The San Antonio Spurs have salvaged the NBA Finals. If the New York Knicks returned to Madison Square Garden and took a 3-0 lead, there would be no intrigue for the rest of the finals. But now that the Spurs have stolen a game and snapped the Knicks’ 13-game win streak, all of a sudden, it feels like either side could hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a huge NBA fan. I adore college basketball, but I usually only tune into the NBA for the playoffs, and this year, I can hardly say that much. I didn’t really start watching until the Finals, but these last three games have me totally tapped in.

While watching Game 3 of the Finals on Monday night, I got to thinking, is it hard to win the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl? I debated this topic with a couple of my colleagues on Tuesday morning, and I’ll admit that even as I’m writing this intro, I truly don’t know which one is harder. And that’s precisely why I’m writing this article, because I want to figure out my answer.

Today, I’m going to dive into what makes winning both of these championships so difficult, and in the end I’m going to attempt to determine which one is the hardest to win.

Why the Super Bowl is Harder to Win

Let’s start with the championship I am much more well versed in: the Super Bowl. As a diehard NFL fan that is paid to cover the league, my initial thought was that the Super Bowl is harder to win. But as I talked about it with some of my friends, I’m not totally convinced.

What makes winning the Super Bowl so hard? Well, let’s start with the obvious. You can’t screw up. One bad game and you’ll be packing your bags and heading to Cabo. In the NBA, you can slip up not just once, but three times and still advance to the next round/win the championship. In the NFL, all it takes is one loss and you’re done.

On top of that, the NFL is more of a team sport. Yes, you can win without having the best roster, but if you put Tom Brady on the New York Jets during the early 2000s and the 2010s, he’s not winning a single championship. Meanwhile, LeBron James was able to carry some pretty mediocre teams to the Finals. He didn’t always win it with those teams, but he brought them much further than they ever should’ve gone.

I’m not saying you can win it all with a bad roster in the NBA, but if you have the 12th best roster in the sport, but you have someone like LeBron leading the team, you still have a chance to win it all. One player can make that much of an impact in basketball, but that isn’t true for football. You need to have a stacked roster on both sides of the ball to win it all, at least most of the time (I’m looking at you, 2007 and 2011 New York Giants).

Another reason winning the Super Bowl is incredibly tough is because you have to have a solid quarterback in place. You can have as great of a roster as you want, but if you don’t have a quarterback, you’re not going to win it all.

In the NBA, this isn’t true. If you have an elite center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard or point guard, it doesn’t really matter. As long as you have a superstar, or just an incredibly well rounded roster, you can win it all. You don’t need to have an elite point guard facilitating your offense.

The NFL also has a lot more parity than the NBA. In the NFL, it’s incredibly hard to be great year after year, while in the NBA, it feels like dynasties last a lot longer. There’s a reason only two players in NFL history have five or more rings, while in the NBA, there have been 26 players to accomplish that feat. And it’s not just because there have been more NBA Championships than Super Bowls.

And on top of all of that, there’s the weather. The NFL playoffs are played mostly outside in January and February. You could play in a dome in the Wild Card round, a blizzard in the Divisional and then 30+ MPH winds in the Conference Championship. And you better pray to the lord that your team is built to handle those conditions. If you’re a pass-heavy offense that scores 30+ PPG, and then you have to go to Denver in a blizzard against a very good defense, your season could end just because of a storm.

Why the NBA Finals is Harder to Win

I know I said the fact that you can lose three games and still win makes it easier for the NBA, but you could also argue that having to win four games makes it harder. In the NFL, there’s a saying that it’s hard to beat the same team twice. Well, in the NBA, if you want to win it all, you have to beat the same team four times just to advance to the next round. And then you have to do that three more times to win the championship. Instead of having to win 3-4 games to win it all, you have to win 16.

Travel is another factor in why it’s tougher to win the NBA Finals. In the NFL, if you’re the 1-seed, you can just sit back on your couch, sleep in your own bed and relax, because all of your games up until the Super Bowl will be at home. And even when you travel for the Super Bowl, you have two weeks between the conference championship and the big game to travel and get acclimated to the time change (if there is any).

As for the NBA, even if you’re the higher seed, you still have to hit the road for at least two games. In case you don’t know how it works, in the NBA, the higher seed plays two games at home, then goes two on the road, and then they alternate game-by-game for the final three (if it goes to seven games). That’s a lot of traveling, especially because there are only a day or two in between games.

Another part of traveling is that you have to play a minimum of two road games per series. Even if you’re the 1-seed playing the 8-seed, it’s never easy to go on the road in a playoff atmosphere and get a win (even though the three Finals game thus far have all been road wins).

Football is the more physical sport, but all the travel and having to play between 16 and 28 games in the playoffs alone make the NBA playoffs incredibly taxing.

The Verdict

Maybe I’m a bit biased because I’m a way bigger football fan than basketball fan, but I think winning the Super Bowl is harder. There are just so many factors that could ruin your entire season.

Your starting quarterback tore his Achilles? Good luck bouncing back from that (Indianapolis Colts).

You’ve won every game by scoring a ton of points? Well now you have to play in 30 MPH winds with some snow falling against one of the most well-rounded teams in the league (Chicago Bears).

You have one of the best defenses the NFL has seen in the past decade, but you have a quarterback that turned the ball over five times in one game? Sorry, you’re not even making the semifinals (Houston Texans).

Made the NFC Championship game last year? Well, this year your quarterback is going to get hurt and all of your free agent signings, which looked good on paper, aren’t going to pan out and you’re only going to win six games (Washington Commanders).

All it takes is one key injury, one game in bad weather or one off game from your quarterback to completely ruin your entire season. In the NBA, if you screw up, there’s almost always another game to make up for it.

I don’t want to take away from how hard it is to win an NBA title, because it is not easy whatsoever, but the fact that you could lose 12 playoff games and still win the Championship takes a lot of that difficulty away.