National Basketball Association

Do the NBA playoffs produce the best champion?

Published Apr. 15, 2016 3:53 p.m. ET

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It's widely accepted that the NBA playoffs, with its fluke-eliminating best-of-seven series, generally produces the "best" champion in sports. Whereas the NHL playoffs can be a seven-game crapshoot dependent on a hot goalie, the MLB playoffs are for a sport that needs dozens of games for the best teams to separate themselves and the NFL playoffs is a single-elimination shootout, it makes sense that the cream would rise to the top in the NBA. Consider: If in five weeks the Warriors aren't playing the Spurs in the Western Conference Final, the NBA world will be stunned. Later this year, nobody will be stunned if the teams with the best record in the American and National Leagues are eliminated before their LCS. The NBA's best-of-seven format allows for some back-and-forth in the series but, generally (not always), the best team seems to prevail. Or does it?

To find out, we went back to look at the last 25 seasons in each major professional sport. Every champion for a given year was assigned a "rank" based on their regular-season record. The Warriors would be No. 1 this year, by virtue of their 73-9 record. The team with the fourth-most wins, whether in the East or West, would be No. 4 (it happens to be the Raptors this year) and down the line. We did the same thing in hockey, basketball and football.

(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Since teams often cluster at 10, 11 or 12 wins in the NFL, we averaged out rankings when there were ties. It's not a perfect system, obviously. Finishing with 50 wins in the NBA's West has often been far more impressive than finishing with 50 wins in the NBA's East, but it's good enough for our rudimentary study.

So what'd we find? Yeah, the NBA produces the best champion - by far. Here are the average regular-season ranks of each Big Four champion of the past 25 years. (Strike-shortened seasons were thrown out and the averages were adjusted accordingly. For baseball, we started counting in 1995, when the first wild-card was added.)

1. NBA - 2.56

2. NFL - 4.04

3. NHL - 4.55

(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

4. MLB - 4.64

That's a statistical blowout. Here are the totals for each:

1. NBA - champions: 23, combined rank: 59

2. NFL - champions: 25, combined rank: 101

3. NHL - champions: 22, combined rank: 100

4. MLB - champions: 21, combined rank: 97.5

(Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)

Again, it's the NBA and it's not close. Some thoughts on the findings:

1. The team with the most regular-season wins in basketball has won the title eight times since 1991. The rest of the sports had their outright wins leader win 10 championships combined. So, while that's seemingly good news for Golden State fans, you can view it a different way too: Only eight of the last 23 NBA champions have entered the playoffs with the league's best record. And only 18 of the 91 title teams in our survey had the best mark (that's less than 20%). Is your glass half-full or half-empty?

2. Only three NFL teams in the last 25 years have finished with the outright best record and gone on to win the Super Bowl. The last time it happened was when the Patriots did it in 2003. The other two times: the 1994 49ers and the 1991 Redskins. Teams have tied for the best record five more times. But it's gotten worse for the best lately: This century, the Super Bowl has been won by a team with the best record in the league (whether outright or tied) just four times.

(Focus/Getty Images)

3. The "best" team in baseball has won just twice. The 2009 Yankees and 1998 Yankees both pulled the trick.

4. To me, the most interesting finding wasn't that the NBA produced the best winner, but that the NHL didn't finish last. Those playoffs have the reputation of being a sort of wild, wild west of sports and, indeed, one of the two lowest-ranked teams to win a title (the 2012 Blackhawks, ranked No. 13) came from the league. However, hockey is more top heavy than not, especially during the '90s and early aughts. From 1994 through 2008, there were 12 NHL champions who were among the top four in points. The only team that didn't make that cut finished fifth. (There were two strike years during that time, which is why there's only 13 champions for 15 years.) Since 2009, however, the NHL has had a champion ranked No. 7 or below in six of seven years, skewing the average.

5. There's another reason the NHL finishing in third is surprising. Sixteen teams make the playoffs there. In baseball, just eight did in the majority of years we looked at. (The past four years have seen 10 teams make the postseason.) Therefore, you'd figure that with a smaller sample size, baseball would almost automatically have better-ranked champions than hockey because it'd be very rare for a team ranked No. 10 or No. 11 in wins to make the postseason, let alone Nos. 12-16. Baseball is theoretically picking from a smaller, better-ranked pool.

Right? Well, yes and no. Because division winners can have a worse record than teams fighting for the wild card, you'll sometimes catch an anomaly, like the 2006 Cardinals, whose 83-79 record is the worst ever for a baseball team. (They ranked No. 13 that season in wins, tying them with the Blackhawks for that dishonor of worst Big Four team to win a title.) But generally, you'd still expect one of the best three or four teams to come through given that there was only eight playoff spots for so long. Not the case. Baseball spreads the wealth more than any sport, as since 1995 there have been title teams ranked first through ninth in regular-season wins

6. We also looked at the two big college sports and you can probably figure out where they'd go on our list. (We used the final AP rankings before the bowl season/NCAA tournament for the college sports.)

X. NCAAF - 1.55

1. NBA - 2.56

(NBA Photo Library/ NBAE/ Getty Images)

2. NFL - 4.0

3. NHL - 4.55

4. MLB - 4.64

X. NCAAB - 5.24

College football, clearly, has the "best" champion because, for years, it was generally only the No. 1 and No. 2 team playing for a title. In the first 23 years, starting in 1991, only one team came from outside the top two to win a title and that was the 1996 Florida Gators, who were ranked No. 3 entering the bowl season. That was pre-BCS, so Florida leapt over the FSU team it creamed in the Sugar Bowl 52-20 and the No. 2 team, Arizona State, lost in the Rose Bowl, allowing UF to jump to No. 1. The two playoff winners have been ranked No. 5 (Ohio State in 2014) and No. 2 (Alabama in 2015).

(Matthew Stockman/Allsport)

College basketball, with its tournament that theoretically gives 64 or 68 teams a chance to win, has the most disparate champions. Just four No. 1 teams have won in the last quarter-century (Kentucky in 2012, Duke in 2001, UCLA in 1995 and Duke in 1992). That's less than the amount of teams ranked in the double digits (5). As for those five double-digit winners, all the other sports had the same amount, combined.

7. The worst teams to win in each sport:

NCAAF - Ohio State (2014), No. 5

NBA - Houston Rockets (1995), No. 10.5

NFL - Baltimore Ravens (2012), New York Giants (2011), No. 11

MLB - St. Louis Cardinals (2006), No. 13

NHL - Chicago Blackhawks (2012), No. 13

NCAAB - Connecticut (2014), No. 18