How many teams are legitimate contenders each year?

[Marchesk]

By "legitimate", I mean they are good enough to win the championship. I don't mean they could win a playoff series or two, and even beat a good team in doing so.

So for example, the Hawks last season were not legitimate title contenders, because as we saw, they couldn't have won the championship (getting easily swept with home court advantage). But the Cavs were, even though they lost in the finals.

So maybe last season the Warriors, Cavs, Rockets and Spurs were legit. That leaves the Clippers, Bulls and Grizzlies as question marks. The Thunder were disqualified by injuries.

So that's 4 to maybe 7 teams last season. If this was during a dynastic era, then the number might be reduced to 3 or 4, at best. So each year you might be looking at around 6 or less teams who could actually win the entire thing.

[SouBeachTalents]

On average, there are probably 5-6 teams every year that have a legitimate shot at a championship. How many would you say there were in past eras like the '60's & '80's? 2-3, 4 tops?

[Marchesk]

On average, there are probably 5-6 teams every year that have a legitimate shot at a championship. How many would you say there were in past eras like the '60's & '80's? 2-3, 4 tops?

80s?

Celtics, 76ers, Lakers obviously. Bucks and Rockets maybe. Then later Pistons, Lakers, Celtics, with Bulls and Suns as maybes. Portland also.

During the Bulls championships, how many were there? The 72 win season there was what, Orlando, Seattle and Utah with any chance? There was probably only about three teams who had any chance of beating the Bulls in a series in any one of those seasons.

What about during the Lakers three-peat? Spurs and Kings. Who else?

[All Net]

Warriors
Cavs
Thunder
Spurs
Rockets

Clippers could be part of this but I don't believe they will ever get over the hump

[Marchesk]

Warriors
Cavs
Thunder
Spurs
Rockets

Clippers could be part of this but I don't believe they will ever get over the hump

Sounds about right for this year.

Cue rant about contraction and shortening the regular season.

[KG215]

I think 5 legit contenders is about as high as you can reasonably go most years. I would say this year there are three teams it absolutely would not surprise me at all if they won the championship (Warriors, Spurs, Cavs) and three other teams who I'm not sure I'd quite put on that level but are really, really close (Thunder, Clippers, Rockets). So you could make an argument that there's 5-6 this year, but I'd say more like 3 or 4 -- I'm waiting to see how the Kanter experiment goes and how healthy they stay before I definitively put OKC in the Warriors, Spurs, and Cavs group.

[Foster5k]

Not many. It's usually the same old teams.

-Whatever team LeBron has colluded with in the East
-Spurs
-Warriors
-OKC

[ArbitraryWater]

2016:

CLE
GSW
SAS
OKC
LAC
HOU

for comparison...

2010:

Cavaliers
Celtics
Lakers

2009:

Cavs
Celtics
Magic
Lakers

2008:

Lakers
Celtics

[All Net]

Sounds about right for this year.

Cue rant about contraction and shortening the regular season.
Still think the main ones are

Warriors
Cavs
Thunder
Spurs

Can't see anybody else really

[CurryOverLebron]

Warriors
Thunder
Cavaliers

[Foster5k]

People always talk about the parity in the NBA. The NFL has pretty much the same parity. The Patriots are currently the favorites to win the Super Bowl. Well, they were favorites last year and the year before that. The NBA has the bottom feeders and the NFL does as well.

[RidonKs]

usually between one and three to start the year

then as teams begin to tangle and you go through the ups and downs of the year and teams like the grizzlies or the bulls take swipes at your confidence and you begin to think there are about half a dozen teams in contention

still there remain typically only a few

this year i think is different though. the main three contenders are definitely the spurs, cavs, warriors... but the thunder are very close. only hesitation is that shooting guard position and we're going to find out how roberson and waiters share the load, not to mention who they find themselves playing beside.

the clippers and rockets and bulls are unproven and that matters. the first title run is always the hardest.

after those teams, the next tier is fat. bucks, hawks, pelicans, wizards, jazz, raptors.... and the list goes on.



look back at the championship odds opening every year... top three listed

2006 - spurs, heat, pistons, suns
2007 - mavs, suns, spurs
2008 - mavs, suns, spurs
2009 - lakers, celtics, cavs
2010 - lakers, celtics, cavs
2011 - heat, lakers, magic, bulls
2012 - heat, lakers, bulls, thunder
2013 - heat, lakers, thunder
2014 - heat, spurs, thunder
2015 - cavs, spurs, thunder

so we have a lot of steady names with three big surprises...

