How Much Objective Value Does a Finals' Loss Have?

[lakerz12]

*Poll assumes player was one of the best players in the series and key in getting their team to the Finals.

edit: You can re-phrase question as "In your educated opinion, how much value does a Finals' Loss have?" - - - answers are not expected to be perfect or totally objective.

Hello. I am genuinely asking this and I think it would be helpful to try to quantify the actual value of a Finals' loss, if possible.

Please don't reply with personal attacks. The goal here is to actually try to objectively analyze Finals' records.

Please don't comment "it's a team game" without explaining your reasoning. Obviously it's a team game, but it's a team game where individual greats have a huge influence on winning and losing!

Obviously a key person in this discussion is LeBron, but this is not intended to bash him or any other player.

Please don't say "losing in the Finals' is better than losing in the first round" - - everyone already knows that and no one said otherwise. That's a straw-man argument.

For reference, let's look at the amount of Finals' wins/Championships among some all time great players (again, all time greats, not Robert Horry) in the semi-modern era (leaving out Russell/list is not comprehensive):

Kareem: 6
Jordan: 6
Magic: 5
Kobe: 5
Duncan: 5
Shaq: 4
Bird: 3
Curry: 3
LeBron: 3
Wade: 3
Durant: 2


Losses in the Finals' among same players:

LeBron: 6
Kareem: 4
Magic: 4
Shaq: 2
Kobe: 2
Bird: 2
Wade: 2
Curry: 2
Durant: 2 (only played 12 minutes in one of them)
Duncan: 1
Jordan: 0


So what value, if any, should we give to Finals' losses?

Also, if we're going to give credit for Finals' losses, should we give credit to losing in the Semi-Finals and earlier rounds of the Playoffs as well?

It's interesting that most people on this board seem to consider Finals' losses a positive thing, but losing in earlier rounds a negative thing. Why? Where/when is the cut-off for it becoming a good thing to lose?

Can we determine a semi-objective formula that gives a more comprehensive rating of a player's playoff record, than just Finals' wins and losses?

[mademan]

Seems kinda obvious, but it depends on how they play. For Lebron, theres positive value to his play in the 2017 and 2018 finals and negative value to his play in the 2011 finals.

[lakerz12]

Seems kinda obvious, but it depends on how they play. For Lebron, theres positive value to his play in the 2017 and 2018 finals and negative value to his play in the 2011 finals.

Okay but the question clearly includes how much value you give to the ones you consider a positive value.

Positive value can range from almost meaningless to incredible, life altering value.

So just saying positive value doesn't get us very far. Which was the point of trying to specify how much value it actually has.

E.g. $1 and $1,000,000 are both positive value. But obviously much different in value.

[zimpy27]

NBA does this with MVP voting and it translates because playoffs also have 5 tiers of success.

1st - 10 points (Win finals)
2nd - 7 points (Win conference finals)
3rd - 5 points (Win semi-conference finals)
4th - 3 points (Win first round)
5th - 1 point (Make it to the playoffs)

[SWYM]

It's a L and teams don't hang up 2nd place banners so a big goose egg

No equation is going to mathematically prove LBJ is the GOAT

[Liam_Gallagher]

Welcome to RealGM, where a 1st round loss is better than a Finals one!

[Troubadour]

I don't know...my team has never lost in the Finals

[subbed sub]

How many points for a summer camp loss?

[Amares]

For the player it has the same value, he's not becoming worse because his team lost, or get better because his team won.

[batmana]

Regarding the top choice (3 finals losses are equal to 1 finals win), I'll give you the following example:
Do you consider Elgin Baylor to have the equivalent of an NBA title? (In fact, 2+ titles due to the number of finals losses).
20 finals losses wouldn't equal 1 title win, that's the reality of it. People might not agree with it but nothing supersedes the value of winning a title.
Now this doesn't mean that having more titles automatically puts Player X above Player Y, that's an entirely different discussion.

[lakerz12]

NBA does this with MVP voting and it translates because playoffs also have 5 tiers of success.

