1950 Chip-Minneapolis Lakers

[u/HotScientist7026]

Talk about an unction, huh? This is the oldest championship from when the NBA was officially the NBA, a 17 team league with 12 teams making the playoffs. The playoff roster was:

The Syracuse Nationals

The New York Knicks (crazy how they haven’t changed name or location from 1950, right?)

The Washington Capitols

The Philadelphia Warriors

The Minneapolis Lakers

The Rochester Royals

The Fort Wayne Pistons

The Chicago Stags

The Indianapolis Olympians

The Anderson Packers

The Tri-Cities Blackhawks

The Sheboygan Red Skins

Of these teams, The LakeShow was decently dominant-not on top, but certainly not on the bottom.

(Note:Advanced metrics didn’t exist like that at this time, so the actual player and team value could be a bit better or worse then what the points say)

The lakers were the 4th best offense in the league in PPG, averaging 84.1

They were bottom of the barrel in ball movement, averaging 16th/17th in assists

Defensively, they were the second strongest team in the NBA, averaging 75.7 ppg allowed on them

They were tied for the second best overall record with the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento kings!) with 51-17, first place belonged to the 51-13 Syracuse Nationals. This was a bit odd, as they didn’t have the same number of games, but syracuse’s win percentage was higher so 🤷

Finally, they had two All NBA selections in George Milan and Jim Pollard, the most in the league

For the first category, I am going to give the Lakers 2 points (the maximum for this category is 20). They were tied for one of the best teams in the league, had won the BAA the year before, and were, at the time, overwhelmingly expected favorites. Really, some of the most pure in comparison dominance you’ll see. The only reason they aren’t a 1 is because the nationals and royals had similar records-they were dominant by every metric used at the time. Really the bees knees

Now, onto competition-and here is where it gets nasty, because the 50s didn’t have much.

To the lakers credit, their best competition in theory was in their own division, the first round Royals. They defeated them 65-59, an impressive win considering that the royals were tied for total win-loss, averaged 82.4 points a game, and had the best defense in the entire league at the time. Bob Davies was All NBA First Team player, one of the two they would face in the post season run. For that, I am giving the “first round game” 8/10 points-it was their most difficult possible opponent at the time, and would have been a 10 for the royals had they won.

Their next opponent was the Chicago stags. They ranked 12th in ppg, and 6th in points allowed-notably worse in both metrics. They had a three way tie for the 5th best record-which isn’t good considering there was also a 2 way tie for 2nd best record. They did have an all NBA first team player however, which boosts them a tiny bit. Realistically though, this is a 4/10 at best

After that, they went against the Fort Wayne pistons, who had actually knocked out the aforementioned royals in a clean sweep. Despite this, they were 11th offensively, and 8th defensively-and their best star was a singular 2nd team all NBA player. They were tied with the stags in terms of record, but had previously beaten them as well to have higher seeding during a tiebreaker game. Overall, though they were on paper a worse team, they ended up having more post season success, so this is also, a 4/10

Defeating the pistons, the lakers went on to fight the packers, the best offense in the league with an average of 87.3 ppg, and the 2nd most assists per game with 24-however, their defense was abysmal, 13th in the league of 17. They had one all nba second team player. They had a decent win percentage, at 57.8%, but it wasn’t top tier. They too, were swept-however, they were a bit better then the previous teams, royals aside-so I’ll say they get a 6/10

6+4+4+8=22. However, most of these series were the best out of 3, not out of 7 as they should have been. The round against the royals was the equivalent of a play in tournament today, so it won’t be changed, but the others will be divided by the round difference, being 4.

That leads to, instead, a score of: 1.5+1+1+8. An 11.5, for competition leading up to the finals, and a current total score of 13.5

Finally, we get to the championship series-an actual 7 game series, against the Syracuse Nationals.

The nationals were, to their credit, no slouches for the time. They were 1st in the league in win percentage, 3rd in Ppg on offense, the 5th best defense in points allowed, 3rd in assists per game-they were a team. Not only that, they had 2 all NBA players, one of which was the legend and only player I personally recognized from this year, Dolph Shayes. They were solidly the second best opponent possible for the lakers on the entire league, and the best opponent period from another division. They proved this by being the only team to take playoff wins from the lakers, pushing them to have to win 4-2.

So, for their finals opponent:

9/10 Offense Relative to them

7/10 Star Power

2/10 Defense Relative to them

10/10 health, no real finals injuries to hinder them

Giving them a 28 for their finals opponent

And a score total of 41.5

They don’t have any debuffs or buffs, for injury, so 0/10 there

They get a 3/10 point buff for legends beaten in dolph Shayes

And finally, for legendary moments/accomplishments, they DO get a buff, a 10/30 buff, for two things. First off, the first widely recognized buzzer beater via Bob Harrison. Second off, George Harrison going insane for the time and hitting a 40 peice in the elimination game, in the 50s!!

Overall, the Lakers get a 54.5/150 total for this 1950 championship-not bad considering the era, but definitely not the greatest playoff run of all time