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It's always exciting when your team gets into the NBA playoffs. Players start talking about stopping the opposing team's star, coaches discuss progress from the year before, general managers get the accolades for assembling a playoff team and, most of all, fans get to hope that their team will go all the way to the Finals. Unfortunately, only one team ever lifts the Larry O'Brien trophy in June – and it's always one of the top regular-season contenders that wins it all. There are no Cinderella stories in the NBA, so to speak.
To come to that conclusion, I had to go back to the 1979-1980 season when the NBA introduced the 3-point shot. I calculated the combined record of the teams that made the Conference Finals, the record of the teams that reached the finals (but not champions), and the record of the teams that won the championship.
The odds are so overwhelmingly stacked against lower seeds, there has been only ONE champion in the NBA with fewer than 50 wins in the regular season, in the past 30 years (including this year, where all 4 Conference Finalists have more than 50 wins). That single champion with below 50 wins was the Houston Rockets of 1994-1995 who had a built-in excuse: They were already the champion the year before and had to deal with injuries to Hakeem Olajuwon (10 games), Clyde Drexler (47 games), Vernon Maxwell (18 games) and Robert Horry (18 games), among other casualties. They were definitely not a Cinderella team.
Next, let’s take a look at the combined Defensive Rating and Offensive Rating of the teams involved:
What is clear from the 2 tables is that the better your win-loss record and offensive/defensive efficiency, the more likely you are to win it all. The best offensive champion of the past 29 years was the 1991-92 Chicago Bulls with an ORtg of 115.52 and the best defensive champion was the 1998-99 San Antonio Spurs with a DRtg of 95.00. The champion with the smallest Rating Differential was the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers at 3.64.
The only surprising runs to the Finals in the past 30 years were made by the 1980-81 Houston Rockets (differential of 0.32) and the New York Knicks of 1998-99 (lockout-shortened season) with a differential of 1.16. Neither team won the championship.
The Raptors are coming off a season with a 107.0 ORtg and a 110.0 DRtg for a negative -3.00 differential. When they make the playoffs again, check their regular season record as well as their Rating Differential to see if there's a championship in their near future — because there are no Cinderella stories in the NBA. 
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