"Before the Toronto Raptors broke through in 2019, only 11 different franchises had combined to win the previous 39 titles (dating back to 1980) -- and just six of those crowned a first-time champion. In a league long defined by dynasties, parity seemed like a distant dream for so long. But that 2019 season turned out to be a pivotal point, with seven different teams hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy in as many seasons since -- the only seven-year stretch in league history that featured seven unique champions."
"To find out which of those 10 teams is most likely to break through, we built a model that projects every franchise's title chances over the next six seasons. The framework starts with each team's preseason odds since 1985 (including for this season at ESPN BET), then layers in two key ingredients: the weighted average age of each roster -- based on recent regular-season wins above replacement -- and the age and performance of each team's best player (again based on WAR)."
The NBA's long run of dynasty-dominated champions has recently given way to greater parity, with seven different teams winning titles across seven consecutive seasons beginning in 2019. Only two of those teams were true first-time winners, but the trend shows the league's power structure has loosened, improving prospects for the 10 franchises still without a ring. A predictive model projects each franchise's title probability over the next six seasons by starting with preseason odds since 1985 (including ESPN BET) and incorporating roster weighted-average age and the age and performance of each team's best player measured by WAR, then simulating thousands of seasons.
Read at ESPN.com
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