Predicting the NBA Finals

What does history say?

Two weeks ago, right before the play-in games, I ranked the then-remaining NBA contenders 1–20. That ranking was also my de facto prediction, in that I would always favor the higher-ranked team.

I’ve gotten some things wrong already. That’s fine with me. I was more curious rather than certain. (I wasn’t making bets.)

But since then I have been thinking about the criteria for predicting the NBA Finals teams. So, pretending I don’t know the current results of the ongoing NBA playoffs, I’d like to re-do the prediction based on historical trends.

I looked at the 20 previous seasons, 2001–02 through 2020–21 with two things in mind:

1. How did the Finals teams finish in the regular-season standings?
2. What had their best (or at least one of their two best) player’s career been like before that season?

The following are the Finals teams of those years, followed by the names of their leading players. In parentheses beside the team is how they finished in the conference standings. Players in italic had been a regular season MVP at least once before that season; players in bold had previously played in the Finals at least once before (and in some cases, several times); players in bold italic had been both an MVP and a Finals…