Expected Championships Won and Titles Over Expected

[Johnny32]

lebron teams were the betting favorite before the finals in 11, 13, and 20.
jordan teams were the betting favorite before the finals in 91-98.

[Gudo]

Even if you do this exercise before the playoffs instead of preseason, Jordan's at ~3.5 and Lebron's at ~3.7 expected titles, which means Jordan still overachieved much more.

And if you do it before the finals, Jordan's at ~4.4 and Lebron's at ~4.3. So while Jordan should have more, he still overachieved here while Lebron is actually underachieving.

So the excuses about the preseason don't really help. Basically every stage where you can assess expectations doesn't help Lebron in this argument.

Interesting

[Ne 1]

You mean people who pay closer attention to sports and understand that some rings are more impressive than others based on roles are somehow not to be taken seriously, but its those people who don't pay attention and might only know ring totals in a vacuum who are to be guided by. Especially when discussing the greatness of certain players.


You make a great point

The issue is that people are hypocritical about this and there's often a double standard for counting rings by elitist fans who do this. Wilt is considered to be a 2x champion, even though West was better for 1. Look at Bird vs. Magic. Magic is often ranked ahead of Bird largely because he has 5 rings and Bird has 3. However, Magic was only clearly the best player on his team for 2 of his championships. Yet all 5 "count" when comparing him to Bird? How about Dr. J and Oscar? Same thing. 1 ring each respectively, not the best player? No problemo!

I know this is when the elitist fans will inevitably cry “Well what about Robert Horry!?” or "What about Derek Fisher!?” Are we seriously comparing Horry's or Fisher's role to elite players who were vital to their teams success? I look at it differently, as I call call it the “indispensable player standard.” At times, all time greats weren’t always the best players on their teams, but without them, they could not have won. Fishers 9 ppg in the playoffs on the 3-peat Lakers or Horry's 8 ppg and 6 ppg on the Lakers/Spurs championship teams were replaceable by journeyman players.

As I’ve said, it’s a subjective, faux category and not always clear. Why should it even matter? If one player was 40% responsible, another 30% responsible, and the other 10 players 30% responsible does that 10% really matter? I look at whether a player was indispensable. If you replaced a player with an above average role player at his position would his team still win? If so, I give him less credit.

[Johnny32]

lebron should have 3 championships. mj should have 6.

https://www.sportsoddshistory.com/nba-champs/

[tpols]

What were the preseason odds for the '11 Lakers or the '13 Lakers and why did they underachieve?

The Lakers underachieved in those years. Especially in 2013. Not sure what your point is.

[AlternativeAcc.]

The issue is that people are hypocritical about this and there's often a double standard for counting rings by elitist fans who do this. Wilt is considered to be a 2x champion, even though West was better for 1. Look at Bird vs. Magic. Magic is often ranked ahead of Bird largely because he has 5 rings and Bird has 3. However, Magic was only clearly the best player on his team for 2 of his championships. Yet all 5 "count" when comparing him to Bird? How about Dr. J and Oscar? Same thing. 1 ring each respectively, not the best player? No problemo!

I know this is when the elitist fans will inevitably cry “Well what about Robert Horry!?” or "What about Derek Fisher!?” Are we seriously comparing Horry's or Fisher's role to elite players who were vital to their teams success? I look at it differently, as I call call it the “indispensable player standard.” At times, all time greats weren’t always the best players on their teams, but without them, they could not have won. Fishers 9 ppg in the playoffs on the 3-peat Lakers or Horry's 8 ppg and 6 ppg on the Lakers/Spurs championship teams were replaceable by journeyman players.

As I’ve said, it’s a subjective, faux category and not always clear. Why should it even matter? If one player was 40% responsible, another 30% responsible, and the other 10 players 30% responsible does that 10% really matter? I look at whether a player was indispensable. If you replaced a player with an above average role player at his position would his team still win? If so, I give him less credit.

I skimmed your post so sorry if I missed something

But what I saw was imaginary conversations about inconsistencies in "eliestist fans" (imaginary group of people) logic when it comes to discussing all-time greats

I'm not saying these conversations don't happen, I'm just confused with the point

Ultimately, the idea is to take everything into consideration when discussing all time greats. People are right to bring up championships and the roles that were played, and the circumstances that led up to a player winning a championship.

I think its right to do, but also agree that it's true that people are often inconsistent when discussing championships

[TheCorporation]

lebron should have 3 championships. mj should have 6.

https://www.sportsoddshistory.com/nba-champs/

Bang!

