What is more difficult? Undefeated in the NBA Playoffs or undefeated NFL season?

I thought this was a relevant off season topic.

Before these NBA playoffs I would have said it was more difficult to go undefeated during an entire NFL season. Now after seeing game 4 I am not so sure. No team would have beaten the Cavs that night. It seemed even the NBA (refereeing) made sure.

My answer is it depends on the competition. The Dolphins swept during a weak NFL season. That's why it would have been a greater accomplishment if Golden State swept San Antonio & the Cavs.

One interesting note: The Dolphins actually had a road playoff game in their season. How does that happen to an undefeated team? The current system of BYE and home field through out may be another reason it is more difficult in the NBA. Eight of their games are on the road.

What about undefeated entire NBA season 82-0 plus playoffs and championship

NFL season by far. The margin of error is much smaller than it is in today's NBA.

Undefeated in the NBA playoffs requires defeating 4 quality teams 8 times on the road.

Undefeated in the NFL likely includes defeating multiple garbage teams home and away ....ie.....Jets, Miami, Bills.... skipping one playoff game...hosting two playoff games ....and then playing the championship at a neutral site.

Never having to play a hostile road playoff game creates a much easier path to remain undefeated.

Edit: Furthermore, the #1 seed advantage in the NFL is considerably lopsided...often playing teams that:
1) played an extra playoff game (wildcard)
2) traveled as the away team 1, 2, 0r 3 weeks in a row
3) play on a surface different than their team was built for
4) play in a stadium different than theirs (indoor vs outdoor)
5) play in a different climate

....while the NBA 's only imbalance consists of an extra home game for higher seeds....which is irrelevant to the premise being argued.

Edit 2.0: And let's not discount the impact/impediment of officiating, especially in the NBA

6) Officials are humans and their emotions come into play, especially when caught up in the raucous frenzy that often occurs by home fans. Home teams get the calls and NBA teams hoping to sweep in the playoffs must combat both their opponent and slanted human nature 8 times on the road.....verses zero times for #1 seeded NFL playoff teams.
7) It is well known that the NBA has deployed specific officials carrying out league edict to extend series and/or achieve a desired outcome. Financially, sweeps force the NBA to return tens of millions to sponsors. The financial impact of 16 NBA games verses the maximum 28 is massive ....while the NFL playoffs is a permanent, defined schedule.

NFL is harder. Just look at the division games for the Pats. When they're totally focused like these past two against the Jets and Dolphins, they dusted them, but it's mostly been a struggle (the 2014 Pats beat the Jets by three total points in two games).

The NBA, pure talent almost always wins. It took the Cavs making like 26 three pointers to win one single game.

I'd say NFL...more fluky.

Family said:

I thought this was a relevant off season topic.

Before these NBA playoffs I would have said it was more difficult to go undefeated during an entire NFL season. Now after seeing game 4 I am not so sure. No team would have beaten the Cavs that night. It seemed even the NBA (refereeing) made sure.

My answer is it depends on the competition. The Dolphins swept during a weak NFL season. That's why it would have been a greater accomplishment if Golden State swept San Antonio & the Cavs.

One interesting note: The Dolphins actually had a road playoff game in their season. How does that happen to an undefeated team? The current system of BYE and home field through out may be another reason it is more difficult in the NBA. Eight of their games are on the road.

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Looked it up, wow that's stupid as ****.

Like the previous NFL seasons, the home teams in the playoffs were decided based on a yearly divisional rotation, excluding the wild card teams who would always play on the road. via Wikipedia

Nfl... In a typical game u get 8 to 10 possessions? In nba you get 800 to 1000???? No idea but it leaves alot more room to make up for a bad stretch if youre the favorite.

Also in this era particularly you cant build a super team in nfl. The lineup gs has assembled is simply ridiculous.

What about 162-0 baseball seasons plus postseason? Has that ever been done? Let me check and report back.

But seriously, NFL. There are a lot more moving parts in football. A lot more has to go right and any mistake you make is magnified because there are fewer possessions. In the NBA, a few talented players can swing every game, it's much less coaching-dependent.

Warriors choked again! How will their fans ever live with themselves...

I think it's pretty close with both of them being equally difficult.

We can all agree going undefeated in the NFL is close to impossible.

The challenge for the NBA team is to go 16-0 versus ALL playoff teams with at a minimum 8 being on the road.

In my lifetime I've seen some pretty dominant teams (83 Sixers, 86 Celts, 87 Lakers, 90s Bulls teams, 2000s Lakers and Spurs teams and this GS team) and none of them have swept the playoffs.

