Would an All-Star Sports Team be Guaranteed to always beat the actual current Championship Team?

The Game Room
21

It occurs to me that, when the US finally decided that we wanted to kick butt in Olympic basketball, we didn’t just send the current roster of the Chicago Bulls. We sent an all-star team.

Also, a thought experiment: Take the championship team in any given sport. Most of the players on that team are probably pretty good (that’s how they got to be a championship team, after all), but there’s some player who’s the weakest player on the team. If you asked the coach if he’d trade that player for the guy who’s the best in the lead at that position, what would he say? Now we have a new, slightly different team, with someone else in the bottom position: Repeat the question.

22

Yes, but subsequent U.S. national teams ran into problems because they were full of all-stars, which often meant ball-hogging scorers, and not enough distributors, defenders, and other role-players. They had a number of disappointing years because they had collections of great individuals, not teams of complementary players.

The U.S. National Team was, player for player, the strongest in pretty much every international tournament since 1992, yet only took Bronze in the 2004 Olympics and the FIBA Championships in 1998 and 2006.

23

I’m not so sure about that. Do you trade your best 3-point shooter for a player who’s better all-around but not as good at 3-point shooting, and whose other skills are already well-covered on the team? In a team sport, I think role-players, specialists, and complementary players are often more important than a deep roster of all-around athletes.

24

Sure, but they didn’t just grab the championship roster, they picked a group of players that would perform the best together. The 2016 team had 3 Warriors, 2 Raptors, and nobody else on the same team. Somewhere in between “all star team” and “championship team” but probably leaning towards the former.

25

For next season? Every coach in the world in every sport trades up. Championship teams brin in new players all the time.

For a game next week? It’d depend on the sport and the player, I think. Sports where it’s more individualistic (baseball) you’d be more likely to swap compared to complicated play calling (football).

26

Maybe not a full scheme but plenty enough of one to count. I’m torn. I don’t yet agree but you make a good point here.

27

Yes, after 2006, they started trying to build teams rather than just collections of All-Stars. Which was precisely my point.

Also, the U.S. National Team is, well, a national team. Even if just taking that year’s championship roster actually made for a better team, it would be a PR nightmare to snub the fans of every other team.

28

This may be, but most of his new teammates are playing the same scheme they’ve been playing for years. Yes, the QB is the most integral part of the offense, but it’s a different situation if everyone is coming into the new offense from square one.

29

I think the original Dream Team in the Olympics could still be the NBA champ team almost every year.

30

You could guess at how many runs they would score with the Runs Created formula. It works pretty well for actual teams.

Not everyone on an All-Star team is the best hitter at that position, since defense helps you earn a spot too, but here was last year’s AL all star lineup:

George Springer, Astros
DJ LeMahieu, Yankees
Mike Trout, Angels
Carlos Santana, Cleveland
JD Martinez, Red Sox
Alex Bregman, Astros
Gary Sanchez, Yankees
Michael Brantley, Astros
Jorge Polanco, Twins

Throwing in some slightly inferior but still excellent performance for the bench, such a squad would hit at least 350 home runs and have an on base percentage of about .390, both unprecedented in modern MLB history. I ran likely combinations of hits and walks, plus the homers, and came up with a rough guesstimate that such a team would score about 1,350 runs, an astounding total. The record is 1,067.

How many runs would such a team allow? Very few indeed. This is much harder to estimate but let’s start with the fact that the stingiest team in the American League (I’ll stick with the AL to always keep the DH in play) was the Astros, who permitted just 640 runs to score. An All-Star team would be even better though, supporting Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole with a better back end of starting pitchers, like Shane Bieber, Lance Lynn, and Mike Minor, and filling the bullpen with relief aces; my back of the envelope guess is this would subtract at least eighty runs. And of course our new squad will have slightly better defense and room for a defensive replacement for Gary Sanchez, who isn’t much of a glove. The Astros were a really good fielding team, to be honest, but we’d get a few more runs. Let’s carve off 100 altogether.

So our All Star team will score about 1350 runs and allow just 540. (That is roughly what I’d have guessed anyway.) Using the Pythagorean method, we know such a team would have an expected record of 136-26, blowing away the 2001 Seattle Mariners by 20 games.

Still, they don’t win every game, and 136-26 is against all other major league teams, who will collectively be .500 teams when not playing the superteam. Against a championship level team they’ll lose a bit more often, and could quite possibly lose a playoff series.

31

The NHL used to do it that way. From 1947 to 1968 (except 1951 and 1952), the opening game of the season (67 and 68 - mid-season) would feature the previous season’s Stanley Cup winning team against a team of All-Stars from the other teams. Let’s check the results…

Of the 19 games held under that format - the All-Stars won 9; the Stanley Cup winners won 7; and there were 3 ties. There were only a few games that weren’t close - 6-3, 6-1. and 7-1 - all won by the Stanley Cup team.

I assume one side would be weaker (particularly the Stanley Cup team) if some of their stars retired during the off-season.

Two incredible teams met in the 1960 game (Canadiens without Rocket Richard, who had retired):

32

Not only that, but some of the players on the previous year’s NBA championship team are likely to be playing for other countries rather than the US team.

33

1927 Yankees had 6 guys who went into the hall of fame. 1928 Yankees had 9. It would be tough to beat those teams even with all stars.