What Metrics Determine an NBA Championship Team?
Deconstructing the common characteristics of winning organizations. Also, can you ‘buy’ championships?
Congratulations! You’ve just been hired as General Manager and President of Basketball Operations at [insert your favorite NBA team].
Your team is a couple games above .500 before the trade deadline. Do you have a realistic shot at winning it all? Should you keep the team intact or do you start making trades and retool?
What metrics will you look at? Which team stats are indicative of future success?
Let’s look at some of the commonalities between NBA champions over the years.
Win/Loss Percentage
As one might expect, winning games during the regular season often translates to success in the NBA Finals.
Not always, but most of the time.
One well-known exception is the 2015–16 Golden State Warriors who won an NBA record 73 games, but ultimately ended up losing in the Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers in seven games.
Still, the correlation is undeniable.
Since 1980, 98% of the teams that won a championship had regular season records of at least .600. The…
