How do you feel about the 'Best team always wins' idea?

[HotelVitale]

Quick philosophical question about the saying that, in a 7-game series ‘the best team always wins.’ I’ve always assumed people take that as a cliche the truth there is that best-of-7 means there's way less room for big upsets (compared to say March Madness) but obviously isn’t the real story of what happens in an actual close PO game or series. This PO, as we’ve seen some tight series and some blowouts, I've thought it was a good example of dividing up series between 'could go either way' and 'better team was always going to find a way to win.' But I’ve noticed people using the cliche again as though it is in fact 100% true. Like in DEN-MIN, some people spoke as though DEN's offense was just too muddied by MIN's defense at times, and implied that Jamal Murray and MPJ were fated not just to shoot poorly because of defensive matchups–but to shoot exactly as poorly as they did. That the exact outcome was somehow bound to happen. (To me it was just that the defense was good but those guys still got shots they often make and this time around just didn't make them.) Or when the Knicks beat my Sixers in 7, it wasn’t because of a few wild finishes and one or two more random hot streaks from the right players, it was because their hustle advantages and Brunson being tougher than Embiid or whatever meant they were always going to win. I thought those advantages were real...but that Josh Hart wasn't fated to hit that last 3 in game 7, or that the Sixers weren't fated not to score on a couple plays down the stretch.)

How do you think of these things? I don’t want to create a caricature of people who actually think 'fate' is involved, so it's probably better to phrase this as whether or not people believe that relatively close games/series aren't determined by a few random in-the-moment things (that would likely happen differently if re-played a few times), or if they're more about strengths/weaknesses of teams that will inevitably emerge and tell the story of which team had it and which team didn't that series. I often think in terms of what would happen if a series were played over a few times; maybe another way to ask that question is if you think the tigther series we've seen would've gone differently if played say 4-5 times over.

I always think of basketball as very fluid, and that even only kinda close games come down to a few tiny movements and gaps that make one play work and the next not, and a few inches here and there on a shot or board or drive or out-of-bounds play. I obviously don't think it doens't mean that better teams don't generally win or everything is luck or anything like that, just that I generally seem to give more weight to ranomdness and lack of predictability than other posters do, so wondering if I might be somewhere on the far end of a spectrum with this topic as well.

[rapstarter]

Things you can't fully control like being in the EC or WC, strength of schedule, matchups, injuries and officiating exist, and in a series of playoff series, impacts of these are magnified, So the "best" team (if you define it as the team that would win it all the most if we repeated the playoffs a large number of times) wouldn't always win on a given run. That said, we don't have a time machine, so I think it's acceptable and frankly healthier that we just stick to "the best team always wins" idea.

[Statlanta]

no, hot streaks, injuries and momentary ref interpretations(Kyrie fouling a man but can't challenge that only out of bounds call because of the rules for challenging) can screw a team.

7 game series makes it easier, I can't imagine if they did it like Football or the NCAA tournament.

[shotsquatch]

It's really hard for a worse team to beat a better team four times. It only happens due to injuries, incredible shooting luck, and bad calls down the stretch -- variables that are outside the control of either team.

[HotelVitale]

Things you can't fully control like strength of schedule, matchups, injuries and officiating exist.

Thanks, definitely think those matter but I wasn't thinking about these things but the actual basketball playing. I think that many if not most plays in a good series aren't fated to happen they way they are, that they're about how they were executed. If the initial set creates some space or a lane or not, how the help defense reacted to that initial space, how the offense responded to that, how the defense adjusted once it was rotating, etc. This literally comes down to inches and some in-the-moment guesses on many plays. E.g. if Jones Jr on a drive chooses to shade 4 inches more to one side on one play, then Edwards doesn't have a window make the pass to the corner he first wanted to and then may or may not have an angle to the cup that he can finish over DJJ on, and DJJ may or may not lean into him enough to foul while contesting, and the shot Edwards gets up may or may not carom to a spot where the big who's freed by that rotation can grab and flush it, etc.

Plus shooting varies so wildly, even if a guy who can read and react like Luka and very frequently find the open guys no matter the defense, there really aren't that many plays where I think a player 100% was or wasn't going to make a given shot no matter what. Obviously good shooters will hit more frequently but even they miss most shots and there's not a clear rhyme or reason to when they do or don't.

When you combine all that, it seems to me that games of evenly matched teams are very very much in play and depend on a long chain of tiny unpredictable things. Not external things like injuries, officiating, etc, just the actual basketball being played in the moment.

