# Does the NBA really need 7 games to determine a winner? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** basketball-nba\ **Created:** [April 30, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673 "2026-04-30T16:39:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lee1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Lee1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lee1)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/21 "2026-05-01T02:36:57Z")
The NBA is essentially a business alliance. Therefore, the primary considerations are viewership and profits. The best-of-seven, best-of-four series can ensure the quality of the game while maximizing the revenue. This is the essence of the NBA. Moreover, some NBA players merely view playing basketball as a job - they clock in and clock out at regular hours - that’s all. There is only one champion, and for most people, although that is their goal, it is often unattainable. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/22 "2026-05-01T02:44:16Z")
Did I say “no idea?” ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/23 "2026-05-01T02:52:24Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > Did I say “no idea? You said “don’t really know”. Which is pretty close to “no idea”, yes? ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/24 "2026-05-01T03:04:52Z")
No, it is not. Your quote cut off the rest of my post which explained what I meant. To clarify, it feels like your confusion could be based on two things: 1. You believe the game solved who the better team is. That the Giants actually were a better team than the Patriots. 2. You don’t think the game solved who the better team is, but you think it’s very strong evidence and you disliked the relative lack of certainty that you inferred from my post. If it’s 1, I just fundamentally disagree that a 1-off win tautologically defines a better team. If it’s 2 then it’s just quibbling over levels. Is there a 3rd option? **Eta** Little googling gives this quote from The Drunkard’s Walk > [@Leonard Mlodinow](#): > > …if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups. There is really no way for a sports league to change this. In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time. And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one. (p. 70-71) ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/25 "2026-05-01T03:12:44Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > “We are the champions, the undisputed best!” And it’s that line of thinking that’s the problem. Champions are determined by winning, not by being the best. Being better is always helpful to becoming champion, but it’s not sufficient, nor is it necessary. (That is, there are teams that were best, yet failed to become champions, and teams that became champions despite not being the best.) If we wanted to determine the best, we’d have a long season where each team played every other team the same number of times. And then use some mathematical metric to determine the best. This is often boring, so we have championships instead. A championship uses a process to eliminate teams until there’s only one left. This is exciting _because_ the best doesn’t always win. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/26 "2026-05-01T12:27:36Z")
I would love for the NHL to try something like a four game total goals series. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/27 "2026-05-01T12:32:37Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > I believe 538 did an article on optimal series lengths for different sports years ago. My likely faulty memory was that a best of 7 will find the “better team” more than 80% of the time in the NBA. Each game is really a statistical sample. To get that kind of accuracy in the NHL, you would need a best of 50 or something, because it’s so much more fluky. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/28 "2026-05-01T12:50:39Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > If we wanted to determine the best, we’d have a long season where each team played every other team the same number of times. And then use some mathematical metric to determine the best. This is often boring, so we have championships instead. I disagree. It isn’t because it’s boring. It’s because back in the day there were typically two leagues or conferences that didn’t play each other during the regular season, so there wasn’t a way of determining which first place team was better. Most famously, in baseball the AL and NL went over 100 years during which they only played each other in the World Series. The NFL, NBA, college football, etc. all have similar histories where teams from a given conference, league, division, etc. only played each other. In those days I think it’s legitimate to say the championship game really did serve the purpose of determining which team was better. Now, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/29 "2026-05-01T13:28:32Z")
Why? You want a goaltender having a single bad game to determine the entire series? ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/30 "2026-05-01T14:20:38Z")
No, I want offence to be incentivized. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/31 "2026-05-01T22:16:45Z")
My point was, and is, that a 7-game series in baseball will not necessarily identify the best team. Whether that’s as it should be, or an abomination that cries out to God for intervention, is up to the individual. My secondary point was that fans enjoy the harmless fiction that their team’s championship means they have proven themselves the very best and exposed the losers as frauds. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2026, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673/32 "2026-05-02T07:11:07Z")
Plenty of fans revel in the fact that their team’s championship wasn’t won by the best team, but rather by their inferior team knocking out a superior one; that’s the whole allure of the David vs. Goliath or Cinderella narrative after all. The whole point of the 1980 Miracle on Ice, for instance, was that the Soviet team was vastly superior to the American team and would have won “nine out of ten times” in the words of Herb Brooks himself, yet it was the plucky Americans that beat the Soviets (and then later on beat Finland to take gold.) If Americans were to say that the USA team was in fact the superior roster, it would actually detract from the glory of it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-nba-really-need-7-games-to-determine-a-winner/1029673.md?page=1)