Why don't teams threepeat, fourpeat, or ninepeat?

The Game Room
21

Just for some ballpark numbers: Let’s say that there are 20 teams in a league (on the low side, I think, but I’m too lazy to look up exact numbers), and that they’re all equally skilled. Year 1, obviously one of them will win the championship. Year 2, again, someone will win: What’s the odds that it’s the same team as year 1? 1 in 20. So you’d expect repeats to be rare, but for a sport that’s existed for many decades, you’d expect to see a few. Now what’re the odds for three in a row? 1 in 400. I don’t think there are any sports that have seen organized play for 400 years, so it’s not surprising that we don’t see threepeats.

Now, obviously this is oversimplified, because the teams aren’t all equal. The winner in year 1 was probably a strong team, and a strong team is more likely to also be the winner in year 2. But the teams aren’t that unequal. And for a ninepeat, like the OP speculates about, even if a team were so good that it was as likely to win as all other teams combined, the chances of a ninepeat would still only be 1 in 512.

22

I’m struggling to understand the point you’re trying to make in this thread.

Do you actually, seriously believe that during the 1980s, the Celtics and the Lakers were literally the only teams trying to build dynasties and win multiple championships? That literally every other team in the NBA was deliberately just treading water?

And then after 1989, the Lakers and the Celtics just gave up? And the Pistons just suddenly decided to try to build a dynasty, while the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan entering his prime, just waved them on and didn’t try to get past them? And then the Pistons just decided that two was enough, and politely stepped aside as the Bulls suddenly decided to actually try to build a dynasty?

And then, when Jordan retired, the Houston Rockets, and only the Houston Rockets and literally no other NBA team, tried to seize the opening to create a dynasty? And then, the season after Jordan came out retirement, the Rockets, like the Pistons before them, just decided that two was enough, and politely stepped back to let the Bulls go ahead, and the Bulls were once again literally the only NBA team trying to build a dynasty?

And then after Jordan retired the second time, the Bulls figured that was enough, and just went to sleep for the next 25 years?*

Ok, that last bit is fair enough.*

**Except, seriously, no, it’s not. The Bulls tried to rebuild a dynasty after Jordan retired. They broke up an aging team which had lost one of the top players in NBA history to try to build a young contender from the ground up. They just failed. It happens. Only one team a year, by definition, can win a championship. It’s hard.

23

Technically, the Packers have won three straight championships twice (1929-1931, 1965-1967), but those were different eras.

With their first “threepeat,” the NFL didn’t even hold a championship game; the league’s champion was simply the team with the best record. Their threepeat in the Lombardi Era was in a much smaller NFL (14 to 16 teams), with no salary cap, and though they capped off the final two of those three seasons by also beating the AFL champs in what would become the Super Bowl, it was still not three straight Super Bowl wins.

(Also, FWIW, the Browns won five straight championships from 1946-1950, but the first four were in the AAFC, where they were clearly head-and-shoulders above most of the other teams.)

24

Seattle set a record for regular season wins in 2001 with 116 out of 162. Let’s assume they maintain the same win rate in the playoffs as the regular season even though they’re probably playing better teams. The chance for them to win a 5-game series I calculate as around 85.75%. The chance they have to win a 7-game series I calculate as around 89.38%, and they need to win 2 such series. The chance for them to win the World Series is thus around 68.5%. If they were to win at this rate every year, their chance of winning two in a row would be 46.93%. The chance of winning 3 in a row would be 32.15%. Now consider that this is with the highest winning rate ever in the 162 game season, and we’re assuming that they can maintain this winning percentage against the top competition. And still at the start of any given 3-year period, the chance this team has of winning all three World Series is less than 1/3.

