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There is an age-old saying in the NBA: More often than not, the team with the best player wins the series. In a sport that only fields five players to a team, the best player wields remarkable power over the game.
If this is doctrine, Luka Dončić’s Dallas Mavericks will win the NBA Finals, even though Jayson Tatum’s Boston Celtics won 14 more regular-season games. Dončić finished three spots higher (third) in the MVP voting. Tatum may be the superior defensive player, but Dončić averaged more points (33.9), assists (9.8) and rebounds (9.2) per game and did so more efficiently. Advanced statistics significantly favor Dončić.
I think it is almost universally accepted that Dončić is a better player than Tatum, even though the gap is not so far between a five-time All-NBA first-team selection and a three-time All-NBA first-team honoree. To wit, prior to the season, more general managers said they would start a team with Dončić than Tatum.
Using each season’s MVP race as the determining factor for who voters believed was the best player in that particular campaign, the better player has won 41 of 68 NBA Finals — or roughly 60% — since 1956. Since the turn of the century, the player who finished higher in MVP voting has been 12-11 in Finals matchups.
Those are not overwhelming numbers. Hardly doctrine.
However, if you go by a more general idea of who was the best player in each series — weeding out, for example, when Charles Barkley won the 1993 MVP, only for his Phoenix Suns to lose to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls — you could make the argument that the best player won 56 of 68 championships (82.4%).
That is a pretty convincing number. Enough to lend some credence to that saying.
(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports illustration)
Interestingly, LeBron James accounts for five of those 12 losses. (Bill Russell’s Celtics lost to the St. Louis Hawks in 1958. Wilt Chamberlain’s Los Angeles Lakers lost to the New York Knicks in 1973. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Celtics in 1974. Elvin Hayes’ Washington Bullets lost to the Seattle SuperSonics in 1979. Magic Johnson’s Lakers lost to the Detroit…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/2024-nba-finals-luka-doncic-is-the-series-best-player-what-does-that-mean-for-the-celtics-003322605.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-03 00:33:22
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