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THE
CHAMPS/CHUMPSRATIO
A Study Of Competitive BalanceIn Professional Sports
by STEPHEN TAYLOR
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Alameda, Caliornia
A Study of Competitive Balancein Professional Sports
by STEPHEN TAYLOR
THE
CHAMPS/CHUMPSRATIO
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A Malchats Media Publication
For more inormation
email: [email protected]
First Malchats Media edition, July 2011
A version o this article frst appeared
in the online magazine Teemings (Series 2, Issue 3)
www.teemings.net
2011 Stephen Taylor
All Rights Reserved
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1
Recently, while watching the Golden State
Warriors drop another disheartening loss to
the Oklahoma City Tunder, I consoled myselwith the thought, At least the Warriors won the NBA
championship back in 75. A promo or the next game
led me to continue with, And thats one more than the
Mavericks1 have ever won.
Only a ew seconds later I added, And one more
than the Suns.And the Jazz
And the Nuggets
As one and piled upon another, a surprising
thought hit me: a loto teams have neverwon the NBA
championship.
How many, you ask? Tats what I wanted to know,and a quick check at NBA.com satised my curiosity:
only 17 out o the current 30 teams2 have ever won an
1 Authors Note: this essay was originally written in the Spring o2010; reerences in the rst section o the essay reer to results aso April 2010. Statistics in the rst section are updated to includeresults as o July 2011. Te second section o this article updatesand expands upon the conclusions drawn in the rst hal.2 Roster o NBA teams dates back to 1947 and includes BBAmembers Philadelphia (now Golden State) Warriors andMinneapolis (now Los Angeles) Lakers.
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NBA championshipa paltry 56.7%. Tat gurethe
percentage o teams that have ever won a league
championshipwe will call Te Champs/Chumps Ratio.But just how paltry is that 56.7%? Perhaps the NBA
isnt so bad in relative terms. How does that percentage
compare with the other major pro sports leagues?
Only the NHL matches the NBA in competitive
imbalance. An identical 17 o its current 30 teams3 have
ever won the Stanley Cupthe same unremarkableratio o 56.7%. (Hockey partisans do have grounds
to deend their sportsee below or urther results.)
Football ares substantially better: the NFL has seen 22
o its 32 teams win the NFL championship (including
pre-Super Bowl champs), a healthy ratio o 68.8%.
And then theres Major League Baseball. It turnsout there really is something to all that Spring raining
talk about hope and renewal: a ull 22 out o 30 major
league teamsa robust 73.3%have won the World
Series. (See able 1 or a summary o these gures.)
All o this strongly suggests that when it comes
to competitive balance, baseball and ootball are
accomplished pros, while hockey and basketball have a
lot o catching up to do.
Tis comparison works because, thanks to happy
accidents o history and demographics, all our leagues
have nearly the same number o teams and have
3 Stanley Cup history pre-dates the NHL, though two currentteams/ranchisesthe Montreal Canadiens and oronto MapleLeasdid win the Cup in pre-NHL times as members opredecessor leagues (and under a diferent name, in the case ooronto). Both teams, o course, won several Cups in the NHL era.
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relatively imbalanced NHL can boast that many o its
champions were crowned in recent times.
And the NBA? Its worse than you think. Only 12 oits 30 teams, a lowly 40%, have won the championship
since Rick Barry and Al Attles made it happen in
Oakland. Tat is, almost two-thirds o the league has
been shut out since 1975. Clearly, while baseball and
ootball ans have valid hopes or their avorite teams,
most NBA ans are getting hosed. (See able 2 or asummary o the post-1975 gures.4)
Table 2 Total Championships by League, 1976present
LEAGUE NBA NHL NFL MLB
Total Teams 30 30 32 30
Championship Winners 12 15 15 20
Percentage 40% 50% 46.9% 66.6%
O course, ans have many reasons or ollowing
their avorite teams. Rooting or the last team
standing is not everything. But given the evidence
attendance gures, V ratings, the tenor o sports
talk radiowinning is what matters most to ans.And championships are the ultimate expression o the
average ans satisaction.
Te Champs/Chumps ratios indicate that ans o
many teams are doomed to years o rustration. Yet,
as daunting as those numbers may be, the situation is
never entirely hopeless. Many teams that have neverwon a title have come close, reaching their leagues
4 Data in ables 1 & 2 accurate as o July 25, 2011.
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championship round at least once. And just two days
aer that aorementioned Warriors-Tunder game, the
New Orleans Saints won their rst NFL championshipaer 42 years o trying. Long-time chumps can indeed
become champs.
But i youre a Suns or Jazz anor, or that matter,
a Warriors andont hold your breath.
UPDAE
More than year has passed since the rst publication o
this essay. In the Spring o 2010, the NBA's Cleveland
Cavaliers still had LeBron James under contract,
nished with the best record in the NBA, and looked
like a reasonable bet to win their rst championship.It didn't work out that way.
