The trade deadline is Thursday. The new U.S. vs. The World edition of the All-Star Game is Feb. 15. There will be some buyout moves in the coming weeks. And, to everyone’s dismay, there will be some tanking down the stretch of the season in pursuit of better odds at the draft lottery.
That’s the schedule.
Not a single playoff spot has been locked up, and technically, no team has even been eliminated from playoff contention yet. There are some reasonable assumptions to make — Oklahoma City, Detroit, San Antonio, Denver, New York and Boston seem like locks for the playoffs, and plenty of other teams can safely assume that they’ll be no worse than a play-in team.
On the flip side of that, Utah, Brooklyn, Washington, Indiana, New Orleans and Sacramento … it’s not looking good. (Milwaukee and Memphis need miracles to get back into the mix, and the soon-to-be-settled, one-way-or-another trade talk around Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ja Morant will likely dictate what happens the rest of this season with the Bucks and Grizzlies.)
Historically, the 50-game mark of the season — all teams have either hit that milestone already or will reach it this week — is the point where some conclusions can be gleaned, where some tendencies can be noted when trying to figure out which teams are the most likely to be the last team standing when Commissioner Adam Silver hands out the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June.
And some trends definitely jump out. The eventual NBA champion, at the 50-game mark, has some distinct characteristics.
Among them:
Must be over .500
The 1977-78 Washington Bullets were 26-24 through 50 games, and that’s the worst record at that point in a season for any team that went on to win a championship.
This rules out Chicago, the Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta, Portland, Charlotte, Dallas, Milwaukee, Memphis, Utah, Brooklyn, Washington, Indiana, New Orleans and Sacramento.
Just like that, the list of 30 teams quickly gets pared down to 16 hopefuls.
Over 30 wins preferred
Only five teams have had fewer than 30 wins through 50 games and won the NBA title: those 1977-78 Bullets, along with four teams in the league’s first decade — the 1946-47 Philadelphia Warriors, the 1947-48 Baltimore Bullets, the 1950-51 Rochester Royals and the 1954-55 Syracuse Nationals.
If that form holds, six more teams fall off the contender list at this point.
Ruled out: Toronto, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Golden State, Miami and Orlando. We’re down to 10 teams left in the race for a title.
Win by 5 points per game
About 70% of the teams — 55 of the 79 — that went on to win NBA titles were outscoring opponents by at least 5.0 points per game through the 50-game mark of a season.
Bad news for Denver, Phoenix and the Los Angeles Lakers. (The Lakers aren’t at the 50-game mark yet but would need a pair of 55-point win this week or something like that to get their point differential up to the 5-per-game mark.) We’re down to seven.
No rebounds, no rings
Since the NBA began charting such stats, about 65% of teams — 36 of 55 — that went on to win titles had a rebound differential of 100 or more through 50 games.
Oklahoma City, to be fair, bucked this trend last season and leads the NBA this season despite being far from a rebounding juggernaut. But rules are rules.
The Thunder are out here, and so is Minnesota. And then there were five.
The parity factor
The NBA has seen seven franchises in the last seven years win titles, a run of parity like none other in league history.
If that trend is going to continue, that means Boston — the champion in 2024 — is out.
That would leave us with four teams left in the race for this season’s championship: Detroit vs. New York in the East, Houston vs. San Antonio in the West.
Teams like the Thunder would argue otherwise — and legitimately so — but such a final four in the NBA wouldn’t be that unpredictable. If nothing else, history says there’s a realistic chance that’s how this season will wind down.
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Around The NBA analyzes the biggest topics in the NBA during the season.
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