NBA Showdown -- GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME TOURNAMENT, part II

The greatest team tournament isn't going to exclude worthy contenders simply because they didn't finish strong in the postseason -- so hold onto your hats, we've got some STRONG teams coming that didn't win it all for various reasons: injury, key player suspensions, the way the cookie crumbled, and/or running into a team with hot markers rolling straight 20s ;) 

I didn't include them, but the '97 Rockets were one of the first "want-to-be superteams" that didn't pan out *cough the Nets cough*

However, I'm not going to give them equal love as the champions - fair is fair in a "greatest ever" bracket -- so these teams are going to have to earn their spots in the final bracket via a play-in tournament. But we'll get to the logistics later, let's see the teams!

NBA Showdown -- New Style, GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME Tournament

 So if you've been following the NBA Showdown posts on the blog, you either saw (or should see) this amazing post by Matt announcing and explaining his revamped style of NBA Showdown. As you can see in the example below, it swaps out the nebulous/often nonsensical "Speed/Power" for the straightforward and objective "Offense/Defense" methodology.

Everything else about the game is the same, but now (i) player values/ratings make more sense; (ii) give defensive players their proper value and (iii) gameplay is a simple "offensive players offense - defender's defense + roll" instead of choosing speed or power. 

NBA Showdown: Best teams of the 2020s

 Thanks to help with the formulas and calculations from Matt, my main card creator buddy and the undisputed master of bringing NBA Showdown into the modern age (including his awesome re-imagining of the game with offense/defense rather than speed/power), I went on a bit of a card creating binge. Like, a lot of cards from a lot of teams. And I want to share them with y'all!

I'm going to start with 234 cards from the 2020s -- I made 8 players per team, plus some scattered superstar cards here and there that seemed fitting from the past few years. I hope you enjoy, and let me know which teams were better/worse than you anticipated!

2020 Los Angeles Lakers (52-19, #1 Seed in West, NBA Champions)