The Gold Medal Superstar Theory and NBA Championships: Part 2

Who Are the Best Players on NBA Champions and Contenders?
What is the evidence? I have gone through every NBA season for the past 50 years. For every season I have determined the best player on the champion, the 2nd best player on the champion, the best player on the team that lost in the finals, and the best players on the two conference finalists that lost, the final four losers. I decided to add the best players from the team losing in the conference finals to the list to see if any patterns emerge. (ECF = Eastern Conference finals; WCF equals Western Conference finals). As you will see, they do.

Obviously, there can be some debate over my judgment as I determine the best players, but not enough to change the evidence appreciably. In some very difficult cases I have ties. For some of the conference finalists, I could not determine a best player, but, in any case, they were not players from the top 83 list.

Take a look at the names in the first column, the best players on the championship team. Because in six instances there were co-best players, there are 56 names in that column. All 56 of those players are on the list of 84 best players in NBA history, liberally including Dwyane Wade. But that barely begins to capture what is happening. Fully 43 of those 56 are Gold Medal Superstar players, one of the 20 best regular season Superstars. They account for 40 of the 50 NBA titles since 1956. 37 of these 40 teams (the exceptions are Houston in 94, GS in 75 and St. Louis in 58) had at least one other top 84 player, often a Silver Medal Superstar or even another Gold Medal Superstar.

Of the remaining ten NBA titles, four were led by two Silver Medal Superstar duos (Cowens-Havlicek and Frazier-Reed), and one was led by Bill Walton, who played like a certain Gold Medal Superstar until injuries derailed his career. So that is 45 out of 50.

Three more titles were accounted for by teams with one Silver Medal Superstar and one Bronze Medal Superstar. Two of these were accounted for by the Bad Boy Pistons. This was something of an "ensemble" team, with a core of five or six veterans who all were close to each other in their contribution to the team. It was slowly assembled and developed under Chuck Daly. But the Bad Boy Pistons had a Silver Medal Superstar (Thomas) and a Bronze Medal Superstar (Dumars). As great at they were, I am not certain if the Bad Boys would have won their titles if they did not fall exactly between the dominance of Bird, Magic and Jordan, but the point is certainly debatable. The other such title was accounted for by the 78 Bullets behind Silver Medal Superstar Elvin Hayes and Bronze Medal Superstar Wes Unseld. Here there is little doubt: This title was a fluke. It was a solid team that won in a down year for the league as the more talented Sixers were imploding and the awesome Blazers reeled with multiple injuries, especially to Walton.

In other words, you better have a Gold Medal Superstar to win a title; short of that, you might have an outside shot and get lucky if you have two Silver Medal Superstars, meaning two of the best 50 players in NBA history. Otherwise, you have no prayer, or better put, you only have a prayer. And you still need two top 84 all-time players to even have a Hail Mary prayer.

Then finally, that leaves us with the two anomalies, the two pure ensemble teams, which had neither a Gold Medal Superstar or a Silver Medal Superstar.

The 79 Sonics were a wonderful ensemble team -- count me as regarding Paul Silas, Fred Brown and Jack Sikma as among the underrated players in NBA history - and as a young sportswriter I covered that team. But, like the Bullets in 78, the Sonics only won a title because the NBA was in a holding pattern waiting for the Sixers to get their act together and for Bird and Magic to claim the 80s. It had Bronze Medal Superstars Dennis Johnson and Gus Williams. The 04 Pistons behind Bronze Medal Superstar Ben Wallace and possible Bronze Medal Superstar Chauncey Billups were also a classic ensemble team, and their subsequent travails point to the limitations of such an approach: great in the regular season, but see you later in the playoffs. Had the Timberwolves not choked or the Lakers not imploded in 04, Kevin Garnett or Shaq would have put a notch on their belts and the 04 Pistons would have washed out.

Most GMs in the NBA today have no prospective Gold Medal Superstar or even Silver Medal Superstar and are content (or reduced) to build an "ensemble" contender. History shows this is pretty much a waste of time if the goal is to win a title. History shows these GMs are in effect building respectable versions of the Washington Generals, the team the Harlem Globetrotters trounce 300 times a year. (If the GM just wants to keep his job, or the owner is averse to risk, this is a rational option. More on this in my next article.)

The Gold Medal Superstar thesis increases its power, if anything, when one looks at the best players on team that loses in the finals. (This is the third column in the table above.) Here, too, we see players on this list dominating. Just to get to the finals you need serious star power. The best player on all but one of the NBA runner-ups over the past 50 years is on this list. (Baltimore Bullets in 1970 with Earl Monroe.)

That means 99 of the 100 teams in the NBA finals since 1956 were led by a player on this list. 31 of these 50 teams that lost in the finals were led by a Gold Medal Superstar, who almost always lost in the finals to another team led by a Gold Medal Superstar. This is King Kong vs. Godzilla. 14 times the runner-ups were led by a Silver Medal Superstar and a measly 4 times they were led by someone from the lower third of the list, a Bronze Medal Superstar.

