Essentially, it breaks down like this:
Using a fairly simple but reasonable set of four criteria, he figures out the best 80 players since 1956. He explains the number and the date in his article, so I won't.
Basically, he uses top-15 MVP finishes (ranked in tiers), All-NBA teams, All-Defensive teams, and DPOYs. Each piece has a point value (3 for All-NBA first team, 15 for an MVP, 2 for a DPOY, etc) and he tallies up these totals and shows them to you in each of the four categories (MVP points, All-NBA points and defensive points, which includes DPOYs). He also shows you average points by year, which is interesting.
He takes injuries and such into consideration as well, as he explains, and also years after 36 as well (so Jordan isn't penalized for his time on the Wizards, etc); the details are in the first part of the article and are interesting and fairly insightful. In any event, he ranks the stars into three categories: gold, silver and bronze.
For example, Bill Walton qualifies for the Gold level but doesn't have the requisite seven seasons, so he's listed at the end of the list even though he averaged 26.5 points per year in his two qualifying years (higher than Jordan, who is at the top of the list).
McChesney puts in the requisite disclaimer that this isn't the be-all and end-all ranking system, since that's not really what it was designed to do entirely. He notes that the four categories he used aren't perfect (and therefore taint the integrity of the exact order of the list), especially since MVP voting is dependent on sports writers, who aren't generally super-reliable and consistent. He notes that, for example, he doesn't consider Jerry West better than Magic just because he has a higher score and so on. But beyond that, it is a very interesting list.
Gold players are guys getting 13.5+ points per year, on average, which generally means All-NBA First Team, top-10 in MVP voting for most of his prime, generally one of the 5 best players in the league through much of their prime (and there are generally only 3 or 4 of these players each year, according to McChesney).
He makes a sidenote that guys averaging 20+ points per year (Bird, Russell, , Duncan, Kareem and Jordan, in ascending order) could be a sort of platinum level, since they're basically one of the two or three best players in the league their entire career and almost always contending for a title, too.
He makes some note of Julius Erving being a special case because he's not including ABA years in this consideration, though Erving headlines the Silver group (average of 7+ points). Bronze is 3.7+.
So once he's established the top 80, things get interesting.
Next up is his attempt to figure out the best and second-best player on each title team in the given period, as well as the best player on the team that lost in the Finals and the best players on the two other squads that lost in the conference finals. So for example, his ranking this year shows Garnett tops on Boston, Pierce second, Bryant tops on L.A., with Billups and Duncan best of the rest in the CFs. He has some objective criteria helping him to figure out these rankings and such and again, not perfect, but the real importance here is to figure the best 2 on the winner, the best on the loser and the 2 other best players in the CFs and that seems to have worked.
Now, the first major observations:
Of the 52 titles in the given period, 40 of them have had a Gold medal player as the best player. 17 have had a Gold player as the 2nd man, 28 of the losing teams have had a Gold player as the best and 36 of them appear in the best-of list for the CFs (out of 104 players there).
Only 8 title teams feature a Silver player as the best guy, 12 are the second-man (6 from Scottie, 4 from Havlicek), 16 feature as best on the runner up and 24/104 are found in the CFs list.
4 title squads featured a Bronze player as the leading man (DJ, Elvin Hayes and two from Isiah Thomas), 8 featured a Bronze second man, 5 runner-ups featured a Bronze as the best guy and there were 10 of them in the CFs.
So, in all, EVERY title in the last 52 years featured at least one of these guys as the best player on the title team, 37/52 title teams featured one of them as the second-best player, 49/52 teams that lost in the Finals featured one of these guys and 70/104 teams that reached the Conference Finals had one of them as well.
Notice that means that no team that didn't have one of these guys as their best player won a title, only 15 teams didn't have one of these guys as their second-best player and only 3 teams that made it to the Finals and lost didn't have one of these guys as their best player. 34 teams made the ECFs without one of these guys as their best player (e.g. about half as many).
So that's pretty significant. Obviously, the talent is the thing. The 40/52 is most telling; if you don't have a guy who's pretty much perennial All-NBA First Team and top-10 in the MVP voting, you have to be a really significant outlier squad to win a title.
McChesney goes on to explore in some depth the implications these findings have and I won't reproduce those here in great detail because the article is worth a read (that part is in Part II).
You'll also notice that most of the exceptions are in the 70s, generally a down-time for the league. Read what he says about the 70s a little more carefully and you'll get a better idea of what "down time" really means comparatively:
On 40 of these 52 teams, the best player was one of the 21 gold medal superstars, the elite of the elite of the elite. In basketball, more than any other team sport, getting a player for the ages is essential for championships. Mere all-stars, even several of them, ain’t gonna get the job done. And 8 of the 11 champions that did not have a gold medal superstar leading it, had at least two players from this list on the team, in their primes, at least one of whom was silver-medal. (The exceptions? Rick Barry’s 75 Warriors, Elvin Hayes’s 78 Bullets, and Dennis Johnson’s 79 Sonics. These champions defeated teams in the finals that were similarly under armed; these were “down” years for the league. The late 70s was almost like a Bermuda Triangle for the NBA. Accordingly these are regarded as among the weaker champions in NBA history.)
He also notes that 21 guys (20, if you discount Bill Walton) led 64 of the 108 teams that have PLAYED in the Finals since 1956.
He even has a piece on "ensemble teams:"
Second, there have been three NBA championship teams since 1956-57 that broke the mold of being driven by a powerful gold or silver medal superstar. I call these ensemble teams and they are the teams where there was not a huge difference between the best player and the third or fourth or maybe even the fifth best player on the team. These teams – the afore-mentioned 79 Sonics, 89 and 90 Pistons, and 04 Pistons – were solid teams led by bronze (or in the case of the 04 Pistons, silver) medal superstars. At their best, the Pistons teams, these were very good teams, and deserving champions. Most fans are hoping and praying that their team can emulate these great ensemble teams because it is far easier to collect a bunch of all-stars than it is to have a couple of superstars. But these ensemble champions are exceptions to the rule, and all but the 79 Sonics had at least two bronze medal superstars on them.
Most of the great ensemble teams in NBA history – the late 60s Atlanta Hawks, the early-mid 70s Chicago Bulls, the 80s Milwaukee Bucks, the 90s Indiana Pacers, the 00s Sacramento Kings, are stalwarts in the regular season, packed with all-stars, often winning 50 plus games, even 60, but invariably flounder when the Hall of Famers take over in May and June. They are fool’s gold if the goal is to win a championship.
The only flaw I see here is that the Kings had at least one year where they theoretically should have won the title but for ref interference and BS... though one might make that square with this analysis on the basis of respect afforded to megastars like Shaq.
Part III is more of a discussion of the players in the league now and GMs who understand how this works and what to do. It is an interesting read but it's more of an extension of the work rather than the meat of the theory itself, so I won't address it right away.
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So, what do people think? Do you agree with this assessment? Are there mitigating criteria that he's missing or does this body of work (which is fairly extensive and very compelling) really help to outline what a team's realistic chances for winning an NBA title look like?
How does this mesh with Lebron's takeover mentality leading to the eventual collapse of the ensemble-style Pistons and the prospects of teams led by guys like Paul and Howard versus the Jazz? What will Kobe do without that second medal-quality player? It seems he can get there but he can't win without that second guy.
Interesting stuff.
