Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[KillerLeft]

Posted this back in April:

For discussion purposes, here are the last to NBA Champions plus this year's #1 seed.


Season               Team             Def. Rank           Off. Rank

24-25                   OKC                   1                      T-1            (current #1 seed, Best championship odds)
23-24                   BOS                   2                       4
22-23                   DEN                   15                     6
21-22                   GSW                  2                       2
20-21                   MKE                   9                       9
19-20                   LAL                    3                       4                (COVID season)
18-19                   TOR                   5                       9
17-18                   GSW                  11                      1
16-17                   GSW                   2                       1
15-16                   CLE                    10                      4
14-15                   GSW                   1                       1

Unscientifically, the Defensive rank for NBA champions is 5.9, while the offensive rank is 4.1 Maybe some skewing due to 4 GSW teams showing up, but (except for 17-18) they were high in both categories.

There are also other factors that contribute to winning a championship but are hard to quantify. For example, injuries, even if the player is still able to play is there a diminished performance? How officials call games. How long the series go. Is there a bad matchup that tilts the results. Does a team play way over (or under) seasonal averages.

Just looking at the data it feels like you have to have at least a decent defense, but you damn well need to have a good offense. I might even theorize that a top offense can improve the defense by putting so much scoring pressure the opponent can't keep up and makes key mistakes. (think last year's finals)

One area the above does NOT show is the effect of injuries, acute or negging. Would IND/OKC be a different story if Haliburton isn't hurt? Would 23-24 be different if Luka was not playing on one leg, maybe the outcome doesn't change, but it would have been more interesting. 

Thanks for this. I've never really dug into it all this deeply, but my eye-test observation has always been (especially recently) that the best offensive teams all get a ticket to the 2nd round, and then the groups from that list who can play the best defense continue to advance. Without a top 10 offense, you're not even in the conversation as a contender, imho.