In other words, you need real superstarpower to just get to the finals. And if your best player is a Silver Medal Superstar, not a Gold Medal Superstar, you possibly can get to the finals, but you won't walk away the winner. Look at the list: if guys like Kidd, Ewing, Payton and Drexler were true Gold Medal Superstars, they probably would have led a team that captured a ring at some point in their careers. Instead their teams petered out just before the finish line, to a team with a true Gold Medal Superstar. And the Bronze Medal Superstar guys, the Moncriefs and Shawn Kemps and Reggie Millers, tend to lead teams to the conference finals, where they get ousted.

The second column indicates the second best player on a championship team. Because of the six co-best player years, there are only 44 names in this column. This column is more eclectic because great Gold Medal Superstar players can carry supporting casts to titles. (Otis Thorpe, anyone?) So it is that here are nine teams where the second-best player is not among the 84 best of the past 50 years.

But the second-best category is important because it highlights great players who might have been able to lead teams to titles had they not been teamed with dominant superstars, like Scottie Pippen and Kobe Bryant. It also reveals that having two or more players on the top 84 list is generally required for a team to win an NBA title. Thus 41 times the second best player is a stud: including the years with co-best players, 13 times the no. 2 guy is a Gold Medal Superstar; 16 times the second-best player is a Silver Medal Superstar; and 12 times a Bronze Medal Superstar. In other words, NBA champions generally not only have a Gold Medal Superstar they have at least two players from this list leading their team. The second-best list is where dynasty teams tend to have Silver Medal Superstar players like Pippen, Bryant and Havlicek show up as trusty sidekicks to Gold Medal Superstars.

Finally, look at the last two columns, which list the best players on the losing conference finals team every year for the past 50 NBA seasons. Here, too, we see the dominance of players from this list, but the dominance weakens. Fully 37 of these 100 teams were led by Gold Medal Superstar players. Another 38 teams were divided even, between teams led by Silver Medal Superstars and Bronze Medal Superstars. That leaves 25 losing teams that were led by players not on the list of 84 best players in NBA history.


Conclusion: Case Closed

Put another way, in the past 50 years there have been 200 final four teams that have made it to the conference finals in the NBA:

-- 26 of those 200 teams -- a measly 13 percent -- have been led by a player not on the list of top 84 players, and only one of those 26 advanced, where it then lost in the finals.

-- 25 of those 200 teams --12 percent --have been led by Bronze Medal Superstars; i.e. players ranked between 53 and 83 on the best players list. They produced only two of the past 50 NBA champions: Seattle 79 and Detroit 04.

-- 41 of those 200 teams -- 20 percent -- have been led by Silver Medal Superstars; i.e. players ranked 21-52 on the best players list. They produced eight of the past 50 NBA championships.

-- 108 of those 200 final four NBA teams -- 54 -- percent have been led by one of the 20 best players in NBA history based upon regular season performance. These players led 40 of the 50 past NBA championship teams. Nine of the top 20 players were multiple champions and these 9 players accounted for 36 of the past 50 NBA titles, or nearly three-quarters of all NBA championships.

-- 44 of 50 NBA champions had at least two players from the top 84 list in their starting line-up or serious rotation.

-- 19 of 50 NBA champions had at least three players from this list in their starting line-ups or serious rotation.

-- 12 of 50 NBA champions had at least four players from this list in their starting line-ups or serious rotation.

-- 5 of 50 NBA champions had fully five players from this list in their starting line-ups or serious rotation. (Who are these dynamos? Celtics in 86, 63, 61, 60, 59.)

The evidence is now overwhelming: teams need Gold Medal Superstars to win titles, or, with a great deal of luck, two Silver Medal Superstars. If a team does not have a Gold Medal Superstar, or someone on the way to becoming a Gold Medal Superstar, and at least two top 84 caliber players, or two players en route to joining the top 84 club on its roster, it has little chance of winning an NBA title.

This radically alters the perception of who the legitimate contenders are for an NBA titles, and what a smart GM should do if he is serious about winning a title. That will be the subject of my next article, which will appear in the next two weeks.

Appendix: This is where the NBA Championship Bones are buried

List of championship and playoff teams led by specific players with their ranking from the top 84 list above. I include ABA records for Erving, Barry, Gervin & Thompson, and pre-1957 totals for Schayes and Cousy. Ties each get one vote, so some teams get two votes for best player. For these reasons, totals at bottom are slightly different from totals above.

Column 1: number of times best player on NBA Champion
Column 2: number of times 2nd best on NBA Champion
Column 3: number of times best player on team that loses in the NBA finals
Column 4: number of times best player on team that loses in conference finals
Column 5: Grand total times player has led team into the NBA final 4, or been no. 2 guy on champion

Gold Medal Superstars

Silver Medal Superstars

Bronze Medal Superstars

And This Guy, of Course:

So what players lead teams to serious contention and titles?

Column 1: number of times best player on NBA Champion
Column 2: number of times 2nd best on NBA Champion
Column 3: number of times best player on team that loses in the NBA finals
Column 4: number of times best player on team that loses in conference finals
Column 5: Grand total times player has led team into the NBA final 4, or been no. 2 guy on champion

COMBINED TOTALS

Note: If Dolph Schayes were included as a Gold Medal Superstar - as he certainly would be in MVP voting went before 1956 -- the combined total would be 145 for the Gold Medal Superstars and 58 for the Silver Medal Superstars. That would mean the now 21 Gold Medal Superstars would have more combined points than all other players in the NBA since 1956 combined.

*The Gold Medal Superstar Theory and NBA Championships: Part 1