NBA Playoffs: Coldiron’s 5-Star Postseason Success Formula
1. Best player/Best peak team
The factor that has determined the most NBA champions is who has the best player and who is peaking at the right time. Note that this does not mean the best players or teams this season. This refers specifically to the best for the two months of playoffs and, more importantly, for two weeks in any given series.
We’d like to think that the best overall team will win, but that isn’t always the case, not by a long shot. More often, the team that puts the best player out of the 30 or so on the rosters of the two teams will win a series. To win the whole championship, that best player MUST be one of the 10 best players in the world.
The only exception of the 36 NBA champions is the 2004 Detroit Pistons. They did not have any of the 10 best players in the world during the regular season or the playoffs. They overcame this fact by two means. First, they didn’t have a top-10 guy, but they had four of the top 16 players in the world (plus Chauncey Billups was one of the 10 best players in the world for those two months). Second, they dominated in a couple of the other three factors.
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It is also worth noting that having the best player in the world does not guarantee you anything and that the best player in the regular season does not always translate to best over the two months of playoffs. To drive this point home I refer you to the 2007 Dallas Mavericks. Dirk won the league MVP that year and was clearly the best player alive at the time.
His team took the number one seed in the Western Conference into the playoffs. Once there, two things went wrong. First, they got completely dominated by the opposing coach (more on that in factor 4 later).
Second, Baron Davis became the best player in the world for two weeks and destroyed them. I have written at length before but it is worth repeating – the level of basketball that Davis played in that series is the greatest individual basketball I have EVER seen. Better than Jordan at his peak even (just for two weeks). This is exactly the kind of thing that can and does upend a series. It’s also exactly the kind of thing it takes to overcome a superior team.
To win the NBA Championship, a team MUST have one of the 10 best players in the world AT THE TIME.
Using this first factor as a starting point, we can start to draw some conclusions about the 2016 NBA Playoffs.
This factor is good news for Golden State, Houston, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Cleveland and OKC. Each of these teams is clearly possible of having the best player in any series, depending on who they are playing.
This is shaky news for Indiana, Boston, Detroit, Charlotte, and Portland, who have stars, but probably not the series-altering type (although the playoffs are their chance to prove otherwise).
Eliminated: As for Memphis, Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas and Toronto – Congratulations on impressive playoff seasons. Also, your major deficiency in this area means that you have no chance of winning the NBA title. Thank you for playing and please enjoy your parting gift (nothing) on the way out.
Next: Factor 2