- lakers celtics out of nowhere in 2008 but they made big trades
- mavs out of nowhere in 2011
- warriors out of nowhere in 2015

i dunno what to conclude from the above but just thought i was interesting



the field does seem more crowded this season... barring injuries it'll be the most competitive nba season in years. then again i said that about last year too...

[SouBeachTalents]

People always talk about the parity in the NBA. The NFL has pretty much the same parity. The Patriots are currently the favorites to win the Super Bowl. Well, they were favorites last year and the year before that. The NBA has the bottom feeders and the NFL does as well.

Disagree completely. The one game elimination format makes it infinitely easier for upsets to happen and lower seeded teams to advance in the playoffs, even win the Super Bowl. The Giants, Packers, and Ravens all won the Super Bowl with 9-10 wins, with the Giants doing so twice. Iirc no one below the 3 seed has won an NBA title in 20 years. And honestly, how many legitimate NBA upsets have there been in the last 20 seasons? 5, maybe 7 tops.

[Legends66NBA7]

Cavaliers, Spurs, Warriors, Rockets, and Thunder.

Assuming everyone is healthy, if not then it probably comes down the Spurs and Warriors for me. I can't see team in the East win if they aren't healthy.

[Sarcastic]

Baseball is the sport with most parity, and its also the only sport that doesn't have a salary cap.

[WayOfWade]

Realistically the Max is 6, 3 from each conference. There ain't no way a team with a 5 seed or lower is ever going to win it all again, Only Hakeem. Then you get to the 4 seeds who just always have to play the 1 seed in the second round. The 2/3 seeds have an easier path to the conference finals.
Personally, only 1-3 seeds could possibly be contenders; anything else just presents too big a challenge. Not to mention the fact that we regularly we 3 seeds with no shot at winning it all (I'm looking at you Chicago)

[Vaniiiia]

Cavs
Thunder
Spurs
Warriors

These are the only contenders.

[wally_world]

Warriors
Spurs
Thunder
Cavs

Outside shot: Clippers

[ShawkFactory]

Baseball is the sport with most parity, and its also the only sport that doesn't have a salary cap.
That's just due to the nature of the sport though.

[Sarcastic]

That's just due to the nature of the sport though.

So why have salary caps if they don't create parity?

[ShawkFactory]

So why have salary caps if they don't create parity?
Salary caps do create parity. Especially in football.

Could you imagine how much worse the parity levels would be if there was no salary cap?

[r15mohd]

Baseball is the sport with most parity, and its also the only sport that doesn't have a salary cap.


those definitely don't go hand-n-hand, tho.

if the NBA didnt have a cap...the Heat would likely be the most star studded squad from the recent Big3 gathering, considering all the "friends" wanted to play together

Bosh
Lebron
Wade


Melo and CP3 would join instead of re-upping with their teams too.

I doubt this could be done by any small market team in the NBA, like it can be done in MLB. heritage plays a HUGE factor in cities like Chicago, St Louis, Boston, etc. for baseball, and why they can afford to dish out constantly for names as the support is there win or fail.

[TrueBlue89]

Warriors
Spurs
Thunder
Cavs

Outside shot: Clippers
A team finished 2nd in the wild wild west, made the WCF and has a Top 5 player leading them isn't a contender? :biggums:

[Sarcastic]

those definitely don't go hand-n-hand, tho.



But that's the exact reason that salary caps were implemented: to even the playing field.

So if the sport without a cap has the most parity, then what does it say about the effectiveness of salary caps.

[ShawkFactory]

But that's the exact reason that salary caps were implemented: to even the playing field.

So if the sport without a cap has the most parity, then what does it say about the effectiveness of salary caps.
Again, it comes down the the nature of the sport. Basketball is by far the more individual-driven sport. And if a team happens to have one of those dominant individuals, other things will generally fall into place.

Baseball is not individually driven. Inferior looking teams on paper beat superior ones in the playoffs and in division races every year. Salary caps aren't needed.

The salary cap promotes excellent parity in the NFL though. I don't know how this could be argued.

[Sarcastic]

Again, it comes down the the nature of the sport. Basketball is by far the more individual-driven sport. And if a team happens to have one of those dominant individuals, other things will generally fall into place.

Baseball is not individually driven. Inferior looking teams on paper beat superior ones in the playoffs and in division races every year. Salary caps aren't needed.

