How often do Star players win Championships?
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 11:39 pm
I decided to look at the empirical evidence and determine how likely a star is to win a championship. I used a few different methods. First is awards based (MVP, All-NBA, All-star). The 2nd is from RAPM data from 1998-2012.
Here is a list of how often these award winners won a title from 1980-2014:
Huge dropoff from 1st team All-NBA to 2nd/3rd team All-NBA.
Here are those same results using MVP Voting. 2nd column is how often the players who finished in those places won a title from 1980-2014. The 3rd column is a cumulative total (ex: how often the top 3 in MVP voting won a title, how often a top 10 finisher won a title).
Here is the data using 1998-2012 RAPM. 2nd column is how often a player with an RAPM in that interval won a title. 3rd column is how often a player won a title with an RAPM equal to or greater than (ex: 7.7% of players with an RAPM of 4 or more won a title).
Here are the number of expected titles a player should win using only All-NBA teams (more weight for 1st team All-NBA)
Based on that, Kobe is the player in NBA history expected to win the most titles in NBA history. If you go by MVP voting, Kobe is not the #1. He was expected to win 1.67 titles based on MVP voting while MJ was at 2.84 and Kareem was at 3.59
Here is a list of all players in NBA history who had a 75% chance of winning at least 1 title based on their All-NBA voting.
Player %
Kobe Bryant 90.8
Karl Malone 90.2
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 89.5
Tim Duncan 88.8
Bob Cousy 87.4
Jerry West 87.4
Michael Jordan 86.6
Bob Pettit 86.6
Elgin Baylor 85.8
Shaquille O'Neal 85.4
Oscar Robertson 84.7
Larry Bird 83.7
Magic Johnson 83.7
LeBron James 81.4
Wilt Chamberlain 78.7
Hakeem Olajuwon 78.5
Dolph Schayes 78.5
Conclusion:
-It's really hard to win a title
-For example a 10 time all-star won't win a title 41% of the time during that span. A 10 time all-NBA 1st team player won't a title 14% of the time.
-Based on All-NBA voting, 9.8% of the time a player of Karl Malone's career is not expected to win a title (which is what happened)
-Based on MVP voting, a player with Kobe's career doesn't win a title 15% of the time while a player with Kareem's resume has 1.3% chance of not winning a title (wins it 98.7% of the time)
Here is a list of how often these award winners won a title from 1980-2014:
Code: Select all
MVP 40.0
1st team 17.7
2nd+3rd 5.9
All-Star 8.5
Here are those same results using MVP Voting. 2nd column is how often the players who finished in those places won a title from 1980-2014. The 3rd column is a cumulative total (ex: how often the top 3 in MVP voting won a title, how often a top 10 finisher won a title).
Code: Select all
1st place 40.0
2nd-3rd 15.7 23.8
4-5th 10.0 18.3
6-10th 5.7 12.0
Code: Select all
4-4.99 3.2 7.7
5-5.99 3.6 10.2
6-6.99 9.1 14.4
7-7.99 8.0 16.8
8-8.99 12.8 23.2
9-9.99 37.5 36.7
10+ 35.7 35.7
Here are the number of expected titles a player should win using only All-NBA teams (more weight for 1st team All-NBA)
Code: Select all
Player # Exp. Titles
Kobe Bryant 15 2.18
Karl Malone 14 2.13
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 15 2.07
Tim Duncan 14 2.01
Bob Cousy 12 1.89
Jerry West 12 1.89
Michael Jordan 11 1.83
Bob Pettit 11 1.83
Elgin Baylor 10 1.77
Shaquille O'Neal 14 1.77
Here is a list of all players in NBA history who had a 75% chance of winning at least 1 title based on their All-NBA voting.
Player %
Kobe Bryant 90.8
Karl Malone 90.2
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 89.5
Tim Duncan 88.8
Bob Cousy 87.4
Jerry West 87.4
Michael Jordan 86.6
Bob Pettit 86.6
Elgin Baylor 85.8
Shaquille O'Neal 85.4
Oscar Robertson 84.7
Larry Bird 83.7
Magic Johnson 83.7
LeBron James 81.4
Wilt Chamberlain 78.7
Hakeem Olajuwon 78.5
Dolph Schayes 78.5
Conclusion:
-It's really hard to win a title
-For example a 10 time all-star won't win a title 41% of the time during that span. A 10 time all-NBA 1st team player won't a title 14% of the time.
-Based on All-NBA voting, 9.8% of the time a player of Karl Malone's career is not expected to win a title (which is what happened)
-Based on MVP voting, a player with Kobe's career doesn't win a title 15% of the time while a player with Kareem's resume has 1.3% chance of not winning a title (wins it 98.7% of the time)