



Are we witnessing the greatest team in NBA history?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Nobody in the world knows better than Steve Kerr what it takes to become the greatest basketball team of all time. In 1996, he played alongside Michael Jordan for the Chicago Bulls as they won 72 games.
In 2016, he coached Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors when they set a new record by winning 73. So it’s best to pay attention when Kerr says a team is about to do something that nobody has ever done before. Which is exactly what he suggests this year’s Oklahoma City Thunder are about to do.
“I think they’ll break the record," Kerr said, before the Thunder’s 49-point blowout of the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday improved their record to 24-1, tying the Warriors’ start to the 2015-16 season. “What they’ve built is incredible." There’s good reason to believe that the Thunder will become the first NBA team ever to win 74 of their 82 regular-season games. That’s because, by the numbers, Oklahoma City isn’t just as good as the ‘96 Bulls and ‘16 Warriors.
The Thunder are actually better. The catch-all metric known as “net rating" is designed to measure dominance. It tracks how much a team outscores its opponents over the course of 100 possessions.
The best teams in NBA history, it’s no surprise, are net rating monsters, combining cutthroat scoring attacks with defenses as solid as Fort Knox. The ‘96 Bulls combined the NBA’s No. 1 defense and No.
1 offense, and achieved a net rating of +13.4, which for three decades stood as a record. The ‘16 Warriors had the third-best defense and the best offense, and put up a +10.7 net rating. This year’s Thunder haven’t just nudged past the mark established by Jordan and the Bulls.
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