Te Boston Celticsa team ull o veterans playing
or a ranchise that is no stranger to the NBA Finals
bounced the Cavs rom the 2010 playos on their way
to a conerence championship. Teir victory set up a
Finals match-up against the deending champion Los
Angeles Lakersyet another ranchise well-acquainted
with hoisting the Lawrence O'Brien rophy.
Te Cavs, meanwhile, watched James make an
ugly exit rom Cleveland, abandoning his home state
or South Beach. In the aermath, Cleveland crashed
and burned during the 2010-11 regular season, setting
new marks or utility (including an epic losing streak)
and completely missing the playosall just one
year removed rom standing on the verge o breaking
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through basketball's parquet ceiling and claiming their
long-sought rst championship.
Fast orward to June o 2011: in a stunning run thatew saw coming (see page 1), the Dallas Mavericks
one o those NBA teams starving or that rst
championshiprode a brilliant perormance by one o
the league's star orwards, Dirk Nowitzki, and claimed
their rst crownthwarting the eorts o another star
orward, the erstwhile Cavalier himsel, LeBron James.How's that or irony?
Dallas's win came as a surprise, but it shouldn't
have. As this essay's original text noted, long-time
losers can overcome past ailures and win it all. A year
aer the long-suering New Orleans Saints won their
rst Super Bowl title, the even longer-suering ChicagoBlackhawks captured their rst Stanley Cup since
1961and a year later the Boston Bruins ollowed it up
with theirrst title since 1972. And Fall 2010 saw the
longest-suering-o-all San Francisco Giants win their
rst World Series title since 1954. Te Mavericks' parlay
came as just one more in a series o new or long-absent
teams joining the roster o recent champions.
Tough these wins came as long-awaited relie,
those long-suering ans should have received their
healing victories much sooner. Fans should expect a
level playing eld rom proessional sports leagues.
"Te pros" is where money talks and the ability to
buy a championship is a time-honored strategy.
Many sco at "parity," but pro sports are supposedto
possess the virtue o competitive balance. Tere is
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no reason or pro leagues to suer rom the "usual
suspects" syndrome that bedevils college athletics. It's
all about building a winner by having the money andthe will to spend it wisely. Long-time incompetents
like the Pittsburgh Pirates or Detroit Lions have only
themselves to blame.
Even with the Mavericks nally breaking through,
the numbers shown above still lean heavily against
the NBA. Can we really expect to see more improvedcompetitve balance in the NBA in the uture?
Whenever it seems as though a newcomer is about
to join the clublike the now hapless Cavaliersthe
league's small roster o dominant teams reasserts itsel
and slaps down the challengers. Perhaps the current
labor strie will radically reorient the economics o theleague and deliver great equity both at the bank and on
the arena foor. But history suggests believing that when
you see it.
* * *
Another way to look at the issue o competitive
balance in the our major sports leagues is to
examine the record over time and see how evenly
championships are distributed. o that end, I have
compiled a chart (See able 3, below) listing each
league's number o rst-time champions per decade.
Each league ollows a similar pattern: in early
seasons, the championship gets spread around among
several teams. Later, as a ew teams establish
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themselves as their sports' dominant ranchises, the
roster o new champs grows thin. (Note that zeroes in
the columns below show up mostly during the middleyears o a league's history.) Later still, as expansion
brings in new teams to compete or the title (and thin
the talent pool, and pull away some o the revenues),
new champions emerge once again.
Table 3 First-time Champs by Decade (rom 1900 onward)
Decade NBA NHL NFL MLB
1900s -- -- -- 5
1910s -- -- -- 3
1920s -- 2 3 4
1930s -- 2 3 1
1940s 2 0 2 0
1950s 4 0 2 1
1960s 0 0 1* 2
1970s 5 1 5 0
1980s 1 3 1 2
1990s 3 4 1 2
2000s 2 3 4 2
* Includes only NFL champions. I AFL champions are added to tally, thenumber or the 1960s becomes 5, and 1970s total becomes 4 (Dallas exans/Kansas City Chies won AFL championships in the 60s, prior to the Chies
victory in Super Bowl IV in 1970). Includes all 12 years post-1999. Includes World Series results rom 1903. Baseballs modern era began 1901,
though major league baseball (National League) dates back to the 1880s. Includes Stanley Cup champs rom NHL era, 1927 onward.
For our purposes, the heart o the matter lies in
the last two rows o the chart above. Note that the
NBA has crowned ve brand new champions in the
last two decadesa tally pushed up rom our thanks
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to the Mavericks' victory this year. Te NFL matches
that result with ve new champions o its own. Both
leagues still trail the NHL's seven newly-mintedStanley Cup winners. Strangely, MLB has the worst
showing on this list, but that gure is less damaging
than it appears; we have already established baseball's
bona des on competitive balance.
