In the wake of the Detroit Pistons' basketball championship victory earlier this week, money manager Tim Ghriskey notes on our June 18 program that it's foolish to draw any links between a sports title and stock market performance:

"It's amazing how you can make data in the stock market mean almost anything. … Little data points like these, little anecdotes are fun in terms of the stock market, but I think it's a bit of sophistry, a bit of witchcraft. It's not a smart way to invest."

But that doesn't stop some folks from looking at the coincidental data from Super Bowls, World Series championships and stock markets every year, so if you're feeling whimsical, why not the National Basketball Association title?

Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE took a look at NBA champions going back to the 1959 title of the Boston Celtics, the first dynasty of modern professional basketball, and calculated the average performance of the S&P 500 each year from 1959 through 2003. Among NBA franchises that have won more than one title over that period, the San Antonio Spurs saw the S&P 500 rise 23 percent annually on average during their reigns. The worst results came from the New York Knicks, whose pair of titles coincided with an average loss of 8.6 percent for the large cap index; Earl Monroe, Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and company happened to peak during the 1970s as the market reeled through high inflation, oil crises and political turmoil.

Market averages for the NBA's modern champions:

CHAMP	S&P AVG. PERFORMANCE
San Antonio Spurs	22.96%
Chicago Bulls	19.3%
Phila. 76ers	18.68%
Houston Rockets	16.29%
Detroit Pistons	10.35%
Los Angeles Lakers	5.6%
Boston Celtics	2.45%
New York Knicks	-8.64%
Everyone else	8.84%
S&P 500 annual average, 1959-2003	8.14%

"Everyone else" averages the index's results during title years for one-time winners: Golden State Warriors; Portland Trailblazers; Washington Bullets; Seattle Supersonics and the Milwaukee Bucks. Considering their titles all came in the '70s -- as already noted, a notoriously sluggish time for the market -- the one-hit wonders have remarkable timing. Only Bill Walton's Trailblazers won in a market-losing year: 1977, when the S&P 500 dropped 11.5 percent.

A particularly anomalous point in time was 1975: Golden State's sole championship, a near-miraculous event for a franchise with one of the league's worst records and a rare highlight in the NBA's worst decade for business; and the S&P 500's second-best yearly gain ever with 31.6 percent, yet ultimately nothing more than a bear rally blip in a market malaise that continued into the early 1980s.

The Celtics and Lakers won so many titles that they span the market's entire spectrum: the slide of the latter 1960s, '70s stagnation and the 1980s bull market. Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls trampled their opponents on the hardwood while bulls of a different stripe drove stocks higher in the 1990s. And market indices along with San Antonio basketball were Spurred to peaks in 1999 and 2003.

Again: It's purely for curiosity value. It's not scientific, not logical and not a basis for sound investing. But there's nothing wrong with a little numbers fun.