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Sheesh. Far too meaningful. What happened to the fun little lists about punts in tie games? This important stuff is making my head spin.

I'm kidding of course.

Interesting analysis buddy. I think standard convention is that stats in sports truly crystallise around the 20 game mark, so it makes sense to me that the true team average is around there. However, I never would've thought that a team finding its true self early in the season would be such a benefit late in the season. On the surface, it seems obvious. It's a tenth of a season's more practice time (considering the basketball regular season is pretty much just practice) to find a team's identity in 12 games rather than 20, but what I struggle to understand is how the Finals winners and losers can differ so much.

Teams that win the Finals are playoff winners. Teams that lose the Finals though are also playoff winners. They had to win three series to get that far, so it's not as if they don't have championship DNA as well. Common sense would dictate to me that Finals winners and losers would be similar, as they are the only two NBA teams that win as many as three series in a season, but they are not similar. They diverge in seemingly wildly different directions, and on average the Finals loser comes out of it looking more like a championship team than they did before, but still nowhere near a championship team.

I am not very well versed in NBA culture. Basketball is not marketed very well in Canada, but my brain just cannot make sense of the divergence between one set of teams that have clearly demonstrated the ability to win playoff games, and another that's demonstrated the same thing. The only thing that could make it make sense to me is to use the framing that one team was always going to win all along, and this discussion becomes more of a 1 vs 29 discussion between the one team that was always going to win vs the 29, rather than a one-on-one discussion between the two participants in the championship series.

Does that make sense? Does any of this make sense? What is your explanation Peter for how the final two teams in the NBA can consistently be so different from each other?

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First off - don't worry, I’m heading back to fun statistical oddities next week! Sometimes the data rabbit holes get deep, and this True Team stuff really captured my imagination for a few posts.

Your point about Finals teams both being playoff winners is fascinating. It's something I've been thinking about since doing this analysis. You're absolutely right - both teams had to win multiple series to get there. They should be more similar than they are.

I have a theory about this (and it ties into your point about it being more of a 1 vs 29 situation):

I think what we're seeing is the difference between teams built for championships and teams built for playoff success. It's subtle, but important. The Warriors dynasty teams, for instance, didn't just want to make deep playoff runs - they were constructed specifically to win titles. Same with the Heatles, the Big Three Celtics, etc.

These teams seem to lock into their identity faster because they're not discovering who they are during the season - they already know. They just need to execute it.

Meanwhile, teams that make surprise Finals runs (like the 2021 Suns or 2023 Heat) are often still evolving and discovering their ceiling as they go. They're excellent teams, no doubt, but they weren't necessarily built with "championship or bust" expectations.

This might explain why Finals losers actually maintain more consistency in their development pattern. They're good teams playing good basketball, while champions are often great teams who've figured out exactly who they are early and just need to execute it.

Does this theory hold up perfectly? Probably not - basketball's too complex for that. But it might help explain some of that divergence you noticed.

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