A league champion is a team that wins its professional sports league championship. In NBA analysis, championship status can identify the one title-winning team in each season and separate it from all other teams. section 12.7.2
Championship status supports practical comparisons. Grouping teams by champ shows that the 28 championship-winning teams from 1991 to 2018 had an average salary-distribution Gini coefficient of 0.53, compared with 0.48 for other teams. section 12.7.2
Testing championship differences
A Welch two-sample t-test compared Gini coefficients for champions and other teams. The result was statistically significant (p = 0.006245), with champions showing more unequal salary distributions rather than the expected greater equality. section 12.7.2
