Originally Posted by
gut
A fun thought experiment that only works in the NBA. There are 8 teams currently winning more than 60% of their games, call them the contenders (GS, Hou, Min, SA, OKC, Cle, Bos, Tor). Build an all-star roster of anyone from the remaining 22 teams, does that team win the title? Hypothetically, that roster could look like:
Guards: Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Bradley Beal, Kemba Walker, Victor Oladipo, Devin Booker
Wings/Bigs: Ben Simmons, Greek Freek, Kristaps, Marc Gasol, Joel Embiid, Blake Griffin, Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic
Now obviously that team has insane depth, but in a playoff series with GS's main guys playing 40 minutes, who wins? I think it is actually possible Golden State wins, or at the very least it is a moderately close series.
I suppose this experiment could work in baseball also, assuming the top team, say Houston right now, has 3 starters all on the top of their game (kuechel, verlander, cole) they can win a 7 game series vs an all-star team of the bottom 22 teams. part of that though is the randomness of baseball, and 7 games still being a small sample size.
Wouldnt work at all in the NFL or NHL, the 2 leagues with an actual hard cap.