1st - 10 points (Win finals)
2nd - 7 points (Win conference finals)
3rd - 5 points (Win semi-conference finals)
4th - 3 points (Win first round)
5th - 1 point (Make it to the playoffs)

Okay thanks for this.

But I think most would agree a Finals' win should be worth much much more than a Conference Finals' win.

Maybe 10 for a Championship and 3 for a Conference Finals' Win.

But, I guess that's where the subjectivity comes in and how much weight you give to the Finals'.

[lakerz12]

Welcome to RealGM, where a 1st round loss is better than a Finals one!

Totally untrue, already addressed in the OP, and it's actually the opposite.

Most people seem to consider losing in the Finals' a good thing (compared to not making it at all), but losing in the 1st round a bad thing.

[dhsilv2]

NBA does this with MVP voting and it translates because playoffs also have 5 tiers of success.

1st - 10 points (Win finals)
2nd - 7 points (Win conference finals)
3rd - 5 points (Win semi-conference finals)
4th - 3 points (Win first round)
5th - 1 point (Make it to the playoffs)

Okay thanks for this.

But I think most would agree a Finals' win should be worth much much more than a Conference Finals' win.

Maybe 10 for a Championship and 3 for a Conference Finals' Win.

But, I guess that's where the subjectivity comes in and how much weight you give to the Finals'.

I'd go with zimpy's numbers. There's no logical reason to value a titles THAT much more. I can see a case where we make small adjustments for strong/weak conferences but even then making the finals should never be less than 5 if a title is 10 and that seems REALLY harsh and skewed towards winning bias.

[The_Hater]

Apparently, to use the logic of many Kobe fans, losing before you make the finals, even in the first round, or even missing the playoffs altogether has more career value then winning 3 playoff rounds before losing to an all time great team in the finals. However there are a lot of people with twisted, backwards logic out there.

Nobody has played more career playoff games in history then Lebron James, and that’s the more important measure of playoff greatness then a finals won/loss record.

[Texas Chuck]

It's interesting that [i]most people on this board seem to consider Finals' losses a positive thing, but losing in earlier rounds a negative thing.

If we frame this point correctly it removes all questions:

Every game and series you help your team win has value. Each successive series adds more value than the one before. So winning 3 series is worth more than winning 2 series to a higher degree than winning two is to winning one and one is to zero.

This seems really straightforward and requires no narratives.

[zimpy27]

NBA does this with MVP voting and it translates because playoffs also have 5 tiers of success.

1st - 10 points (Win finals)
2nd - 7 points (Win conference finals)
3rd - 5 points (Win semi-conference finals)
4th - 3 points (Win first round)
5th - 1 point (Make it to the playoffs)

Okay thanks for this.

But I think most would agree a Finals' win should be worth much much more than a Conference Finals' win.

Maybe 10 for a Championship and 3 for a Conference Finals' Win.

But, I guess that's where the subjectivity comes in and how much weight you give to the Finals'.

Well depends on perspective.

The MVP voting is trying to give value to the 1st position but also value for your ranking.

Do you see the heirarchy of the NBA completely flat where you have 29 teams on one tier and 1 team above the other 29?

Nearly no one does this in respect to teams during a season, only after the season has ended. It doesn't make any sense to flip the logic like that.

We all truthfully see teams in a heirarchy, in tiers or in a rank. That's because getting to the championship is a mountain to climb, you can get halfway up the mountain, 3 quarters of the way or to the very top. It's measurable and should be measured.

[gigantes]

Seems kinda obvious, but it depends on how they play. For Lebron, theres positive value to his play in the 2017 and 2018 finals and negative value to his play in the 2011 finals.

I can't really agree with that. He was still the main reason they made the finals, even if he got a little overwhelmed against Dallas. It was also a close finals that could easily have gone either way, even looking like a blowout for Miami for awhile.

There's also the fact that we're talking about more than just the finals itself, but a player's body of work through those playoffs which got them there, and James' playoff numbers in 10-11 are actually more impressive than his regular season stats in some ways.

