It would be interesting to see once teams get to the playoffs what the parity is like. Also, parity isn’t always the best thing in terms of watching a sport too. The NBA got really popular in an era when the Bulls reigned. I’m sure it wasn’t just love that made it popular. People watched it to hate on ‘em too.

First, William’s second point about baseball’s near-total embrace of sabermetric analysis may actually strengthen the author’s hunch about why basketball has been quicker to adopt advanced statistics. While few baseball minds might be currently stuck in 1968, it took quite a bit of convincing to bring them all up-to-date. Watching this difficult process, and being able to weigh this reluctance against the evident benefit of robust statistical analysis, may have primed basketball front offices to willingly receive the gospel. While basketball nerds still had to design the new stats, they didn’t have to do nearly as much evangelizing as their baseball counterparts–Bill James, Rob Neyer, Michael Lewis, et al did that for them.

Second, but first, in re the greater parity of the Majors….it sure does seems that way. But it’s not entirely clear whether this is a result of differing financial structures or just an artifact of the games themselves and the players that play them. For instance, since the 1984 season, when the modern salary cap was instituted, the NBA championship has been dominated by a handful of teams–Lakers, Celtics, Bulls, Spurs, with Pistons and Rockets claiming a few, too. But is that a comment on the salary cap’s failure to foster parity, or just a result of each team having two or more of the greatest players of all-time on the roster at the same time? Furthermore, it’s the nature of basketball that Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen have a much greater influence on the outcome of a game than even Ruth and Gehrig ever did. Since basketball isn’t a turn-based game like baseball, individual greatness matters more. I’d say the same goes for football, though to a lesser degree. Still, when comparing the effects of differing financial structures across sports, we can’t forget to bear in mind the differences inherent in the sports themselves, and how these differences may influence the comparisons.