The salary cap promotes excellent parity in the NFL though. I don't know how this could be argued.


One and done playoffs is what promotes parity in the NFL. Any given Sunday. Make it a best of 3 or 5, and parity would quickly be gone.

[ShawkFactory]

One and done playoffs is what promotes parity in the NFL. Any given Sunday. Make it a best of 3 or 5, and parity would quickly be gone.
Not necessarily. Just since 2000:

After losing the super bowl to the Ravens, the Giants went 7-9 and missed the playoffs the following year.

After a dominant 3 year run as the greatest show on turf, the Rams went 7-9 in 2002 after losing the super bowl in a 14-2 season in 2001.

After a Super Bowl win in 2001 the Patriots went 9-7 and missed the playoffs in 2002. They would go 14-2 the next two seasons and be super bowl champions both times.

After winning the super bowl in dominant fashion in 2002, the Bucaneers went 7-9 the following year. The raiders, who they played, went 4-12.

After almost winning the super bowl in 2003, the Panthers went 7-9 the following year. The year before, in 2002, they also went 7-9, and the year before that they were 1-15.

The 2005 Eagles, off of a close loss in the Super Bowl in a 13-3 season, went 6-10.

The defending champion Steelers went 8-8 and missed the playoffs in 2006.

I'm a little pressed for time so I'll move forward a bit: the opponents in the super bowl in 2013 (2012 season), the Ravens and 49ers, are a combined 2-8 right now and are both at the bottom of their divisions.

I will agree that in a typical year, the one and done system creates parity in the playoffs. But the NFL is incredibly up and down on a year-to-year basis.

The only teams that have managed to sustain consistent success over the course of many years since the cap (Patriots, Colts, Packers) are/were led by Brady, Manning, and Rodgers.

Injuries play a big part of it, but so does the cap.

[ClipperRevival]

GSW
SAS
CLE
LAC
HOU
OKC

I can see most people sleeping on the LAC and HOU. I think they are absolutely legit. They have about as much talent as anyone on paper. Vegas has LAC at +900 and HOU at +1600. Those are decent odds.

[HurricaneKid]

Realistically the Max is 6, 3 from each conference. There ain't no way a team with a 5 seed or lower is ever going to win it all again, Only Hakeem. Then you get to the 4 seeds who just always have to play the 1 seed in the second round. The 2/3 seeds have an easier path to the conference finals.
Personally, only 1-3 seeds could possibly be contenders; anything else just presents too big a challenge. Not to mention the fact that we regularly we 3 seeds with no shot at winning it all (I'm looking at you Chicago)

This is an old timey way of looking at things. When the city in the desert says the 2nd most likely team to win it from the West last year was the 6 seed you need to adjust your thinking.

The Clippers are decidedly a contender this year. They were right there with the best offense in the league, had the Hou series won until JSmoove became prime Ray Allen. And they did all that with their best player playing with a busted hammy. And now they added a bunch of depth.

Cavs
GSW
SAS
Hou
OKC
LAC

So there are 6 this year. And there were 6 last year too. Thats pretty good. In the mid 80s there were 2. The early 90s had 1.

Someone brought up baseball. Its an AWFUL comparison because the best baseball team almost never wins.

[Wade's Rings]

This is an old timey way of looking at things. When the city in the desert says the 2nd most likely team to win it from the West last year was the 6 seed you need to adjust your thinking.

The Clippers are decidedly a contender this year. They were right there with the best offense in the league, had the Hou series won until JSmoove became prime Ray Allen. And they did all that with their best player playing with a busted hammy. And now they added a bunch of depth.

Cavs
GSW
SAS
Hou
OKC
LAC

So there are 6 this year. And there were 6 last year too. Thats pretty good. In the mid 80s there were 2. The early 90s had 1.

Someone brought up baseball. Its an AWFUL comparison because the best baseball team almost never wins.

Blazers? Suns? Knicks? :biggums:

[Wade's Rings]

@OP I would say 4-6 Each year.

[Young X]

I don't think people understand what a championship contender really is. It's not just an elite team or a high seeded team or a talented team, it's a team you could realistically see winning a title.

Last season for example:

Warriors
Spurs
Cavs

Were the only real contenders. I wouldn't have been surprised if any of those teams had won.

Rockets
Clippers
Grizzlies
Hawks

Weren't real contenders. I would've been completely shocked if any of those teams had won it all. Like I couldn't have seen the Rockets or Clippers beat the Warriors for example. They were all really good teams that are threats to beat almost anybody in any given series but none of them had any chance of winning 16 games in the playoffs.