Te gures in able 3 are suggestive, but not
denitive. Tey paint a picture o relative equalitybetween the several sports leagues when it comes
to competitive balance. We need to go deeper to
nd a measure that provides a true comparison o
competitive balance.
Perhaps the best metric or this comparison lies
in the number o teams who have played or thechampionship. Aer all, winning the championship
is great, but in a league with a truly level playing eld,
we should at the very least see a healthy mix o teams
in the championship game or seriesincluding a air
collection o those also-rans who have yet to win a
title despite their years (even decades) o trying.
able 4 (see next page) contains the data, by
decade, or the number o dierent teams to have
played or the championship. And here's where the
rubber meets the road. In these columns we see how
ar behind the NBA lags in competitive balance.
Simply put, ewer teams reach the NBA Finals than
reach the championship round o any other league.
Add up the total number o championship contestants
in the past two decades plus (the 1990s and 2000s,
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including 2010 and 2011) and the contrast grows much
clearer: NHL - 31; NFL - 28; MLB - 25; NBA - 22. And
that comparison gets even worse when the '80s are
added to the total (NHL - 39; NFL - 38; MLB - 39;
NBA - 27). Only ve diferent teamsan astoundingly
small number in the expansion erabattled or the
NBA crown in the '80s, an era widely hailed as the
game's golden era. (A similar dearth o competition
stains another "golden age," MLB in the '50s.) No other
Table 4 Number o diferent teams to play or thechampionship (rom 1900 onward)
Decade NBA NHL NFL* MLB
1900s -- -- -- 7
1910s -- -- -- 9
1920s -- 4 -- 9
1930s -- 7 5 8
1940s 5 6 7 10
1950s 8 5 6 71960s 5 5 10 11
1970s 10 7 7 8
1980s 5 8 10 14
1990s 11 16 13 10
2000s 11 15 15 15
* Includes NFL champions rom 1933 onward (no playos pre-1933. otals
or decades based on seasons; Super Bowl winners in January counted orprevious years season. Does not include AFL championship games, but doesinclude Super Bowl participants rom 1966 season onward.
Includes all 12 years post-1999. Includes World Series results rom 1903. Baseballs modern era began 1901,
though major league basebal l (National League) dates back to the 1880s. Includes Stanley Cup champs rom NHL era, 1927 onward. Te 7 gure or
the 1930s comes rom the Original Six plus the Montreal Maroons, whowon the cup in 1935 beore olding in 1938.
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league in the last our decades has had such a small
number o teams compete or the ultimate prize. Nor
has any league in the last 22 years had ewer total
teams vying or the crown than the NBA.
Adding it all togetherthe raw numbers o to teams
to have won championships, overall and recently; the
distribution o rst-time champions; and the number
o teams to make the nal round o playwe can
conclusively state that the NBA does not measure up tothe other pro leagues in competitve balance.
One nal comparative measure must be mentioned:
as noted beore, the NBA does not measure up in the
more nebulous metric o ans' expectations.
Basketball partisans may use any one o the
measures presented in this study to claim the NBAmatches up with its peers. For instance, the NBA has
had as many rst-time champions recently as the NFL
or MLB. But who really has more hope or uture
success, a Detroit Lions an, a Kansas City Royals
anor a Minnesota imberwolves an?
Football and baseball have seen their share o"worst to rst" teams; how oen do you see that in
the NBA? Small-market teams nd ways to win in
baseball (wins), and even a team in Green Bay,
Wisconsin can thrive in the revenue-sharing NFL.
But how long has it been since the Portland rail
Blazers were a legitimate threat to win the title?
wenty seasons, since their last trip to the Finals in
1992. And don't orget, Portland enjoys the benets
o Paul Allen's Microso moneythey are nota
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nancially poor team. So why then haven't they
broken through lately? Poor luck? Sure, there's there's
been some o that (injuries to Oden and Roy). Baddecisions? Undoubtedly so (bad hirings, bad rings,
bad dra picks).
Yet, Portland's utility has just as much to do
with the nature o the NBA and its almost caste-like
structure o winners and losers. Elite status? Tat
belongs to the Lakers and Celtics, and you'd better winthe lotteryliterallyi you want to crash that party.
And even then, there are no guarantees. O course,
no sport guarantees success to any o its participants,
yet more oen than not, the NBA is where good
ortune (such as a number one overall dra pick) goes
to die. And history then repeats itselusually in theorm o a championship or the Lakers.
All o preceding promises more o the same or
a league that has long been tilted in avor o the
priveleged ew. As always, there are Champs, and
there are Chumpsand then there are the people
who buy season tickets, again and again, to watch the
Warriors or the Pacers. Tose hopeul souls may not
be Chumps, but the evidence remains clear: theyre
not getting their moneys worth.
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