Would the 1995-96 72-win Chicago Bulls have gone undefeated if they had present-day Steven Adams as their center instead of Luc Longley? This is a question that has interested me for a few weeks now, so let’s take a deep dive into the realm of factuality and extract the answer from those shadowy depths.
Fact: Steven Adams is averaging over 5 offensive rebounds per game. Luc Longley got 5 offensive rebounds in only ONE of his games that season.
There you have it. If the Chicago Bulls of 1995 gained access to a fully-functional time machine that was guaranteed to not cause any paradoxes, used it to travel to the present day in order to abduct Steven Adams from his home in Oklahoma City, took him back with them to the 90’s, pretended to discover him at a prison basketball tournament where he had the supposedly well-earned nickname “The Tongan Terror”, signed him to a veteran-minimum deal at the beginning of the season, told Longley to go back to Australia and never come back, and started him at center for the entire season, they would have won all 82 games of the regular season and swept the playoffs as well, cementing Michael Jordan’s legacy as the greatest of all time a full two years earlier than when it was actually cemented.