[Fallen Angel]

If you don't think the Rockets are real contenders then you're agenda driven

[DMV2]

Number of contenders usually correlates with the number of superstars/MVP-caliber players in the league, plus one deep stacked team or darkhorse team. I'd say about 4.

The start of last season was Spurs, Thunder and Cavs. Within a few weeks, Warriors added their name to the list based on their hot start, though a lot of people weren't sold it. I saw it coming it (http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10687028&postcount=16) though after a week. This was mostly based on how they did in the 2013 and 2014 playoffs. I didn't call them contender though but labeled them as darkhorse.

[DMV2]

If you don't think the Rockets are real contenders then you're agenda driven
They should based on what they did last season, plus addition of Ty Lawson.

1. Warriors
2. Spurs
3. Cavs
4. Rockets

[Sarcastic]

Not necessarily. Just since 2000:

After losing the super bowl to the Ravens, the Giants went 7-9 and missed the playoffs the following year.

After a dominant 3 year run as the greatest show on turf, the Rams went 7-9 in 2002 after losing the super bowl in a 14-2 season in 2001.

After a Super Bowl win in 2001 the Patriots went 9-7 and missed the playoffs in 2002. They would go 14-2 the next two seasons and be super bowl champions both times.

After winning the super bowl in dominant fashion in 2002, the Bucaneers went 7-9 the following year. The raiders, who they played, went 4-12.

After almost winning the super bowl in 2003, the Panthers went 7-9 the following year. The year before, in 2002, they also went 7-9, and the year before that they were 1-15.

The 2005 Eagles, off of a close loss in the Super Bowl in a 13-3 season, went 6-10.

The defending champion Steelers went 8-8 and missed the playoffs in 2006.

I'm a little pressed for time so I'll move forward a bit: the opponents in the super bowl in 2013 (2012 season), the Ravens and 49ers, are a combined 2-8 right now and are both at the bottom of their divisions.

I will agree that in a typical year, the one and done system creates parity in the playoffs. But the NFL is incredibly up and down on a year-to-year basis.

The only teams that have managed to sustain consistent success over the course of many years since the cap (Patriots, Colts, Packers) are/were led by Brady, Manning, and Rodgers.

Injuries play a big part of it, but so does the cap.


There was actually an article on 538 today about this.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/on-any-given-sunday-nfl-favorites-win-and-underdogs-lose/


The NFL is an organization built on the perception of parity. “When you come into a season, every fan thinks that their football team has a chance to win the Super Bowl,” league Commissioner Roger Goodell said in 2011. Jonathan Kraft, president of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, echoed this sentiment during a pregame radio show earlier this season, saying: “The difference between 0-2 and 2-0 can be a couple of plays in individual games. And I’m not surprised because the one thing I’ve learned is if you expect something to happen in this league, it’s likely not going to happen. And you see that lesson repeat itself over and over. It’s what makes it so special and why people love to follow it.”

This is a narrative that built a multi-billion dollar business, one that encourages supporters and inspires graphics that go viral. It keeps fans involved when their teams are struggling and brings them back each year. Even the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-14 in 2014 and 2-3 so far this year) think they have a chance in 2015. Each game is a new set of downs, a shot to continue a winning streak or turn around a flagging franchise. You either win or you lose. The excitement comes because your team has a chance to do both.

But the “Any Given Sunday” idea — that any team has a chance to win any game — is less true than NFL executives want the fans to believe.

Sure, you might see your favorite team go from worst to first over the course of a season, but that’s more a function of luck than anything. Teams play such a small number of games that they might have ended up in the cellar even though they weren’t that bad the year before. Conversely, even if a team stinks, it can luck its way to an 8-8 year.

But beneath that luck, the NFL is much more unequal than Major League Baseball or the National Hockey League. Instead, it’s on par with the NBA, a league that’s dominated by its transcendent talents.

That’s what we found by comparing leagues simultaneously, judging their competitiveness on the same scale. We turned to gambling to do it. While game results and win-loss metrics can be affected by scoring systems and number of games, sportsbook odds are the one unifying metric. In a world with perfect competitive equality, each team would have a 50-50 chance of winning. But as the gaps in talent between the teams grow, games are no longer a coin toss. For example, in Sunday’s contest between Green Bay and St. Louis, the underdog Rams were given roughly a 1 in 5 chance of emerging victorious.

