.2 | Lakers 4-0
02-03 | New Jersey Nets | San Antonio Spurs | Spurs +11 | Spurs +0.3 | Spurs 4-2
03-04 | Detroit Pistons | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +2 | Pistons +2.4 | Pistons 4-1
04-05 | Detroit Pistons | San Antonio Spurs | Spurs +5 | Spurs +4.3 | Spurs 4-3
05-06 | Miami Heat | Dallas Mavericks | Mavericks +8 | Mavericks +2.7 | Heat 4-2
06-07 | Cleveland Cavaliers | San Antonio Spurs | Spurs +8 | Spurs +5.1 | Spurs 4-0
07-08 | Boston Celtics | Los Angeles Lakers | Celtics +9 | Celtics +3.6 | Celtics 4-2
08-09 | Orlando Magic | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +6 | Lakers +0.9 | Lakers 4-1
09-10 | Boston Celtics | Los Angeles Lakers | Lakers +7 | Lakers +1.0 | Lakers 4-3

* There were 50 regular season games in 1998-99 instead of the ordinary 82.
** The Lakers and 76ers both had 56-26 records in 2000-01 but the Lakers had home court advantage due to a tie-breaker

(Note: I suppose we have to tip our hat to the Spurs and Lakers for winning 10 of the 11 Western Conference championships in our sample.)

Although raw record tends to be less predictive than net margin, the actual records are significant in the NBA Finals because it is the team's record, rather than margin, which determines home court advantage. As we can see, the 2003-04 Pistons were one of only two teams out of our 11-year sample to win the NBA Finals without home court advantage (if we went one more year in both directors, we would have added the 1997-98 Bulls and 2010-11 Mavericks, both of which won without home court), with the other being the 2005-06 Miami Heat. Similarly, two teams won with a lower regular season net rating than their opponent. One was again the 05-06 Heat, but the other, in a mild surprise, was the 2000-01 Lakers over the 76ers (the Lakers had home court advantage). That Lakers team brings up an interesting point that focusing on regular season net rating can overlook: Playoff performance.

Now let us look at the playoffs. Both the Pistons and Lakers were relatively healthy in the playoffs – so their margins should give us a good marker. While the playoffs generally offer no reason to throw out 82 games of regular season evidence, there have been cases where a team significantly raises its level of play in the playoffs. Perhaps the best example is the 2000-01 champion Lakers I highlighted above. Rather than tell, I will show:

RegS/POF | Record | OFF Rtg | DEF Rtg | Net RTg
00-01 Lakers Reg Season | 56-26 | 108.4 (2nd) | 104.8 (21st) | +3.6 (8th)
00-01 Lakers Playoffs | 15-1 | 111.6 (1st) | 97.9 (1st) | +13.7 (1st)

The Lakers were a good-but-not great team in the 2000-01 regular season before turning into one of the greatest teams in NBA history for 16 playoff games. Lest anyone think that the Lakers simply had an easy playoff road, they had to beat, in order, the 5th, 2nd, 1st, and 4th ranked teams in Net Rating, which they did in stunningly dominant fashion. While I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Pistons had a fair case to be favored in 2003-04, I would not make the same argument for the 2000-01 Philadelphia 76ers. Notwithstanding the Lakers' pedestrian regular season, they were demonstrably more talented than the 76ers and performed better enough in the playoffs to justify being tabbed as the near-prohibitive favorite in the series (the 76ers were taken to seven games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals and Finals while the Lakers swept all three of its Western Conference opponents, and all three Lakers opponents had better net ratings than the 76ers' best opponent).

Perhaps the 2003-04 Lakers similarly raised their playoff level. Let us see how the 2003-04 Lakers looked through their Western Conference title run against the Eastern Conference champion Pistons.

Team | Record | OFF Rtg | DEF Rtg | Net RTg
Pistons | 12-6 | 98.7 | 92.2 | +6.5
Lakers | 12-5 | 103.3 | 98.9 | +4.4

(I want to note for the record that the Pistons and Pacers had offensive ratings of 90.8 and 87.8 respectively in the Eastern Conference Finals. I note this just so you understand how brutal that series was.)

