Both teams were able to tailor their defense to whatever the opponent presented. The obvious examples are the two most recent Eastern Conference champions, the Raptors and Heat. Not only do you need to be good defensively, but you need to be able to solve the problems the opponent presents to you. The league has evolved to a place where what works 90% of the time in the regular season but doesn’t work in the playoffs. Now, there’s noise in there: the Cavaliers were a once-in-a-lifetime team built around a once-in-a-lifetime player who made four straight Finals the past two runners up, Warriors (2019) and Heat (2020) were 11th and 12th in defense respectively.īut we’ve also seen teams that were great defensively in the regular season fall apart in the playoffs, even if their offense was top-15. Of the five NBA Finals runners up during the past five seasons, the loser has been top-10 in defense just once - the 2016 Warriors. However, over the past five seasons, a shift has occurred in terms of playoff success. Even in the NBA’s offensive apex over the past decade, the Golden State Warriors were the only championship team to finish outside of the top 10 in Defensive Rating (11th overall in 2018). You can’t be a bad defensive team and win the NBA championship, we have plenty of evidence of that. With the way the game has evolved, though, the regular season has become less connected to the DNA of playoff basketball, so we have to amend that cliche.
Defenses win championships, as the old axiom says.
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