AFL Comparison #9: Greater Western Sydney Giants

The longest named team in the Southern Hemisphere (I resisted the temptation to compare them to the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" on name length alone!) is also the youngest team in the AFL, having just finished its fifth season of competition on the footy pitch. GWS is not only young as a franchise, but its roster is insanely young as well - stocked with draft picks in its formation stages, and adding to it by being winners of the "wooden spoon" in its first two years of existence (the last place finisher), thereby picking up more top draft picks, their lineup averaged an age barely able to drink in celebration of its rare wins (three in the first two years combined!). Their progress was noticeable in its third year, moving up the ladder two places and winning six games, including a landmark, season-opening victory over its cross-town rival, the 2012 champion Sydney Swans, 99-67. In 2014, they started with some victories and fell off with youth to an 11-11 finish.

The reward for their budding experience? Trade some of it away for more draft picks! Although they did get veteran All-Australian Ryan Griffin in a ransom hostage situation trade with the Western Bulldogs in 2014, most of their roster got younger, incredibly, over the break. What the Giants kept showing, it seemed, was PATIENCE. 

Patience paid off this year. In 2016, they made the top four, won their qualifying final, and came within one goal of the Grand Final, losing to the eventual champion Western Bulldogs. To say they are the favorites for 2017 is an understatement.



Their American counterpart, pro possibility: The LA Clippers

There isn't really a perfect comparison that I can find in current American sports to an expansion team being methodically constructed and moving directly towards a title. In the four US major leagues, the closest I see is the Arizona Diamondbacks, which won a title in its fourth year by upsetting the New York Yankees in 2001. But they've never been back.

The Clippers might as well be an expansion team, as terrible as they were for decades. Under new ownership, they've built one of the three or four best teams in the NBA. Favorites? Not while the Warriors and Cavs are still intact. But they've built steadily from lovable losers to challengers for the whole thing.

 

The other team that comes to mind is the NCAA's Louisville Cardinals, which moved from the lower level leagues up through the ranks into the ACC (for most intents, making them an 'expansion' team at the Power Five level, the only teams truly 'eligible' for the national title), and under the noted semi-criminal Bobby Petrino, they've risen steadily to where they're a single loss away from a CFP berth this year (as of late October, 2016).