Unlike the 2000-01 Lakers, the 2003-04 edition’s playoff numbers are similar to its regular season numbers. The same can be said for the Pistons. Both teams scored and allowed fewer points, but the shift was similar for both. The Lakers slightly narrowed their net rating gap to 2.1 worse than the Pistons in the playoffs from 2.4 in the regular season, but this too is similar. While these numbers do not establish that the Pistons had to be the favorite going into the Finals, they do suggest that there was some evidence that the Pistons had generally been a better team than the Lakers all season.

However, there is some playoff context that favors the Lakers. Let us compare their opponents. For this, we will look at the regular season statistics for the six teams the Pistons and Lakers encountered en route to the Finals. I will note the three best teams in each category in bold. They arent in bold …...The parenthetical shows their rankings out of the 29 NBA teams.

Opponent | RegS Record | OFF Rtg | DEF Rtg | NET Rtg
San Antonio Spurs (LAL) | 57-25 | 102.2 (16th) | 94.1 (1st) | +8.1 (1st)
Indiana Pacers (DET) | 61-21 | 103.8 (9th) | 97.2 (3rd) | +6.5 (3rd)
Minnesota Timberwolves (LAL) | 58-24 | 105.9 (5th) | 99.7 (6th) | +6.1 (4th)
New Jersey Nets (DET) | 49-33 | 100.8 (25th) | 98.0 (4th) | +2.8 (8th)
Houston Rockets (LAL) | 45-37 | 100.9 (24th) | 99.0 (5th) | +1.9 (10th)
Milwaukee Bucks (DET) | 44-38 | 106.5 (4th) | 105.4 (23rd) | +1.2 (11th)

The Lakers had a harder road to the Finals, having to overcome the top and fourth-ranked teams in net rating in the latter two Western conference series. While that Lakers team is remembered as a failed superteam, what is perhaps most impressive is that they were markedly inferior to both the Spurs and Timberwolves based on their regular season performance. Neil Paine conducted a study where he compared the net rating of every NBA conference champion from 1984-2024 to the two teams they beat in their respective conference semifinals and finals. The 2004 Lakers were tied for the fifth largest deficit in the 40-year survey. (The Pistons had a better rating than the Nets and Pacers, so they would be on the other side of the chart.)

The Pistons’ road was a bit easier, if for no other reason than that it did not include the NBA’s best regular season team by net rating. With that being said, the Nets, while clearly the weakest team in the Final eight that year, were the two-time defending Eastern Conference champions and they were returning many of the key players from their previous two teams. In hindsight, it is somewhat surprising the Nets managed to take the Pistons to the brink – but much like the regular season play underestimated the injury-prone Lakers, it may have somewhat underestimated the Nets, which had their own set of issues that year beyond the scope of this article. The Pacers were excellent – in some respect similar to the Pistons in having a very balanced, defense-first roster, without a single superstar. The Pacers had the best regular season record at 61-21 and were third in the NBA in net rating, just 0.1 points behind the Pistons for second. That the Pistons managed to hold the Pacers to an offensive rating 16 points below their league average (yikes) counts for something. I would go as far as to say that while the Lakers overcame a much tougher semifinal opponent than did the Pistons (and with less drama), the Pacers were stronger than the version of the Timberwolves that played in the Western Conference Finals (one could make a fair case that the Pacers were better than a healthy Timberwolves team, but that would be a close call).

The Pundits Before the Finals

I have established that at a minimum there was evidence to suggest that the Pistons were better than the Lakers going into the Finals. Of course, were one to have followed the pre-series punditry, he or she would not have heard much of this.

The odds makers set the Lakers as heavy favorites. John Nadel of the Associated Press warned that the Lakers were “heavily favored” and that “[t]he Pistons seem ill-equipped to deal with [Shaquille] O’Neal,” suggesting on the latter point that Detroit would have to turn to backup big man Elden Campbell in lieu of its All NBA Defense center, Ben Wallace.

(The rest of Mr. Nadel’s article focused on how hideous the Pistons-Pacers series was, which, to be sure, was fair.)

The Associated Press was not done, Greg Beacham wrote on the eve of game one of the Finals:

Star power is one reason the Lakers are big favorites in the upcoming NBA Finals, where most expect the scrappy, defense-oriented Detroit Pistons to become the sixth straight Eastern Conference champion dismissed by the West’s behemoths.

Tim Legler and David Aldridge both picked the Lakers for ESPN. Jason Whitlock, while opining that Larry Brown was a better Coach than Phil Jackson, nevertheless concluded that based on the rosters, “Brown’s Pistons don’t stand much of a chance against the Lakers.”

