For the past 40 years, nearly every single championship team has had at least one player that was a 1st team all-NBA selection in years prior to that title year.
I could only find 2 exceptions to this rule:
- Steph Curry’s first selection to 1st team All-NBA was the year he won his first title.
- The 04’ Pistons did not field a player ever selected that list.
For every other year, the champs had at least one such player. In nearly 50% of those years, the champ fielded 2 such players.
So, who meets the criteria this year?
- 76ers
- Warriors
- Clippers
- Lakers
- Suns
- Bucks
- Celtics
- Nuggets
- OKC
- Mavericks
We can further divide this list based on other data that’s likely not as accurate as the 1st team metric.
First, we can look at the average age of the roster weighted for minutes played. The average age of title-winning rosters, when weighted for minutes played, comes in at 28.234 years. Based on last season’s numbers (all I had available, but enough to usefully ballpark), the following teams fall into this optimal age range:
- Nuggets
- Warriors (shockingly, but this might go up dramatically depending on CP’s usage)
- 76ers
- Mavs
- Lakers (Again, lightly shocking but the bottom half of the roster is pretty young.)
- Suns
- 76ers
- Celtics
We can then divide this list again by teams with 2+ stars with 1st team selections. Teams with 2 stars of this caliber win in nearly 50% of the seasons for the past 40 years. This means these teams have a much higher chance of winning in any given year than teams with just one 1st team guy.
- Lakers
- Suns
Some caveats regarding 2 star rosters*
The Warriors technically fit, but CP3 is past his statistical prime and that likely reduces the impact.
The 76ers technically fit while Harden is there, but he’s likely to leave (and also past his statistical prime)
Conclusion: Anything can happen and the 04’ Pistons are proof, but the most probable outcome is that one of the above teams will win this upcoming year. The teams with talent in that top 5-7 range almost always win.
My personal prediction:
The Suns: Their offense is going to be really hard to stop. Making shots at a really high percentage makes playing defense easier because you’re able to set your defense more frequently.
The Nuggets: Best player in the league, in his prime, with great support.
The Celtics: Eventually they’ll get over the hump. Could be this year
The Lakers: If healthy*, I think theres enough there around Bron/AD
Dark horse: The Mavs - Sometimes a guy is just so good, he pulls a weak roster all the way.
No way the Mavs are in the running but agree with your other assessments
You had me until the Mavs lmfao they won’t even make the play-in
Which is why I caveated it with “dark horse”. You may be right. I believe that Luka has the potential during his peak to absolutely drag a bad roster pretty deep though, so I guess we’ll see if he’s there yet.
The Mavs look like a 50-win team to me. It’s weird how many people are writing them off after one bizarre season with a bunch of roster turnover.
This is my gut too. IF Kyrie plays close to a full season, those two guys are talented enough to be an issue. Luka really has generational talent potential though.
They were a solid playoff team for pretty much all of last season until they collapsed at the very end and even that took some injuries to an already depleted roster. No one even considered that they could miss the playoffs until the last couple of weeks of the season. I’d be shocked if they weren’t a top-6 seed in the west as long as they remain relatively healthy, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to face them in the first round.
I think most NBA fans/experts would be shocked if the champ isn’t one of 7 teams: Nuggets, Celtics, Bucks, Heat, Lakers, Warriors, Suns.
The Heat would be an outlier but they have made the Finals 2 of the last 4 years so they have to be included.
“Lightly shocking” use a different word
Delicately shocked.
I mean, there are 30 teams in the league, and half of them is not even trying to win now and if they had a First-team All-NBA level of star somehow, that star’d likely leave for a contending team. It doesn’t really narrow anything much to make a list of 10. I guess Heat, Grizzlies and Cavs may be sad.
Who isn’t trying to win now? The only teams that are legit gonna be bad are the Wizards and Pistons really. Everyone else will be trying to some degree. Obviously alot of teams aren’t gonna be great or real contenders but overall this is the most stacked the NBA has ever been.
The players will probably always try to win, also in Wizards and Pistons. But many teams have a general approach that the focus is more the future, they base on young players and won’t sacrifice the future just for this season, which means they are conceding that the success in this season is not the priority.
