http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ3GawN3SVU

It's a great piece. He covers more ground on this subject, in laymen terms, than you would expect.

But for most Neil's position or player related lists lately, the weight of Michael Jordan is massive. He is misconstruing almost all lists. It's only fitting that the Alpha Dog takes his rightful throne in this category.

1) Every generation, there are anywhere from one to five truly dominant, high usage players, whose win total far surpass their peers. Lebron and Chris Paul (Durant this year as well) offer so many wins above replacement that they set they their teams far above the pack. These teams SHOULD naturally win more titles with their cap related competitive imbalance (caused by individual player max contracts).

2) Relying on fewer players leads to greater team variance. Injuries and foul trouble (in the playoffs) are obvious issues here. But I would also ask if team construction as a whole leads to greater season long variability for many of the 2 superstar teams. I suggest that because, due to cap restrictions, these teams often have to depend on low usage, relatively cheap role players. They simply can't afford to spread the wealth as much due to their high investment in their star players. These role players can either be rookies or undervalued veterans, about whom there is less league wide information (especially given their future usage context). In any given year, these relative unknowns are probably more likely to under/over perform their projections.

If their are four legitimate two superstar teams out their any given year and these teams are, on expectation, equal to their less variable egalitarian peers, it would makes sense that one of the high variance teams would hit it big on the variance express and win the finals. That probably depends on sample size (not a great stat guy) but I doubt 53 finals is enough to smooth it out.

My guess is that some combination of theories 1 and 2 explain why 2 superstar teams tend to win more championships--at least in the current salary cap context.

All this proves is that there's more than one way to skin a cat; dominant players win championships, but plenty of balanced teams have won it all too. I would compare the current Celts to the 82 Lakers; they have a balanced attack, but they are also a star-studded team of HOFers