When it comes to James, you also have to give him credit for dragging some pretty terrible CLE teams to the finals, particularly that awful 06-07 crew, plus the 17-18 team you mentioned. That goes above and beyond merely good play, and says something extra special about a player IMO, even if fans then turn around and use it against them.

[Egg Nog]

If you consider scenario A [strong east/weak west] versus scenario B [weak east/strong west] in the case of Jordan and LeBron's careers, you would expect the results to be fairly in line with what actually happened, with MJ over-performing somewhat.

You would expect a great team (the Bulls) playing in a very strong conference to have a harder time making the finals, but to be hugely favored and to have a very good record once they got there. You would expect a great team (LeBron's teams...at least some of them) in a weak conference to make the finals a higher percentage of the time, but to win a much lower percentage when they got there. This is pretty much what happened.

MJ's teams consistently lost as the underdog and consistently won as the favorites. LeBron's teams did the same apart from 2011 when they were favored 56% to win but still lost, though the Lakers were the title favorites that season and got swept by the same team (avoiding the dreaded "finals loss" ), so perhaps those Mavs are still being underrated.

[Texas Chuck]

Seems kinda obvious, but it depends on how they play. For Lebron, theres positive value to his play in the 2017 and 2018 finals and negative value to his play in the 2011 finals.

I can't really agree with that. He was still the main reason they made the finals, even if he got a little overwhelmed against Dallas. It was also a close finals that could easily have gone either way, even looking like a blowout for Miami for awhile.

It just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how basketball works and a lack of any specific knowledge about that series to suggest that Lebron was a negative. The Mavericks made slowing Lebron their entire focus in that series(and the RS btw where Dallas contained Lebron as well---very few people seem to realize Dallas won 6 of 8 from Miami that year. Dallas winning was no fluke nor just a Lebron choke.). This is why Wade had such a great series. He always got the weaker perimeter defender, including being defended by Jason Terry a bunch. The bigs were constantly shading Lebron's way as well.

Dallas made a calculated gamble that if they could limit Lebron, Wade and the rest couldn't beat them. And 6 out of 8 times they were proven correct. This could have backfired. In 06 they thought if we contain Shaq, Wade can't beat us. They totally wiped out Shaq who was worse than Lebron was in 2011, but Wade made them pay.

Remove Lebron and Dallas just shifts all attention to Wade and the series is a trivial sweep. Even when not playing his best basketball Lebron still changes the very calculus of the games in immense ways that benefit his teams.

[DoubleLintendre]

Don't think you can convert it into a stable number applicable to every player, franchise, or team. Not all Finals losses carry equal value: same with championships won. It's highly contextual.

Off the top of my head:

Dirk's ring vs KD's rings
LeBron's 2016 championship
LeBron's loss in 2015

I'm not sure if Dirk's ring is +1 and KD's is +2. Not sure that LeBron's loss in 2015 is the exact same as his loss in 2011. They're different brands of wins and losses. If you follow the events of a championship loss/win, it's hard to reduce them into a number that compares flawlessly to other championship years/teams.

Player championship value has lost a lot of value over the years to me. Because basketball is very much a team sport, often a player's greatness or failing rests on who's around them or if they're healthy or hitting shots. It's like crediting a car's engine for winning a race instead of the whole car. You can have the greatest car in the world, but blow out a single wheel and your race ends there.

We like to simplify Finals into individual player accomplishments/failings, but it probably hurts more than helps. I look at Ray Allen's game 6 in 2013 as a reminder of the fragility of player greatness narratives.

Looking at the story "objectively", the 2013 championship is a LeBron led team. He's the star player. They got the win and thus LeBron has +1 ring. But if Ray Allen doesn't hit the shot after Bosh grabs the rebound and kicks it out, that's a -1 count on LeBron. It's not 0, it's -1.

What does that single possession have to do with LeBron James? It saved the Heat from elimination. At the end of the day we attribute a positive numerical value to LeBron for what transpired. But, consider if a less skilled 3 point shooter was in that corner-- how much negative value do we attribute to LeBron in the Finals now?