Winning an NBA championship is always the top prize in the Association. No matter how teams get there, no one can take away your team hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of a campaign.
However, that doesn’t mean all championships are made the same, as some teams have extremely difficult paths to winning titles.
For example, the 1995 Houston Rockets, led by Hakeem Olajuwon, had to face opponents with a combined winning percentage of 72.6 percent – without homecourt advantage in a single series – on their way to winning statistically the toughest championship in NBA history.
On the other hand, some teams have it a bit easier.
We decided to take a look at the easiest paths to a title in NBA history, using opponent winning percentage, a simple metric that gives us a good idea of the strength of opponents faced on the way to championships.
By the numbers, the 2023 Denver Nuggets had one of the easiest paths to a championship ever, fifth, to be exact, according to the combined winning percentage of their four opponents: the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat.
Regardless, in the end, you can only play who’s in front of you. So sure, the Nuggets’ path to the 2023 championship may have statistically, according to opponent winning percentage, been easier than any other team in the last 64 years (literally), that doesn’t take into account the Los Angeles Lakers’ or Phoenix Suns’ trade deadline moves or how hot the Miami Heat got in the playoffs, seemingly out of nowhere.