Judging Championship Potential with Ian Thomsen

Headlined “The Simplest Way I Can Tell To Judge Championship Potential,” you would be forgiven for assuming that this article by Ian Thomsen would include a heavy dose of number of actual games won tempered by a nod to strength of schedule and consideration of the team’s injury situation. You would be forgiven because, well, that way of judging championship potential actually makes sense.

Instead, we get this:

In honor of the extended holiday, here is an extended look at the simplest way I know to gauge NBA championship potential. Search the roster of any team for an MVP-level talent with the leadership and drive of Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Hakeem Olajuwon or (to cite the newest example) Kevin Garnett.

Tell the Minnesota Timberwolves that KG was all that was needed to be a championship contender. Or the Detroit Pistons that you need a singular MVP-level talent. Wait? What’s that? You reference the Pistons in your next sentence?

Well more than half of the NBA teams are absent this kind of star, which means you can essentially write them off as championship contenders (unless they are the Detroit Pistons of a few years ago, as you'll see below).

I can see that this method of evaluation is not going to be so simple after all.

In fact, if you bother to read the article because you are, like me, desperately interested in learning a simple way to determine championship contenders, you get a two-page list of awesome basketball players since the 80s and the following lessons:
2. Awesome players help teams win championships
1. You need luck to get those players on your team
1a. Coaches are less likely than players to earn an NBA championship ring because only one coach gets to win every year compared to a whole team of players

Not only simple, but totally useful for determining who might be in pole position to win this season!

Thank you Mr Thomsen for being totally uninformative in a most uninteresting way and still hitting your editor-mandated word count for the week. You, truly, are among the reasons that traditional media readership has fallen off a cliff.