Like Spurs, whom you not listed, just had one of the worse seasons in history and now they will focus on developing their star rookie, I feel very safe saying that they will not be contending and they will not have an All-NBA First Team player lol.
You’re right. But I still think the Spurs are gonna be a decent team. League is so deep I feel like they almost solved their load management issue by just not having terrible teams.
I think it helps to give realistic expectations to teams that are competitive but lacking those guys. You constantly see posts about “can X team contend this year?”, and the answer is usually no if they don’t have “that dude”. I honestly don’t think a lot of people realize that they don’t actually have a shot
one could argue (and be correct) in saying that the All-NBA picks are less legitimate these days and more to do with business decisions than anything
I’m astonished that you’ve asterisked the Lakers and not the Suns.
Neither KD, nor Beal have had the best luck with injuries in the last few seasons.
I think Booker has deal with a lot of injuries too.
Not shocking for the Lakers, Bron and AD are the only players on the team over 30. We’ve got a nice young team this year. Welcome change from the Russ days
28, 27, 27, 24, 24, 24, 23, 23, 21, 20, 20, 20
Breaking news: teams with elite prime players win championships……
Kinda rude man. I spent a lot of time on this and it’s fun and interesting to me (and apparently others too).
Aside from that, your condescending and dismissive comment misses the point. This is a way to evaluate who exactly is the type of player necessary to take a team all the way. There are plenty of players - Ja, Derozen, Zion, Lavine, Fox, Sabonis, Trey, Ant, Butler, Mitchell - who do not meet the criteria but would still be considered “elite prime” players by a lot of people.
No Bucks? Easily one of the favorites.
Yeah, I may regret that after watching 20 or so games. Recency bias mixed with Dames age and lack of post season success probably has me lower on them than they deserve. If that starting lineup is healthy, they’re gonna be very very hard to defend.
Also, they were outside of my weighted age window, which may mean absolutely nothing, but I still used it for fun.
Blazers made the playoffs 8 years in a row with Dame even being the 3rd seed man
“Lack of post season success”? They literally won the title 2 seasons ago, wtf are you talking about?
Talking about Dame. Sorry if I phrased that poorly.
super confident the warriors are gonna blow everyone’s expectations this year with their record. i think theyre better and more balanced team than Suns and the Lakers
Stars win NBA titles, big if true
Another important criteria: 100% of championship teams had a winning record against above .500 teams in that season.
Out of this list, only Bucks, 76ers, Celtics, and Nuggets met that criteria last season.
Wolves fans have this stat burned into their brain after last season
Yep 😂
For those who don’t know:
Timberwolves were one of the 5 teams who had a winning record vs .500+ teams. So technically they are a contender based on this criterion. BUT the Wolves were also one of 6 teams who had a losing record to .500 and below teams (along with Rockets, Magic, Hornets, Pistons and Wizards) 💀
Goofy franchise
Like 5th gear and reverse are labeled backwards. But damn it feels good to beat the big names!!!
When Wolves played the Blazers at the end of the season, I knew we were going to lose lmao
I sold my season tickets and stayed home bc deep down I just knew it…didn’t matter that they were fighting for their playoff lives or were 6th seed.
It was hilarious how both fanbases were pissed 😂
lmao I dodged that game, too! Wolves had to have norovirus. Fate demanded a champion and norovirus rose to the occasion 🤣 Predictable as Blazer Bigs’ knees.
Any will be first team all nba. So basically we Gucci.
Damn, that’s super interesting. Makes sense.
How’s that useful besides only in retrospect?
Helpful at the start of the postseason
If teams with 2 super stars win “nearly” 50% of the time, doesn’t that mean teams with just 1 or fewer win more than 50%?
No one wins with fewer than one 1st team all-nba player.
There are far more teams with just one 1st team guy, so that means that the chances of team with two such guys winning is higher in any given year than teams with just one.
But there are teams with 2 who lose to teams with one. Look at the lakers vs the nuggets.
RemindMe! 7 months