2000 Lakers vs 2001 Lakers

[1987_Lakers]

An Ish poster is making a 2000-2015 NBA Tournament where he is making a tournament bracket for the best teams from that time period. Only problem is he put the 2000 Lakers instead of the '01 team which I do not agree with. Which team deserves the spot?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksev4bg8iVw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkBMacotGGs

Could not find ANY youtube vid making a GOAT case for the 2000 Lakers, only the '01 team. :lol

[SouBeachTalents]

Nobody is arguing the '00 team over '01 :lol Yes, they won 11 more regular season games, but they lost EIGHT times in the playoffs, and needed Portland to pull off a historic choke just to escape the conference finals. Also Kobe clearly hadn't made the leap to superstar yet.

[Baller234]

Kobe was steadily improving year over year, so clearly the '01 team.

[theman93]

2000 Lakers showed a longer stretch of being dominant in the regular season, then the 2001 Lakers turned it up in the playoffs (honestly to a level nobody saw coming based on their regular season) while the 2000 team struggled .

Regular season:

Record: 2000 Lakers - 67-15 | 2001 Lakers - 56-26
Point Differential: 2000 Lakers - 8.5 | 2001 Lakers - 3.4
SRS: 2000 Lakers - 8.41 | 2001 Lakers - 3.74
Net Rtg: 2000 Lakers - 9.1 | 2001 Lakers - 3.6


Postseason:

Record: 2000 Lakers - 15-8 | 2001 Lakers - 15-1
Point Differential: 2000 Lakers - 2.4 | 2001 Lakers - 12.8
SRS: Not listed, but advantage 2001 Lakers as their playoff opponents won a combined 219 games in the regular season compared to the 2000 Lakers playoff opponents who won 212 games and had a much, much higher point differential.
Net Rtg: 2000 Lakers - 2.6 | 2001 Lakers - 13.7


The issue here is that the tournament the poster is conducting bases teams off their regular season, not postseason. But I think that's fair because the regular season sample size is like 4x the size of the postseason.