Is the NBA Turning Into Premier League?

Wednesday, 23 February 2011 | by Pat's Picks

Carmelo Anthony’s trade to New York caused the Wall Street Journal to opine on the state of the NBA in this morning’s paper. And the analogy they came up with is interesting: As superstar players continue to migrate toward a handful of successful teams, the NBA “may quickly come to resemble (gasp!) English soccer.” Anthony joining the Knicks reiterated something we saw when LeBron, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade all converged on the Heat: “It’s becoming a league where a handful of glamour-puss teams are attracting all the marquee players and where, if recent events are any indication, they may vacuum up championships for years to come.”

In the Premiere League, only four teams have ever finished in the top three. The Journal used standard deviation to see whether their theory panned out. According to their calculations:  “Last season, the NBA’s standard deviation of wins was 13.4, up from 10.8 in 2006-07. That suggests the best NBA teams were about 24% better than the worst ones. In the EPL, the standard deviation was 18.1 points last season, up from 15.9 in 2006-07. That’s a 13.8% increase over the same period of time. If that keeps up, the NBA will soon look like two leagues, one that consists of teams that play for titles and one for teams that merely play.”