One reason to believe the Milwaukee Bucks might have a chance to upset the Toronto Raptors in their first-round series, which continues with Game 3 Thursday night in Milwaukee, was that the Bucks have the best player in the series: All-Star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Likewise, skepticism about the Boston Celtics, who trail the eighth-seeded Chicago Bulls 2-0 in their opening-round series, was founded in the possibility the Celtics might not have the best player in any playoff matchup.
Given the way coaches can extend their stars' minutes in the playoffs, it certainly seems logical that the team with the best player might have a greater advantage in a short series than over the course of the regular season. But is that the case? Let's take a look at the numbers.
Defining 'best player'
Figuring out how to define the best player in a series is trickier than it might seem. First, to be clear, we're not talking about the player who plays best in a given series -- say, Andre Iguodala and Kawhi Leonard winning Finals MVP -- because that's impossible to predict beforehand.
Ideally, we might want to consider multiple years of performance. Part of the reason Boston guard Isaiah Thomas isn't generally considered a better player than Chicago counterpart Jimmy Butler (or Washington Wizards guard John Wall, a likely future opponent if the Celtics were to advance) is because this is his first season playing at an All-NBA level.
Ultimately, I decided to use my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric, prorated to 82 games played to account for injuries during the regular season. While that might not always capture the player considered best by neutral observers, it works well for a large-scale study like this one.
Do teams with the best player win more?
My sample is the 214 best-of-seven series from 2000 to 2016, besides the NBA Finals. The projections for each series winner are based on regular-season point differential and the results of the head-to-head season series. (The Finals are excluded because head-to-head results from the two-game interconference series aren't predictive.)
Of those 214 series, the team with the player whose prorated WARP was highest during the regular season won 145, a little better than two-thirds of the time. However, that statistic doesn't necessarily tell us whether teams with the best player win more than we'd expect, because naturally, the better team usually has the best player. That's the case in 149 of the 214 series.
Instead, we want to split up the series into cases in which the team with home court also had the best player, and cases in which the underdog had the best player.
Here are the 10 series with the largest advantage for the favorite in terms of best player.
The favorite won all 10 of these series, eight of which featured LeBron James. Looking at the whole sample of 149 series in which the favorite had the best player, we'd have expected the home team to win 116 based on their regular-season point differential and head-to-head results. The home team actually won 121, slightly outperforming expectations.
Now, let's take a look at the series in which the underdog had the best player. Here are the 10 largest such advantages.
At this extreme level of difference, having the best player wasn't necessarily predictive. The underdogs won three of these 10 series: the Clippers over the Grizzlies in a 4-5 matchup in the 2012 opening round, the Thunder over the Spurs in the 2012 Western Conference finals and the Warriors over the Nuggets in the 2013 opening round.
Overall, underdogs do fare better than expected when they have the best player in the series. We'd expect them to win about 16 of the 65 series (24.7 percent). Instead, they pulled the upset 24 times (36.9 percent). And though the sample size gets small, that advantage does appear to be larger when they have a more decisive edge in terms of the best player. When it's more than five WARP in their favor, underdogs win 45.5 percent of the time (10 of 22) despite being expected to do so just 24.8 percent of the time (5.5 out of 22).
So yes, having the best player in the series does seem to help a team more in the playoffs than in the regular season.
Looking at this year's series
Having established the value of the best player in the series, let's return to this year's first-round matchups. The largest difference in terms of WARP per 82 games is in Cleveland-Indiana, where LeBron James posted 19.7 WARP to Paul George's 11.1. Three other series -- San Antonio-Memphis, Golden State-Portland and Washington-Atlanta -- had a difference of between three and four WARP for the favorite.
The Clippers-Jazz series, with Chris Paul 1.0 WARP per 82 games ahead of the now-injured Rudy Gobert, is the other first-round series in which the favorite has the better player. If you take away Gobert, Paul is 5.5 WARP ahead of Gordon Hayward.
Collectively, those five favorites are 9-1. By contrast, the three favorites facing an underdog with the best player in the series by this measure -- Antetokounmpo's Bucks, Butler's Bulls and Russell Westbrook's Oklahoma City Thunder -- have gone 3-3.
None of the underdogs with the best player fall into the five-WARP difference that has really boosted their odds. Still, if one of them pulls the upset, having the best player on the court will be part of the explanation.