Do note that I am not cherry-picking. While I am sure there were some people publicly picking the Pistons other than the Pistons themselves, the Lakers were broadly viewed as the overwhelming favorites going into the NBA Finals.

Why Were the Lakers Favored?

One may ask as we look back why the Lakers were so heavily favored. I was around at the time and following the NBA, so I can offer a few explanations.

The Lakers had won 3 of the previous 4 championships. Despite having had some tough seasons on the way to the Finals in the previous four years (4-3 over the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2000 West Finals, 4-3 over the Sacramento Kings in the 2002 West Finals, and their loss to the Spurs in the 2003 West Semifinals), the Lakers had dealt with the Eastern Conference Champion with relative ease in its three championship wins (4-2 over the Indiana Pacers in 2000, 4-1 over the Larry Brown-coached Philadelphia 76ers in 2001, and a 4-0 sweep against the New Jersey Nets in 2002).

The Lakers had the two best players in the series – Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, and both were playing well in the playoffs. I will note that notwithstanding the then-overlooked evidence going into the Finals that the Pistons had performed better all season, there is no serious argument against the assertion that Messrs. O’Neal and Bryant were the two best players on either team. The counter-point would be that at least six of the eight next best players in the series were on the Pistons.

The Pistons were unusually constructed for an NBA champion. While the Pistons had the best starting lineup balance in the league (Tayshaun Prince was the weakest of the Pistons’ 5 starters and he was good enough to harass Kobe Bryant into the worst shooting playoff series of his career), it is fair to say that the Pistons did not have a top-10 player in 2003-04 (Chauncey Billups had a case for such a designation in 2005-06, but not 03-04). The last NBA champion arguably similarly constructed was the 1989-90 Pistons. The champions between the Pistons in 89-90 and 03-04 were led by (noting best player only), in order: Michael Jordan (3X), Hakeem Olajuwon (2X), Michael Jordan (3X), Tim Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal (3X), and Tim Duncan– all of whom were among the top 2-3 players in the NBA at the time of their championships. (The 89-90 Pistons were led by Isiah Thomas, who was a Hall of Famer and one of the finest point guards in NBA history, but neither he nor any of the other Pistons players on that championship team have the statistical profile of Jordan, Olajuwon, O'Neal, or Duncan.)

While I established that the Pistons playoff run was very good, I suspect some pundits held their near loss to the Nets, which were not as good in 2003-04 as they had been in the previous season, against them. Moreover, as the Nadel article noted, the Pistons win over the Pacers was so painful to watch that people may not have given Detroit full credit for what was a quality victory over a very strong 61-win Pacers team.

Conversely, the Lakers beat what was widely viewed to be the next best team in the NBA, the defending champion Spurs, before toppling the NBA MVP Kevin Garnett and the top-seeded Wolves in the West Finals. While I noted that the Timberwolves did suffer a key injury in game three, they were still a good team – albeit not good enough to threaten the Lakers – even without Mr. Cassell.

The Lakers were generally healthy after having had injury problems for much of the season.

2003-04 was a bit before looking to advanced stats like offensive/defensive rating or focusing on margin over raw win/loss totals was in vogue. Thus, evidence that the Pistons had consistently had a better margin than the Lakers over the course of the season may have been overlooked. Moreover, the playoffs has a way of flattening things since the best players play heavier minutes and factors like depth – which favored the Pistons over the Lakers – become less significant. (Of course that goes both ways – the Pistons could ratchet up the minutes for its excellent starting lineup.)

Even in hindsight, I do not think the Lakers being favored – even granting the pro-Pistons evidence -- was unreasonable. The NBA is very much a strong-link league, and the Lakers had the two most productive players – with a relatively in-shape Shaquille O’Neal still having a solid case as the best player to have on your side in a best of seven series. As terrific as that Pistons team was, there is a reason why NBA champions tend to have one-to-two elite players who are a notch above the Pistons’ ensemble cast (note that the Pistons would send four of those same starters to the All Star game in 2005-06 – so saying that they were not individually on the same level as Messrs. O’Neal and Bryant is not to say they were not very high level performers). But while I think favoring the Lakers was fair, it was not required – and the evidence did not support making the Lakers the overwhelming favorites that they were deemed going into the Finals.

What Actually Happened

Game one of the NBA Finals took place in Los Angeles, with the Lakers having home court advantage, and it did not go at all as expected. Despite some belief that the Pistons were ill-suited to guard Mr. O’Neal, the undersized Ben Wallace spent a great deal of time covering Mr. O’Neal with unusually little help and doing an admirable job at the task. Mr. O’Neal had a strong game with 34 points on 13-16 shooting to go along with 11 rebounds, but Mr. O’Neal did not receive much help – lest one not look too deeply into Mr. Bryant taking 27 shots to score 25 points – and the Pistons pulled away in the second half to win 87-75. The Detroit Free Press began to feel confident.

The Lakers very much needed to win game two at home with games three-through-five being in Detroit. The Pistons led by three before Mr. Bryant hit a clutch three pointer with 2.1 seconds to play to tie the game and force overtime. The Lakers then outscored the Pistons 10-2 in overtime to even the series at 1-1 going into the three-game stretch in Detroit. Both Messrs. O’Neal and Bryant played well, with the former scoring 29 points in 20 shots and the latter 33 on 27, including the game-saving three.

Perhaps the Lakers had righted the ship. But as we know, that would be the final time Messrs. O’Neal and Bryant played together in Los Angeles.

The Pistons felt like they let one get away in game two – and they responded with a dominant 88-68 win at home in game three, holding the O’Neal-Bryant duo to 25 points. The Pistons backcourt of Billups and Hamilton combined for 50 points on only 33 field goal attempts. The Lakers problems were compounded by the fact that Karl Malone, then 41, left the game with injury – leaving the Lakers without their two best power forwards (Horace Grant had already been out with injury). Mr. Malone would play his final career game in game four, missing game five. Lakers point guard Gary Payton insisted that the Pistons were not better and were just out-hustling the Lakers, but at this point even the Lakers partisans were beginning to see the writing on the wall.

Game 4 went only marginally better for the Lakers. The score was tied at 56 after three quarters, but the Pistons pulled away in the fourth to win 88-80 and take a 3-1 series lead. Note at that time no team had come from 3-1 down to win the NBA Finals, and it only happened subsequently on one occasion (2016 Cavaliers over the Warriors). Shaquille O’Neal had his best game of the series with 36 points on 21 shots and 20 rebounds while Kobe Bryant again struggled to 20 points on 25 shots. The Pistons backcourt of Billiups and Hamilton had 40 points on 23 shots while Rasheed Wallace chipped in 26 points on 23, perhaps taking advantage of the Lakers’ newfound lack of healthy power forwards.

The Lakers were facing elimination in game 5, but a win would return the series to Los Angeles for game 6 and a potential game 7. However, it was not to be. The Pistons led 55-45 at halftime and extended that lead to 82-59 after three quarters. The fourth quarter proved to be a coronation wherein the Lakers chipped away to make the final result – 100-87 – look a bit more respectable. The O’Neal-Bryant duo closed an era with 44 points on 34 shots. The Pistons starting lineup closed the series in perfect fashion, which the five starters scoring between 11 and 21 and notching 81 points on 59 shots.

The Pistons demolished the Lakers.

For the Finals, the Pistons posted a 106.7 offensive rating while holding the Lakers to 96.1 (net Pistons +10.6). Other than Shaquille O’Neal, who had a .615 true shooting percentage (this accounts for free throws and three pointers), no Lakers starter topped .487, and Kobe Bryant struggled at .456 while the Lakers team posted .477. The Pistons were not too much better in terms of true shooting percentage (.514), but the Finals MVP, Chauncey Billups, posted an outstanding and series-best .696 TS% while averaging 21.0 PPG, 5.2 RPG, and 4.0 APG in the Finals. Mr. Billups was the rightful Finals MVP, albeit Mr. O’Neal was still the best player on the floor. But the Pistons proved their superiority to the Lakers over five games in all respects. But for a spectacular game-tying three by Kobe Bryant in game two, the Pistons would have almost certainly won in a clean 4-game sweep.

Final Thoughts

I opined that the Lakers should not have been prohibitive favorites going into the Finals and that there was a case for the Pistons – especially had people taken time to consider that the Pistons were perhaps uniquely capable of managing Shaquille O’Neal on the defensive end. By the same token, to say that people should have seen the Pistons blowing the Lakers out in 3 of the 5 games in the series would be extreme – the evidence did not suggest a dominant Detroit win, especially when one considers the Lakers equities. As Mr. O’Neal acknowledged, the loss of Karl Malone was a big blow to the Lakers (the Lakers were significantly better all season with Mr. Malone on the court), but I see no reason to believe that a healthier Karl Malone would have ultimately changed the result of the series.