The chart below shows a compendium of the pregame probabilities, derived from Sports Insights betting odds, of the home team winning each game in each of the four pro major sports over the past 10 years1 or so.2

In the vast majority of NHL and MLB games, the home team’s chance of winning falls between 35 and 70 percent. That’s the big spire you see in the middle of the graph, and it suggests that the home team is never that big of an underdog or favorite. Many games, if not most of them, are a near 50-50 proposition. The curves for the NFL and NBA, though, are more spread out because fewer games in those leagues are tossups. The NFL’s curve may look even, but that really suggests that the games feature more lopsided matchups. Bad NFL home teams are bigger underdogs than bad MLB teams. Every week, there are several NFL games where you can be fairly confident which team is going to win and which is going to lose before they take the field for warmups.

In hockey and baseball, even the worst teams are generally given a 1 in 4 chance of beating the best teams. Meanwhile, in the NFL and NBA, teams like the 2013 Jacksonville Jaguars and the 2014 and 2015 Philadelphia 76ers are sometimes given no more than a 1 in 20 chance by odds makers. And while only about 1 in 100 NHL or MLB contests feature a heavy favorite (75 percent or higher), about 1 in 4 NBA and NFL games reach such a standard. That is, about a quarter of NFL games each weekend are bigger mismatches than the most lopsided baseball or hockey games — think the Dodgers hosting the Phillies or the Sabres traveling to Pittsburgh.

Parity in the NFL is perceived, a phenomenon born out of each season’s tiny sample size of games. Sabermetricians Tom Tango and Phil Birnbaum, for example, argue that you learn as much about true team talent from 12 NFL games as 14 NBA games.3 But while the NBA gives teams 82 regular-season games to prove themselves, the NFL provides only 16 games. It’s easier for a less-talented NFL team to luck its way into a few victories and make the playoffs. And the NFL’s playoff format, which can reward divisional winners at the expense of teams with more talent, helps, too. It means that the 2014 Carolina Panthers, at 7-8-1, can make the second weekend of the playoffs, a major marker of a successful year, even though few people would argue that they were one of the league’s best teams. In fact, they were a 7 to 1 underdog in their playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks. While the Panthers reached the postseason (after all, someone had to win the NFC South last year), they were given little chance to win a title.

What’s also interesting about these results is that unlike each of the other leagues, which fix schedules almost entirely using divisional or conference affiliation, the NFL goes out of its way to encourage closer games by using an unbalanced schedule. When there are fewer games between the Pats and Bucs and more between perennial powerhouses like the Pats and Broncos — who have met in six of the last seven regular seasons — the league, on average, artificially narrows the curve in the chart above. Perhaps that’s a good thing for a league that relies on the myth of parity to keep supporters interested. If the NFL made its schedule following the rules used by other major sports, it might become abundantly clear to the fans that Any Given Sunday is only true in the movies.

CORRECTION (Oct. 12, 1:30 p.m.): An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect time period for its analysis of pregame probabilities for major sports leagues. The probabilities were not based on all games since 2005; the time periods varied by league, and in several cases, games in recent weeks were not included. We have added a footnote clarifying the exact dates.

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/lopez-parity-1.png



What's most interesting about the salary cap is that of the 4 major sports, only MLB has not had a labor stoppage in the past 20 years, whereas the other 3 have all had very recent labor stoppages, and are likely to have more very shortly. Baseball also has had the most parity without the salary cap. The NHL just introduced the salary cap recently, so we'll see how that works out over the next decade or so.

[!@#$%Vectors!@#]

They should based on what they did last season, plus addition of Ty Lawson.

1. Warriors
2. Spurs
3. Cavs
4. Rockets


5.Clippers.

Lance will lead them to the promise land by taking the ball out the hands of chris manlet and hopefully not choke a 3-1 lead to Jason The jet Terry:lol

[Foster5k]

There was actually an article on 538 today about this.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/on-any-given-sunday-nfl-favorites-win-and-underdogs-lose/



https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/lopez-parity-1.png?w=610&h=569



What's most interesting about the salary cap is that of the 4 major sports, only MLB has not had a labor stoppage in the past 20 years, whereas the other 3 have all had very recent labor stoppages, and are likely to have more very shortly. Baseball also has had the most parity without the salary cap. The NHL just introduced the salary cap recently, so we'll see how that works out over the next decade or so.
:applause:

[I<3NBA]

if you wanna be technical about it, every year, there can only be 2 contenders. one for each conference.