The conversation in the NBA when it comes to how to build a championship-level team often comes down to which way of doing so is better: going big in free agency or building one through the draft?
Of course, it’s not easy for teams in small markets to do the former, as top-level free agents rarely choose them. But champions can be built in the NBA through trades and certain small-market teams have done well lately in amassing draft picks and trading them for established stars. Just look at the Cleveland Cavaliers with Donovan Mitchell and the Oklahoma City Thunder with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as examples.
Today, we have decided to take a look at the most organically built NBA champions of the 21st century. To do so, we broke down the percentage of playoff minutes played by players on each champion who made their NBA debuts with said teams. That includes players drafted by each team and undrafted free-agent pickups.
What’s interesting is despite the flak the Golden State Warriors have gotten for seeming to buy their championships, three of their title-winning teams sit in the Top 4 of this list as some of the most organic champions in recent history.
Meanwhile, some of the weaker champions we’ve had in the past two decades – the 2004 Detroit Pistons, the 2006 Miami Heat and the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, for example – were mostly made up of free-agent pickups and trades.
At the end of the day, winning a championship is difficult no matter what, with some luck and circumstance always being involved. And although free agency and trades are very important toward building a contender these days, drafting well and being savvy with your assets are also vital.
Look at the 2020 Lakers as an example. Sure, their two top players that year, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, were a free-agent pickup and trade acquisition, respectively. But the latter pickup would have been impossible if the Lakers didn’t do so well in drafting in the years before that, as L.A. draftees Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart were all part of the trade for the Lakers to land Davis.
Finally, before we get into the numbers, it’s fun to note how organically built the champions of yesteryear were. While the most organic champion of the 20th century, the 2021-22 Warriors, had 68.26 percent of their postseason minutes played by players who made their debuts with Golden State, the most organic champion ever, the 1962 Boston Celtics, had a whopping 98.76 percent of their playoff minutes played by Boston draftees.
As for the most organic NBA champion post-induction of the three-point line, that honor belongs to… the 1993 Chicago Bulls, thanks to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. The ’93 Bulls had 77.48 percent of their 1993 playoff minutes played by players whose first team was Chicago, a far larger number than any champion of the 21st century.
Anyway, here’s the ranking for the 21st century: