2 Year Rule Coming to NBA?

[ChicosBailBonds]

It's always been my opinion that the NBA is the one pro league where the best team usually wins.  Baseball and Hockey, by the nature of their sports are much more difficult for the best team to win consistently.  Football is a one and done scenario, so a couple of poorly timed turnovers can kill the best of teams.  NBA Basketball is the one sport where, if there is a dominant team, it pretty much always wins.

I think the numbers bear this out, I would agree on the NBA side.  The other really interesting point surrounds baseball.    In the NBA, your team puts out the same starting 5 and typically the same reserves for most games.  A consistent lineup as it were.

In baseball, that isn't the case.  A team with a Cy Young award winning dominant pitcher can only pitch in game 1, 4 and 7 if everything lines up perfectly.  Often only has two appearances.  Because the pitcher has such a dominant impact on a game, more so than other sports, it is a different team when he pitches in one game compared to his same team two games later with their number 3 starter.  Throw in that who they are playing may have needed more or less games to get there, and it doesn't mean the #1 starter is matching up against the #1 starter either. 

All fun stuff.


At the end of the day, winning the NCAA tournament is a crapshoot.  Best team doesn't always win....in fact happens often. 

[Lennys Tap]

By the way Lenny, since 1950, the #1 seeds in the NBA have won the title 49 times.  That's 77.8% of the time.  You are welcome.  Much less for NHL and MLB, of course that is because often the "number one seed" wasn't the best team....great books on this if you want to read about these things.  Who was considered the actual best team in certain years vs who had the most points or wins do to soft schedules.  Or you have situations where a team finishes with the best record that is TIED with another team, but only one team can get a 1 seed....curious how you are going to adjust for that.  


I can recommend some books...hell, I'll even send them to your kindle if you wish.





EDIT:   If you expand the NBA to the "top 4 teams" as you are wanting to do with the NCAA example you used.  The percentage goes to 85.7% of the time they win the NBA title.

First of all, I never even mentioned the NBA so why are you going there? Of course the NBA playoffs are even more "chalk" than the NCAA tourney. That's because 1. They are playing the same game and 2. The format (best of 7, not one and done) favors the better team.

You are able to grasp #2 but evidently not the importance of #1. The main reason that hockey and baseball playoffs (and to a lesser extent football) produce fewer "chalk" champions isn't that the "wrong" teams are seeded #1. Can it happen? Sure, just like Gonzaga last year, but the most important reason hockey and baseball are a much bigger crapshoot is the the essential differences in those games. In a sport where a team can win with one goal or one run and a hot goalie or pitcher an upset, even in a 7 game series with the better team getting home ice/field, is common. When the best hockey or baseball teams play the worst teams they are usually about 2-2.5 to 1 favorites. Money lines (if even available) are much higher when the top teams go against lesser ones in the NCAA tournament.

Summary: the FORMAT that the NCAA uses - one and done, need 6 straight to win, allegedly no home court, etc. - is, by far, the biggest crapshoot format used in any of the major playoffs. Because of the differences in the games though, (goalies and pitchers winning games almost single handedly, one goal or one run winning a game, etc) the chances for a non chalk (or even the LAST TEAM IN), winning the Stanley Cup or World Series (or Super Bowl) are much greater. World Series, Stanley Cup and Super Bowl champs have a much more random profile than NCAA champs in spite of format. That, by definition, makes their playoffs bigger crapshoots. No book that you've read can argue against that.

[MU82]

It's always been my opinion that the NBA is the one pro league where the best team usually wins.  Baseball and Hockey, by the nature of their sports are much more difficult for the best team to win consistently.  Football is a one and done scenario, so a couple of poorly timed turnovers can kill the best of teams.  NBA Basketball is the one sport where, if there is a dominant team, it pretty much always wins.

Baseball success is so often determined by that day's starting pitcher. Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling carried the Diamondbacks in 2001 -- and that's probably understating it.

In hockey, the goaltender can have an outsized affect on the outcome of a game or a series. Many times in NHL history, a low seed with a red-hot goalie has pulled off upset after upset.

There is no basketball equivalent. A guy who normally shoots 28% from 3-point range but goes 7-for-9 ... that can happen once but it's not gonna happen over and over again for 5, 6, 7 games. So in the NBA, the team with the best players and best system almost always wins, or at least gets to the Finals where it often faces a similarly talented team.

We all know that Chicos is right about the NCAA tournament (and NFL playoffs in most recent years) being a crapshoot. Of course, his presentation is what rubs lots of folks the wrong way.

[Lennys Tap]

Sounds like you are saying it is a crapshoot, lol

The point isn't whether the NCAA tourney (or any non fixed competition) is a "crapshoot". Everybody knows and acknowledges that. Chicos insists that the NCAA is the BIGGEST crapshoot in sports. The numbers say he's wrong. The top seeds do worse and the low seeds better in football, baseball and hockey, in spite of football requiring only 3 straight wins, baseball 11 of 19 and hockey 12 of 21. The pesky facts prove it.

[ChicosBailBonds]

58.8% of the time one of four top seeds has won the tournament, not 80% as you suggested.  With FOUR #1 seeds, you are claiming FOUR best teams.  Now you're going to do research to see how many times the TWO 1's have won it all.  OK, that's fine.

Lenny, that % just dropped again.   

[Nevada233]

+1

Kentucky is like the NBA Minor Leagues...