I also did this calculation for 3-peats various other flat winning percentages in the post season.
80%: 68.21%
75%: 46.44%
70%: 26.12%
65%: 11.7%
60%: 4.08%
55%: 1.06%
50%: 0.20%

I also calculated the probability of 3-peats with flat playoff winning percentages for the NBA and NHL, which each have 4 rounds of 7-game series. The best regular season record in the NBA is much better than in baseball, at 73 out of 82. If they could maintain this winning percentage for 3 seasons and through the playoffs they would almost certainly (95%) 3-peat. Golden State only had one year with that high of a percentage, but they made the finals 5 years in a row, winning 3. In the Bulls’ 3-peat in the mid-late 90s, they won 72 + 69 + 62 games out of 3 * 82, or about 82.5%. Taking that average and using it as a postseason winning percentage, you get a 77.65% chance for the 3-peat. Here’s the chances for the other winning percentages above:

80%: 66.57%
75%: 41.56%
70%: 19.86%
65%: 6.89%
60%: 1.65%
55%: 0.26%
50%: 0.02%

NHL records are harder to compare due to things other than wins and losses, but the best record is likely the 95-96 Red Wings at 62-13-7. Counting ties as half a win, this is 79.88%. Ignoring ties it’s 82.67%. The best 3-year run is clearly Montreal in the late 70s, at a combined 177-29-34, for either a 80.83% or 85.92% winning rate, and splitting the difference puts them around the 90s Bulls.

Hopefully that gives some perspective on why the teams that are the best of an era generally do not win every championship, but how it’s clearly more likely to happen in the NHL or NBA where there is much more likely to be very high winning percentages compared to baseball, especially when the leagues were smaller. Iin hockey in the 70s and 80s it was rather common, with Montreal winning 4 in a row, then the Islanders winning 4 in a row, and then the Oilers winning 4 out of 5 but stopped in the middle by Montreal. In Basketball, the Bulls had 6 out of 8 with 2 3-peats in the 90s, and the Lakers won the first 3 of the 2000s

25

I would dispute this, depending on what you mean by “team”. As mentioned in this thread, some owners think there’s more consistent profit with having low payrolls and not vying for championships, while still being reasonable enough to draw crowds. And players may prefer to not have to play extra games at the end of the season, depending on what incentives their contracts have for post-season performance. It’s conceivable that someone with little monetary incentive to win in the post-season would prefer to not take the chance at getting injured.

26

The NFL only implemented their salary cap in 1994. The 49ers and Cowboys definitely were spending extra.

In all three cases, however,you see one common thread: Hall of Fame head coaches paired with HoF quarterbacks. There are numerous HoFers at other positions, too. Whether through fortunate drafting or spending extra, these teams amassed enormous talent and still only won championships less than half the time.

I’m curious. How would YOU go about planning and building a team that will win a league championship ten years in a row?

27

I would say that at the elite levels we’re talking about, this has pretty much zero likelihood, or as close to zero as to make no difference. You don’t get to the top ranks of a competitive activity unless you not only have the ambition to be at the top, but the actual belief that you are going to do it.

28

It’s widely suspected that teams with NO chance of making the playoffs late in the season will “tank”, that is to say, deliberately lose in order to improve the quality of player they will get in next year’s draft. They deny it of course.

But the notion that a player would be give up a chance at a championship out of laziness or fear of injury is dubious. Anyone who gets to that level is too highly competitive to contemplate such a thing.

29

It’s actually 30 (baseball), 30 (basketball), 31 (ice hockey), and 32 (football), so the odds are actually much tougher.

30

I second that it’s hard to win one, much less three in a row. One play, loss, or injury is often all it takes:

When I was in college, my Nebraska Cornhuskers dominated the mid-90s, going 60-3 from 1993-1997, winning 3 out of 5 years:

[ol]
[li]1993: Went unbeaten, but lost in the title game by missing a last-minute field goal. One play: No title[/li]
[li]1994: Won the title. We lost our Heisman-candidate QB at the beginning of the season, due to blood clots (of all things). Then unluckily drew a Miami home team in the title game, where we came from behind when that star QB came back (his first game back). Arguably, one player stays injured: no title.[/li]
[li]1995: Won the title, with the best college football team of all time. They made it look easy, beating four top ten teams by an average 49-18.[/li]
[li]1996: Didn’t make the title game, due to losing in an upset on a ballsy 4th-down play. One upset loss: no title shot.[/li]
[li]1997: Won the title, but needed some luck, including a diving last-second controversial catch vs Missouri. Catch not made: no title.[/li][/ol]

Now that Nebraska sucks (3rd straight losing season), how I yearn for “When I was in college, you whippersnappers!”.

