There's no recipe to make the Finals, but there's an obvious key ingredient

It's the superstars.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Rainbow; Willem Roelofs; 1875

There are no real, ironclad roster requirements to make the NBA Finals these days. Competitive balance is the law of the league, and persistent conference imbalance has tended to make the Eastern Conference crown available to a wider swath of clubs.

But there is one strong indicator — a proposed prerequisite, if you will — of what it requires to make the NBA Finals: you need a top-10 player. We have a decent (not foolproof) way to demarcate the top 10 players in the league in any given season: the first two All-NBA teams. If you make one of those, you are definitionally a top-10 player from that season. There is some weirdness prior to this year around the center position, which ebbs and flows over time. Generally speaking, though, those first two All-NBA teams present a clear case, at least when it comes to the regular season.

As such, here’s the data: in the past 25 years, just four of the 50 teams in the NBA Finals did not have a player on the first two All-NBA teams in that season. So 92% of the Finals teams this century have had a top-10 player. That’s a pretty good rule on a minimum requirement to make it to this stage.

The four teams without a top-10 player, by the way:

• 2000 Indiana Pacers (Jalen Rose, Rik Smith and Reggie Miller got a tiny smattering of All-NBA votes)

• 2005 Detroit Pistons (Ben Wallance finished third team)

• 2010 Boston Celtics (Rajon Rondo finished a couple spots outside of third team)

• 2020 Miami Heat (Jimmy Butler made third team)

It’s happened once since the 2011 collective bargaining agreement went into effect … and that was in the bubble season. The other 27 Finals teams since 2011 had a top-10 player, including the Celtics (Jayson Tatum) and Mavericks (Luka Doncic) this season.