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Stat Central: NBA Title Odds By Record

By Mika Honkasalo

Jun 15, 2014; San Antonio, TX, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Tim Duncan (21) stands on the free throw line with Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) during the second quarter in game five of the 2014 NBA Finals at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 15, 2014; San Antonio, TX, USA; San Antonio Spurs forward Tim Duncan (21) stands on the free throw line with Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) during the second quarter in game five of the 2014 NBA Finals at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports /
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What is the probability of winning a title for a 50-win team? What about a 60-win team? Figuring out NBA title odds is pretty useful in figuring out how good a team really is, and whether or not they actually have a chance to win a championship.

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    • Last season featured some interesting cases in the Western Conference. The West was loaded beyond being loaded, and there were at least seven teams who legitimately thought they could make the Finals. Heck, you can even throw in the No. 8 seeded Dallas Mavericks into that mix, considering they gave the Spurs the toughest series in the entire playoffs during their first-round matchup.

    The Warriors won 51 games. The Rockets 54. Memphis made it to 50 with Marc Gasol out for much of the year. Usually we consider a 50-win team to have a good chance of making a deep playoff push, all three of those teams failed to even advance past the first round. Nuts.

    Based on every single team from the 1979-80 season, I calculated the general trend of title odds illustrated on the chart below.

    NBA Title Odds based on regular season performance. Created by: Mika Honkasalo. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.
    NBA Title Odds based on regular season performance. Created by: Mika Honkasalo. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. /

    The graph above is a bit surprising, basically winning the title with 55 wins or fewer is almost a miracle. The odds become much better when you get to the 57-60 win range, where there’s a 1-in-5 chance of winning the championship (at that point you can be considered a pretty heavyweight contender. For a reference point; the Clippers made it to 57 wins this season). Making it the around the mid-60s in wins makes you an overwhelming favorite and teams that have won 64 games or more are 10-for-14 in winning titles in the past 35 years.

    The best team by wins to not win an NBA championship is the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks, who had the best record in the league but lost shockingly to a Golden State team led by Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson in the first round. The worst team by record to win a title was the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, but they added Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler mid-season.

    The point here is that 50-win teams almost never win the championship, and the odds increase more dramatically than you would imagine when you add just five to 10 wins to that.

    Based on this model, the 2013-14 Spurs had an approximate 35 percent chance of winning the NBA title, and the Heat whom they faced in the Finals were around the 2 percent mark. Helps that they came from the East where only four teams could even be considered better than the 0 percent mark, compared to the West where nine teams gave themselves a better-than 0 percent shot of winning the title (statistically speaking), of course the ninth team in that group was the Phoenix Suns, who didn’t even make the playoffs.