31

If this had some reference to the Yankees, this would be the ultimate Yankees 1996 Champs thread. Why don’t teams aim for a threepeat? Classic.

32

[quote=“HubZilla, post:30, topic:855514”]

[ol]
[li]1993: Went unbeaten, but lost in the title game by missing a last-minute field goal. One play: No title[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]

I was at that game! Go 'Noles!*

And the OP is ridiculous. Of course teams are trying to do that. It’s just really hard.

  • I have to say that y’all have (had?) the nicest damn fans in all of college football. I spent half the train ride back up to Ft. Lauderdale (closest hotel we could get) telling Seminole fans to STFU and act like they had some class. Closed the hotel bar with some Husker fans and had a blast.
33

It’s more common in collegiate sports than the pros for a single school to dominate a sport for years and years. Before large-scale professional recruiting, student-athletes basically just went to whichever school was physically closest to where they already lived, and certain schools in areas rich with athletic talent enjoyed success simply by virtue of having a geographic advantage. It still occurs, but actually *because of *large-scale professional recruiting, where the schools with the best reputations and the largest, highest paid staffs can suck up a disproportionate amount of raw talent.

34

Other than Charles Haley (who I admit is the player who likely put them over the top), and Deion Sanders (for the second half of their run), the 90s Cowboys team was all home grown talent. They didn’t spend a bunch of money bringing in a whole team full of star free agents.

35

@ the OP: Bear in mind also that, at the pro level, ***everyone ***is elite. No athlete would be in the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc. in the first place if he weren’t elite. They are the cream of the crop.

So even if your team is dominant, the other 29 teams are made up professional, highly-driven, Type-A athletes who are just as hungry to win as you are and gunning after you with all their might. They aren’t slackers; nobody at that pro level is a slacker.

36

age which ties into physical conditioning money and egos are what usually ends dynasties

i mean give it 4 or 5 years the patriots will be the next packers as for the next 20 years their team goes back to the toilet they crawled out but all you’ll hear is " look how good we were for those 5-10 years"

37

age which ties into physical conditioning money and egos are what usually ends dynasties

i mean give it 4 or 5 years the patriots will be the next packers as for the next 20 years their team goes back to the toilet they crawled out but all you’ll hear is " look how good we were for those 5-10 years"

38

dupe i will be so glad for the board move …

39

I think the OP’s point (based on this and his other threads) is that only the most successful teams matter and that being a fan means rooting only for consistent winners.

40

What’s very odd about the OP is teams have from time to time threepeated and fourpeated, and as a Yankees fan you’d think he would know that, since they fourpeated in 1936-1939, fivepeated in 1949-1953, and threepeated in 1998-2000 and were so, so close to fourpeating in 2001.

The NHL has seen the Montreal Canadiens fivepeat and fourpeat, and the Islanders fourpeated immediately after the Canadiens fourpeated. The LEafs threepeated twice. (Granted, those, and the Montreal fivepeat, were when the NHL only had six teams.) The Oilers might well have fivepeated had their own defenseman not scored on his own net in 1986.

The Boston Celtics won eight championships in a row, of course.

It can be done. The thing is

  1. The other teams are all trying to stop you and
  2. North American leagues have systems in place to make the competition at least somewhat fair.

I would not want to be a fan of most teams in European soccer leagues, which tend to be totally dominated by a handful of teams. The modern Premier League has seen every championship since 1993 go to four teams, except for two fluke years, and it’s one of the most balanced ones. Bayern Munich wins the Bundesliga every year; they have won seven titles in a row to date, and 14 out of the last 20. Italy’s top league, Serie 1, is currently “enjoying” a run of eight consecutive season championships by Juventus. Spain’s La Liga is almost always won by either Barcelona or Real Madrid. In France, Paris Saint-Germain has won seven out of the last eight. European soccer leagues have a level of competitive imbalance for which North America has no comparison at all, but it’s not that the other teams aren’t trying; it’s a structural thing.