My pick to win it all

Even without deep playoff experience

HENRY ABBOTT

If defense wins championships …. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads a historically incredible defense. ANDREW LAHODYNSKYJ/GETTY IMAGES

Last week, we published David Thorpe's updated analysis of this year’s NBA contenders. You should listen to him. He knows more about basketball than me or anyone I know. For a while at ESPN, there was some dedicated analyst who would track all of the public predictions of ESPN experts, and David left the rest of us in the dust.

In his story, he puts a heavy emphasis on playoff experience. He favors teams with playoff experience, especially the Celtics. “They know the path because they’ve walked the path,” David writes. “That makes the Celtics the team to beat.” He also notes he’d pick the Nuggets–narrowly–over the Thunder.

These picks are bold when the regular season’s best teams, by far, have been the Thunder and Cavs. The Cavs might win 70 games. The Thunder are a hair behind. ESPN’s BPI playoff predictions factors in things like strength of schedule and margin of victory, and have a healthy track record of success. Remarkably, as of Wednesday that model sees those two young teams as each more than 60 percent likely to win their respective conferences. Combined, the Thunder and Cavs are said to be 75.1% to win this year’s title.

David’s making no small bet on playoff experience, which I feel has value, but … how much? When excellent young teams lose in the playoffs, youth always gets the blame. When the Thunder, as led by 23-year-olds Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, lost to Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh in the 2012 NBA Finals it seemed every commentator cited inexperience.

But was youth really the cause? LeBron has made basketball history by winning 41 playoff series and counting. He beat Tim Duncan’s Spurs and Steph’s Warriors. He has waxed every kind of opponent; short, tall, strong, weak, old, and young. Were the Thunder too young? Or did they lose just ‘cause for a long while there, everyone did, for reasons like bad luck, injuries, or facing the best player of all time?

Of course, young teams have won titles. Magic Johnson led the Lakers to a title as a rookie. 14 times the Finals MVP has been 26 or younger. Magic was 22 when he won his second Finals MVP. Bill Walton became a 24-year-old Finals MVP and a champion in 1977 leading what had been an expansion team just seven years earlier. (Eight players on that roster had fewer than three years’ experience.)

Just last year the Mavericks made the Finals with 24-year-old Luka Dončić, 19-year-old Dereck Lively II, and 25-year-old Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington. A decade ago the Warriors kicked off their dynasty with starters aged 26 (Stephen Curry), 24 (Klay Thompson and Draymond Green) and 22 (Harrison Barnes). The Thunder’s leaders in minutes per game are similar. Using Basketball-Reference’s system of their average age over the season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 26, Jalen Williams is 23, Luguentz Dort is 25, and Isaiah Hartenstein is 26.

The question isn’t can young teams win. We know they sometimes do. The question is: are the Thunder, like those other past champions, good enough to overcome whatever playoff experience is worth?