The All Blacks are better than the Dream Team

Roar Guru

14th November, 2015

3656 Reads

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As always the All Blacks are likely to be the team to beat in 2019. (Photo: AFP)

Phil Bird

Roar Guru

14th November, 2015

146

3656 Reads

Statistics say this current All Blacks team is the best in the world, from any era, from any sport.

Before we get into the numbers, let’s clarify that only global sports have been considered in this analysis. Rugby league has obviously been left out due to its comparatively smaller global reach.

NFL and baseball don’t get a mention as the Americans don’t invite other countries to participate in their sports. Cubans or Japanese might chuck a baseball round from time to time, but let’s be sensible here.

Let’s focus on four remaining global sports: football, cricket, basketball and rugby union. And the one statistic that really matters – games won as a percentage of games played.

Let’s start with club football. Manchester United has achieved a 48 per cent win record in all competitions including the Champions league and Premier League.

This is dwarfed by Real Madrid which boasts a 59 per cent win record overall (59 per cent in La Liga).

With regards to international football, friendlies have not been considered as anything under this preconception shouldn’t really be played at all let alone recorded in the annals of history. Brazil has the best record, winning 67 per cent of FIFA World Cup fixtures. So in football terms the Brazilian national team takes it.

With regards to cricket, given the frequency of drawn Tests, only the One Day format has been considered. The author recognises the glaring issue here and presses on unabated. Australia is the most dominant in this form of the game with a massive 65 per cent win record. Still, not quite enough to knock the Brazilians off their perch.

Now we come to basketball, and the LA Lakers have a 62 per cent win record so they don’t shake down the tree. The US National team, however, does. This insanely good side has won 87 per cent of games since their records began in 1936.

So where do the All Blacks sit in all this?

Since 1903 the All Blacks have achieved a 77 per cent win record. And thus there’s daylight between the US basketball team and the All Blacks, and daylight again to the Brazilian football team.

However what makes the All Blacks’ 77 per cent win record all the more spectacular is they’ve played the Wallabies or Springboks in 46 per cent of their matches. There’s just no comparison in basketball, however you could perhaps wonder what the stats would look like if the US basketball team played, say, Croatia or Spain every second game.

Notwithstanding, the numbers are the numbers and the yanks take it for long term consistency of domination.

Let’s now pit this current All Blacks side against the best basketball team ever assembled – the Dream Team from the 1990s.

Under Richie McCaw the All Blacks have lost only 3 of their last 61 encounters, with 2 draws, 3 losses and 56 wins (a win ratio of 91.8 per cent). This achievement eclipses the Dream Team’s 90.2 per cent win record.

So there you have it.

Rather unfortunate for the Wallabies who are an extremely good side that for the past decade has found itself in the path of the greatest team to have thrown an object around a space.

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