[guy]

Some people clearly don’t understand the logic of odds

And just using finals odds and ignoring the preseason and playoffs odds where the pool of teams is significantly larger is really stupid. It’s basically the equivalent of if we pretended it was just a 2-team league since every other team just doesn’t exist in that scenario.

And either way, like I said with finals odds, Jordan should have 4.4 championships while Lebron should have 4.3. Basically the same at 4-5 championships. Which means Jordan clearly overachieved even based on finals odds while Lebron at best met expectations if not underachieved.

[Johnny32]

Some people clearly don’t understand the logic of odds

And just using finals odds and ignoring the preseason and playoffs odds where the pool of teams is significantly larger is really stupid. It’s basically the equivalent of if we pretended it was just a 2-team league since every other team just doesn’t exist in that scenario.

And either way, like I said with finals odds, Jordan should have 4.4 championships while Lebron should have 4.3. Basically the same at 4-5 championships. Which means Jordan clearly overachieved even based on finals odds while Lebron at best met expectations if not underachieved.

the desperation is hilarious.

[guy]

the desperation is hilarious.

There’s no such thing as desperation from the winning side

[TheCorporation]

Hey guyz, I know we're at the start of the 2016 Finals now but I have this odds analysis that was done 100 games ago. Should we include the 100 games into our Finals odds calculation or just ignore it and use the calculation that was done 100 games ago (82+18)?

[coastalmarker99]

^ I wish we had betting odds data prior to 1984-85 so I could extend this analysis further back to include Russell, Wilt, Kareem etc.

I have read thousands of articles about Wilt from a variety of newspapers: “The New York Times,” the Boston papers, the “LA Times” and the then three Philly dailies, “The Bulletin,” “The Inquirer” and the “Daily News.”

Even in the Philly papers, Wilt’s teams, pre-season, were not favoured to win the Eastern division title from Boston nor, in the playoff, where they favoured to defeat Boston.

That even in the Philly papers that the Warriors or the Sixers were not picked to defeat Boston was not shocking to me.

The exception was in 1966-67 when Wilt’s team did win and in 1967-68, when they blew a 3-1 lead.

[kawhileonard2]

There is a lot of discussion on online forums, barber shops etc. talk about how certain athletes exceed expectations while others underachieve but there has never been a way to quantify this. I have recently realized that Preseason Odds on Basketball-Reference can be used to estimate championship odds for teams of certain players. Here is the methodology.

Say player X had a five year career and his teams had Preseason Odds of +800, +250, +300, +1200, and +10000 to win titles in those years. Those betting lines can be converted to implied odds which is probability of winning using an application like this.

https://www.aceodds.com/bet-calculat...converter.html

This is the data that we get for player X:

Year 1: 11.1% —> 0.111 expected titles
Year 2: 28.6% —> 0.286 expected titles
Year 3: 25.0% —> 0.250 expected titles
Year 4: 7.7% —> 0.077 expected titles
Year 5: 1.0% —> 0.010 expected titles

Total: 0.734 expected titles

Dividing the percentages by 100 gives us expected titles won for that particular year. So for instance in year 3, the player has 0.250 expected titles. If we add up all five years we get 0.734 expected titles meaning that this player should reasonably be expected to win 0.734 titles in that 5-year span. This methodology also makes intuitive sense. For example, if a team has 50% chance of winning a title two years in a row then they are expected to win one championship. If the same team has a 50% chance of winning for four years then they are expected to win two championships.

Preseason title odds are available for the NBA since the 1984-85 season. Comparing expected titles with the number of championships the player actually won we can get an idea if said player’s teams overachieved or underachieved. Here are some of the biggest legends ranked in order of titles above expected. A high positive score is obviously the best while a negative score is bad and indicates underachieving.

Titles Above Expected of Some Legends: 1984-85 to 2020-21



See the attached link to download the PDF for year-by-year numbers of each player.

https://file.io/lPxc8SCh7Zpa

Great Stuff!

[kawhileonard2]

Why this?

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ason_odds.html (Dallas 7th)

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ason_odds.html (San Antonio 6th)

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ason_odds.html (Golden State 8th)

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ason_odds.html (Raptors 5th)

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ason_odds.html (Lakers 1st)

[ELITEpower23]

Hey guyz, I know we're at the start of the 2016 Finals now but I have this odds analysis that was done 100 games ago. Should we include the 100 games into our Finals odds calculation or just ignore it and use the calculation that was done 100 games ago (82+18)?

Let's ignore what acutally happened in the regular season and playoffs and go with the prediction made 100 games ago