[Roscoe Sheed]

The best team seems to win more in the nba than mlb or nhl, but as mentioned above, hot shooting, poor officiating, and luck still factor in.

In mlb and nhl, it actually seems like the best team usually doesn’t win it all- mlb allows too many teams in the playoffs and the early rounds are too short. In the nhl, a hot goal tender and match ups can be more determinant

[UcanUwill]

I take it as cliche too, and its a cliche I am not sure is true. Obviously, in a 7 game series, better team will win most of the time, but let start with - what is better team? Let get philosophical. What does that even mean? We can argue win is what makes a better team, not a hypothetical strength, this is not a simulation with numbers, team that won was the better team?

So, I am not sure what does best team mean to person to begin with? Was Panathinaikos best team in Europe. Budget, greater sample, names, overall eye test would say Real Madrid is easily more talented team, but Panathinaikos are the team that won games that needed to be won, isn't that what makes team best?

So what is best team, team that won after everything happened the way it did. Or is best team that team thats most talented and maybe could be more reliable on greater sample? Personally, I think the latter is ''best'' team, so yes, I do not think best team always win. But thats why sports are being played, we do not start the season with observing the roster and giving a championship to the team that has best 15 man roster, we play the game to decide champion, so I don't know. Most talented team (separate it from best team) not always win, even in a long series, yes.

[HotelVitale]

It's really hard for a worse team to beat a better team four times. It only happens due to injuries, incredible shooting luck, and bad calls down the stretch -- variables that are outside the control of either team.

Agree in general--a team that's definitely better is nearly always going to be able to use their firm advantages at some point. Shooting will even out, the inability of the worse team to create offense easily/steadily will take its toll, a rebounding or athleticism advantage will at some point greatly impact stretches of games, etc.

That's why the cliche exists: best of 7 means it's really hard for a clear upset to happen. But it still doesn't mean the 'best team always wins,' especially not when one team isn't obviously significantly better than the other. I think my question is about where you draw the line between 'this was always gonna happen' vs 'this could've gone either way,' when you start thinking that a series comes down to some lucky breaks or some plays working out well or not.

My guess is I draw that line further than most fans and think many games could've ended differently. Not because I don't understand what makes a team better or can analyze strengths/weaknesses in a match-up (I think I'm reasonably good at that) but because I just think that the execution of the average play is way more variable than most seem to think, and that even 7-game series aren't nearly long enough to account for hot-cold streaks, shooting variance, random players stepping up, etc. Not enough that the better team won't generally find a way to win, but enough for many games (and thus series) to be about those variances and exeuctions/decisions in the moment and not purely being 'better.'

[Bloodbather]

I think of 'best team' as the team that performs the best over a large sample.

7-game series definitely does its job to ensure that the best team wins most of the time compared to single game formats which are very prone to upsets. But an even better insurance that the best team wins is the league format. With the exception of injuries that render teams incapable of showing their potential, leagues without Playoffs are almost always won by the best team.

Not saying the league format is better, but it does reflect overall strength more faithfully.

[KamikazeK]

2023 ECF proves that isn't the case, but for all intents and purposes, it might as well be. If you lose 4 out of 7, you don't deserve to move on.

[BrianInPhilly]

By definition, the team that "plays better" always wins ... under assumption "playing better" means scoring more points than your opponent.

The whole "best team always win" just goes back to how you define "best". Of course only a fool would say luck doesn't play some factor in who wins each game. So, of course the most talented team sometimes does not win. But that's why you play the games & ties to nature of competition. If you're defining "best team" as team that was not just the most talented, but also the team that got th emost lucky, played through fatigue the best, made more shots, prepared the best, avoided injuries the best, tried harder, limited mental mistakes, limited dumb fouls, etc. etc. then sure if all that is built in that is the "best team".

At the end of the day though, the goal very literally for a team is to not "be the best team" it is to "play better than the other team" when the ball goes up. There is a difference, so you can't discount the psychological element of shining bright when the lights are on, etc. etc.

Long winded way of saying - depends on how you're defining these words. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter, because you play TO WIN, not be "the best team".

[sammo89]

Technically yes, but the enormous amount of games in the NBA makes health a giant factor at the end of the day (if not the biggest factor). Shortened regular season, best of 5 playoffs and best of 3 finals would be the best mix (with the finals being back to back to back on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

[djsunyc]

alot of factors involved. i think all of these things now have to be considered part and parcel of the nba playoffs

- health
- matchups
- luck
- randomness

they should not be asterisked anymore. it's part of every series.

there's alot of parity and more often than not, it's going to be about the "best team of this particular series".

different matchups would yield in different results.