Nearly 16 years after they went 15-1 in the playoffs en route to their second consecutive championship, the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant have been in the news lately.
With LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers stumbling as they approach the finish line this regular season, and on pace for just 53 wins, those Lakers are the role models for how to flip the switch in the playoffs.
After a subpar 56-win regular season, the Lakers posted perhaps the most dominant postseason run in NBA history. That's the best-case scenario for the Cavs.
But is that kind of defensive leap normal? If we look at the previous champs, we can get a better idea about what to expect from Cleveland.
Defensive decline for defending champs
Let's go back about four decades. The 38 champions between the ABA-NBA merger and last season averaged a defensive rating that was 3.5 percent better than league average during their title season. As defending champions the following year, that dropped to 2.8 percent better than league average.
As much as that might look like evidence of diminished effort on defense after winning a championship, remember it's also typical of regression to the mean. Any group of teams that's better than average on defense will move toward average, championship or no.
Looking at playoff performance reinforces that point. In the postseason, as compared to the regular-season offensive rating of the teams they faced, defending champions' adjusted defensive rating was 2.8 percent better than league average, the same as in the regular season. So overall, there's no evidence that defending champs turn it up defensively in the playoffs.
Things get more interesting at the individual level, so let's look at teams, like Cleveland, that saw their defensive rating suffer the season after winning a championship. Here are the biggest drop-offs relative to league average.
Currently, Cleveland's decline from 1.6 percent better than league average last season to 1.9 percent worse so far in 2016-17 would be the fourth largest for a defending champion. As for the other seven teams that dropped at least 2 percent relative to league average, I've grouped them into three categories: the inconclusive cases, the light switchers and the cautionary tales.
Inconclusive cases
1994-95 Houston Rockets
I've heard the Rockets lumped in with the 2000-01 Lakers as examples of defending champs who turned things on in the playoffs, but the real story is a little more complex than that. Houston defended little better in the 1995 playoffs than in the regular season, and not nearly at the level of the Rockets' 1994 championship team.
There is more evidence of light switching when we look only at games Houston played after trading Otis Thorpe for Clyde Drexler, a move that improved the Rockets' offense but hurt them defensively. According to Basketball-Reference.com's game logs, Houston's defensive rating was 1.1 points per 100 possessions worse than league average after the trade, worse than their playoff performance. However, the Rockets' bigger improvement in the playoffs still came on offense.
2008-09 Boston Celtics
The Celtics' defense declined in the playoffs for the same reason it did during the regular season: an injury to Kevin Garnett, who played just five games after the All-Star break before aggravating a knee injury and missing the postseason. With a healthy Garnett, Boston had the league's best defensive rating through the All-Star break. Without him, the Celtics lost to the Orlando Magic in the conference semifinals.
2012-13 Miami Heat
Along the lines of Houston, Miami made the switch from defense-minded to offense-first in the process of winning a second consecutive championship. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra first went small with Chris Bosh moving to center and Shane Battier to power forward during the 2012 playoffs, then carried that lineup over throughout the following season.
So while Miami's defense got no better in the playoffs after a 2.1-point drop in defensive rating from the 2011-12 regular season, the Heat survived seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals and the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals on the strength of their offense.
Light switchers
2000-01 Lakers
During Phil Jackson's first season in L.A. -- 1999-2000, when they won their first of three consecutive titles -- the Lakers had led the league in defensive rating. So it was surprising when they dropped all the way to 19th the following season.
Motivation was surely a factor. So too was an injury to Derek Fisher, who did not return until mid-December from a stress fracture in his right foot. Without Fisher, the Lakers gave 851 minutes to undrafted rookie Mike Penberthy, who did not play in the postseason.
The Lakers had far and away the league's best defense in the playoffs as they reached the NBA Finals undefeated and came within an overtime loss in Game 1 to the Philadelphia 76ers of sweeping through the postseason in 15 games. However, they did benefit from unsustainably poor opponent 3-point shooting in the playoffs, as teams made just 27.1 percent of their 3s. For the Lakers, that's the second-lowest percentage in NBA history among teams that defended at least 200 3-point attempts.
2004-05 Detroit Pistons
After acquiring Rasheed Wallace at the 2004 trade deadline in what I've called the best deadline deal ever, the Pistons defended at a higher level the remainder of 2003-04 than any other team has ever reached over a full season. Adjusted for opposition, their playoff defensive rating was the best by a champion since the ABA-NBA merger.
So there was plenty of room for Detroit to decline the following season and remain strong defensively. The Pistons were third in defensive rating in 2004-05, so they were hardly slacking, but they did get back near their level the previous season as they returned to the NBA Finals before losing in seven games to the Spurs.
Cautionary tales for Cleveland
1986-87 Boston Celtics
The 1985-86 Celtics rode terrific balance (third in offensive rating, second on defense) to 67 wins and a championship. With sixth man Bill Walton sidelined most of the following season due to injuries, Boston slipped to ninth in defensive rating. The Celtics' defensive woes were exacerbated when Kevin McHale played through a fractured navicular bone suffered in late March, and they allowed opponents to score at an above-average rate in the playoffs.
In hindsight, it's a testament to Boston's offensive firepower that the Celtics survived seven-game series against both the Milwaukee Bucks and Detroit Pistons to return to the NBA Finals before losing their third and last matchup with the Lakers. Boston's minus-3.9 adjusted defensive rating was worst of any team's since the merger to reach the Finals.
2002-03 L.A. Lakers
You'll recall 2002-03 as the season when Shaquille O'Neal famously declared -- after winning three titles in a row -- "I got hurt on company time, so I'll rehab on company time." O'Neal delayed surgery on his injured toe until just before training camp and missed the season's first 12 games as the Lakers started 3-9.
Having finished seventh in defensive rating in 2001-02, the Lakers dropped back to 19th in 2002-03 and won just 50 games to land as the fifth seed in the Western Conference. This time, there was no switch flipping. While they did go on the road to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in the opening round, the Lakers lost in six games to San Antonio in the conference semifinals, ending their reign as champions.
It's interesting that we've heard so much more about the 2000-01 Lakers as a comparison for Cleveland than their 2002-03 counterparts. That may reflect availability bias, since it's certainly easier to remember the Lakers' one-of-a-kind playoff run in 2001 than their 2003 flameout.
When it comes to projecting the Cavaliers' future, however, I think both teams are equally telling of the possible outcomes. Either the Cavs will continue to make history or be consigned to history's dustbin.