Wheelman said:

Warriors choked again! How will their fans ever live with themselves...

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Interesting they voted as a team not to go to the White House.

Its close, but I'd give the edge to the NBA. The NBA has the best home field advantage in sports. Think of the truly historic 86 Celtics: 40-1 at home, 27-14 on the road; 10-0 at home in postseason, 5-3 on the road in the postseason. I'd imagine other all-time NBA champs having similar home/road splits. Going a perfect 8-0 on the road in today's NBA postseason seems slightly more mind-boggling than going undefeated in the NFL...slightly.

That GS came one game away from doing it is remarkable. And yet at the same time showed how hard it is to do. I mean look at that roster! And yet they still couldn't do it.

Regards,
Chris

I will say even to be honest. An NBA game in itself is more consistent as a whole than an NFL game. In the NFL 2-3 fluke plays can turn a game that should be safe into not safe. In the NBA you need a lot more flukes to happen and even then the better team needs to just under preform which isn't as common in the playoffs. But you get more games against top teams in the NBA playoffs. Half of your NBA playoffs games are theoretically against 2 of the top 4 teams. Even though games as less fluky that is a higher level of competition than your NFL 16 game schedule.

The fact a perfect season has happened in the NFL just 1 time (17-0 Miami) and 16-0 just once in the modern salary cap era (Pats) vs 0 times in NBA history has a team run the post season gauntlet would potentially argue the NBA playoffs is harder but the sample size is too small to say for sure.

Aside from the Patriots right now, NFL teams are usually talented enough to at least stand a puncher's chance on any given Sunday. The NBA basically has a few elite players, atrocious and arbitrary officiating, and too many bad teams get in. No question an undefeated NFL season is harder.

jboston19 said:

Aside from the Patriots right now, NFL teams are usually talented enough to at least stand a puncher's chance on any given Sunday. The NBA basically has a few elite players, atrocious and arbitrary officiating, and too many bad teams get in. No question an undefeated NFL season is harder.

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People were forgetting that this flawed Cavs team was also undefeated until they coughed up a hairball against the C's. An undefeated season in the NFL is much harder.

To be a dissenting voice, the NBA playoff gauntlet is probably just as difficult, but both of these are extremely difficult in any case. As others have mentioned, with the NBA it's 16 playoff games, so it's all playoff teams (albeit with a bigger field). The gap in quality between a 1 and 8 seed is vastly wider in the NBA than the gap between a 1 seed and Wild Card team in the NFL.

The other reason I say this is somewhat counterintuitive, but it speaks to the point Kontradiction made above. The question isn't whether it's easier to win a championship if you're the best team in either sport, but whether it's easier to go undefeated. There's absolutely zero question that it's easier for the best team in the league to win a playoff series or championship in the NBA than it is in football.

There's a psychological element in sports with a 7 game series. You can afford to drop a game in any given series and still win the war even if you're a better team. Behind by double-digits late in the 3rd quarter, up 2 or 3 games in a series? The coach might just rest his stars and preserve them for the next night, and it's ultimately probably a good decision.

In the NFL, no such luck. Lose a playoff game and you're out. You can't afford to pace yourself. Losing a single game in the NFL, at least in the playoffs, just has much more dire implications than does losing a single game in the NBA, and that probably reflects itself in a team and coaching staff's approach to whether a loss is strategically affordable. As a result, NBA teams are not only going against the other team when it comes to this, but you're also facing off against the tendency your own team or coaching staff may have to strategically pace themselves in any given single game.

On the other hand, any given game in the NFL is more prone to randomness because there are fewer plays in a game than in the NBA. A single fumble or interception changes the game much more than a turnover in the NBA. Figure any given play is a roll of the dice, weighted by the quality of the teams. The NBA has more rolls, so the results tend to be distributed more normally. The NFL has fewer rolls, leading to a much less smooth distribution of results.

In either case, you're going to need a great deal of luck (Rex Ryan calling a timeout before a play you failed on, for example). It's maybe the lazy answer, but both are extremely difficult tasks and neither has ever been accomplished (at least with a 16-game regular season in the NFL) so the preponderance of evidence suggests that neither is more difficult than the other.

Family said:

One interesting note: The Dolphins actually had a road playoff game in their season. How does that happen to an undefeated team?

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IIRC, HFA in the CCG used to rotate among the divisions.

17 weeks of grinding and non-stop speculation from the media is like a boiling pot of water. Due to the intense pressure over a much longer period of time factoring in the time of preparation an opponent has to prepare, the number of players involved and chance of injury... I'd have to say the NFL. Not even close.

So glad Kevin Love didn't come here.