Is Iguodala right that Thunder were the best team?

Somewhat surprisingly, Andre Iguodala doesn’t think he played on the best team in the West last season.

Andre Iguodala knows basketball.

He’s an NBA Finals MVP, a former All-Star and a former All-Defense selection.

So when he tells you his team wasn’t the best, you might want to listen; per Sports Illustrated:

"Now that we got [Kevin Durant] I can say it. The Thunder were the best team in the playoffs. They were better than us, they were better than Cleveland. They should have won a championship. They played us better than anyone. They had our number."

Given that the Warriors did not win the title, it’s fair to say that they were not the best team. But were the Thunder better than them, even though they lost? Were they better than the Cavaliers, who they didn’t even advance far enough to face? Only Iguodala and his teammates can speak to the level of on court competition, but the numbers show a slightly different story (all stats courtesy of Basketball Reference):

Point differential:                                    FG%:                                              3P%

Cavaliers: +8.6                                         Cavaliers: 46.9%                        Cavaliers: 40.6%
Thunder: +5.3                                          Warriors: 45.5%                         Warriors: 39.3%
Warriors: +4.4                                          Thunder: 45.2%                         Thunder: 33.3%

Opposition FG%                                       Opposition 3P%                         Offensive eFG%

Warriors: 42.9%                                       Warriors: 33.9%                         Cavaliers: 54.4%
Cavaliers: 44.4%                                      Cavaliers: 35.3%                         Warriors: 52.9%
Thunder: 44.6%                                        Thunder: 37.1%                          Thunder: 50.1%

It’s by no means an exact science. The eye test will always look a little different than the numbers will. But when you dig deep, it’s hard to make a case for the Thunder as the best team. The Cavaliers had the best, most effective offense; the Warriors had the best overall defense. You could make a case for the Cavs or Dubs being best if you looked at the numbers alone, but there are almost no categories where the Thunder lead anything.

A lot of this tracks with the narrative of last year’s Thunder: They played a lot of “hero ball” down the stretch, ran countless isolation plays, and shot contested jumpers at will. Their lower shooting percentages in nearly every category bear that out. But shooting percentages alone don’t really dictate who the best team is. For Iguodala, having to guard the hyper-athletic Thunder every night presented a task as daunting as going one-on-one all game with LeBron James. It’s understandable that in his mind, switching between defending KD and Westbrook was more difficult than any other task he had to tackle.

In the end, there’s only one category that really matters: wins. The Cavaliers are the champions, and the fact that they dominate the majority of the statistical categories here makes sense. They faced a more inferior slate of competitors in the Eastern Conference, but that didn’t stop them from making one of the greatest comebacks in the history of professional sports, against the same Warriors team that comes in second in most of these categories. Given their dominance in stats — and status as champions — it’s pretty hard to say they weren’t the best team.

We can debate this all we like, but its academic. Now that Iguodala gets to pass to Durant instead of defending him, that ‘Wins’ column is going to stay lit up for years, and the debate will be about who is better, the Cavs or the Warriors. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a couple more finals match-ups so we can find out.

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