The 2003-04 Pistons are remembered for their major upset of the Lakers and for being a championship team without a single elite player. I thought it would be fun to study that latter point. Below, you will see a list of the best players by three advanced statistics on the 2003-04 Pistons and the four champions before and after that Pistons team (I went with four on each side to avoid the lockout-shorted 1998-99 season).

Season | Champion | PER Leader | WS Leader* | BPM Leader | VORP Leader***
99-00 | Lakers | O’Neal 30.6 (1st) | O’Neal 18.6 (1) | O’Neal 9.3 (1) | O’Neal 9.0 (1)
00-01 | Lakers | O’Neal 30.2 (1) | O’Neal 14.9 (1) | O’Neal 7.7 (1) | O’Neal 7.1 (2)
01-02 | Lakers | O’Neal 29.7 (1) | O’Neal 13.2 (4) | O’Neal 8.0 (1) | O’Neal 6.1 (5)
02-03 | Spurs | Duncan 26.9 (3) | Duncan 16.5 (1) | Duncan 7.6 (3) | Duncan 7.7 (4)
03-04 | Pistons | Billups** 18.6 | Billups 11.3 (8) | Billups 3.6 (18) | B. Wallace 4.3 (12)
04-05 | Spurs | Duncan 27.0 (3) | Duncan 11.2 (11) | Duncan 7.6 (3) | Duncan 5.4 (6)
05-06 | Heat | D. Wade 27.6 (4) | Wade 14.4 (8) | Wade 7.7 (4) | Wade 7.1 (5)
06-07 | Spurs | Duncan 26.1 (4) | Duncan 13.0 (3) | M. Ginobili 7.8 (4) | Duncan 6.2 (3)
07-08 | Celtics | Garnett 25.3 (4) | Garnett 12.9 (8) | Garnett 8.2 (4) | Garnett 6.0 (7)

* Win Shares is affected by playing time, so missing games puts a dent in the total. For example, Messrs. O'Neal and Duncan missed 15 and 18 games respectively in 01-02 and 04-05, which put a dent in their Win Shares. The other three stats are not affected by missed games.
** Rasheed Wallace had an 18.8 PER, but I decided to make an exception and designate Mr. Billups as the top Piston since Mr. Wallace played most of his regular season games with the Portland Trail Blazers. Mr. Billups and Ben Wallace led the other categories, so no exception was needed for those.
*** Explained in BPM link.

The Pistons stand out. Mr. Billups was an excellent player – and he was even better in future seasons than he was in 2004-05, but he was not on the level of an O’Neal, Duncan, Wade, or Garnett.

(Mr. Billups' best regular seasons came in 2005-06 and 2007-08. He ranked 13th and 10th respectively in PER, 3rd and 5th in Win Shares, 9th and 5th in BPM, and 8th and 4th in VORP. While Mr. Billups was still not what one would have ordinarily thought of as the best player on a championship team in those two excellent seasons, it is worth noting that he rated as an elite player at his peak using some of the status in the above table.)

Some of the champions listed also had a second-best player who had a superior statistical profile to anyone on the Pistons (Kobe Bryant for the three Lakers championship teams, Shaquille O’Neat on the 05-06 Heat, and arguably Manu Ginobili on the two Spurs championship teams and Paul Pierce on the 2007-08 Celtics). There is no question, however, that the Pistons had the deepest starting lineup of all five of these championship teams (Tayshaun Prince was certainly the best fifth starter) and a solid bench behind its high class starting lineup.

The Pistons were an unusual champion – but a deserving one. They proved that they were not a fluke in their title defense season. After performing slightly worse in the regular season, the Pistons returned to the Finals, overcoming Shaquille O’Neal for the second straight year, this time on the Miami Heat instead of the Lakers. In the Finals, the Pistons faced the Spurs who led the NBA in net rating for the second straight year. Despite being a legitimate underdog by every meaningful measure in 2004-05, the Pistons narrowly outscored the Spurs over a close seven game Finals defeat. The Pistons would return to the Eastern Conference Finals every season through 2007-08, but 2005 marked their final Finals trip and the era was effectively closed with the trade of Chauncey Billups early in the 2008-09 season.