Teaching Moments

Great Game! But Who Was Better?

A mini-lecture from OWU's 2025 i³ event by Erin Flynn, Professor in the Department of Philosophy & Religion

Two questions. First, do you think the result of an athletic contest is supposed to show who has been better in the game? Second, do you think the best games are close games?

Many people, including many philosophers of sport, answer yes to both questions. I argue that a "yes" answer to both cannot be defended, for the closer a game gets, the worse it gets as a comparative test of skill, and the very best games cannot credibly determine who has in fact been better.

Before I turn to my arguments, let me present an example of a particularly wellplayed close contest, the sixth game of the 2013 NBA Finals.

Lebron's Miami Heat were facing elimination, and the San Antonio Spurs held a 3-point lead on Miami's final possession in regulation. The Spurs forced Lebron into a tough 3-pointer, which he missed. The ball caromed just beyond the reach of the Spurs' Kawhi Leonard; Chris Bosh of the Heat grabbed the rebound and, before falling out of bounds, found Ray Allen for a 25-foot 3-point try. Allen made the shot, and the Heat went on to win the game in a close overtime.

Doesn't that result prove the Heat were better than the Spurs in that game? No.

Go back to the beginning of that final possession. I contend that you cannot credibly say that either the Spurs or the Heat had been clearly better to that point. The very closeness of the game makes such a determination impossible.

If you cannot credibly determine who has been better after 99% of the game, then it doesn't matter what happens in the final 1%. You still can't credibly say who has been better. The Spurs-Heat game nicely illustrates this point, because the Heat definitely did not outplay the Spurs on that final possession. The Spurs played defense about as well as you can, forcing Miami into a missed shot. And consider Ray Allen's made shot. Allen was one of the NBA's all-time best 3-point shooters, but his career 3-point percentage was 40%. Worse than a coinflip.

Do you think the best games are close games?

Of course, after the game ends, we hear all about how the winner actually outplayed the loser. But these are fictions, created only once we know the result.

My second argument asks you to consider such games in the aggregate. As statistical analysts in many sports have demonstrated, winning close games is not sustainable, not something any team can consistently and reliably do.

Why? Because those games are chancy affairs, and winning them tells us nothing reliable about the relative superiority of the winner.

If you want clear evidence that a side is superior, then they better be winning games by a comfortable margin—games that fans might consider dull.

In conclusion, the best games fail to reveal who was better—so that can't be a game's purpose. We should stop insisting that the winners of the best games are in fact better. It should be enough to acknowledge that both sides were excellent, and to accept that to the victor goes the spoils.