Postseason seeding is completely up in the air, but here are the key facts and figures that define the field. Plus, we analyze Boston’s historic conference lead and whether the sterling clutch résumés of the Mavs and Lakers mean anything for their playoff chances.
I welcomed this week at a small park in a northern suburb of Indianapolis, where I’d traveled to watch the solar eclipse. The moon’s blockage of the sun was a breathtaking spectacle and a beautiful reminder of the wonder of the natural world.
But for everyone at my gathering, the eclipse delivered a basketball story as well. About half an hour before totality, a couple marched through the park, shouting at all the astronomy enthusiasts, “Repent or perish! The kingdom of heaven is upon us!”
Eschatological message delivered, the couple then walked onto the park’s basketball court, picked up a ball, and played one-on-one as the temperature dropped and the sky darkened around them. That’s how I’d want to go, too—the “ball is life” philosophy, taken to the utter extreme.
Thank you, fellow ball-is-lifers, for following along with the weekly Kram Session columns this NBA season. This format is done for the year, as the playoff schedule arrives, but I’ve enjoyed sharing this space—and all sorts of stats and graphs and charts—with you each week. So let’s get into the analysis for this week, for one final time before the real season begins.
Under Review: Eight Numbers That Define the 2024 NBA Playoff Teams
The postseason is almost here! Twenty teams remain in contention—if to varying degrees—for the title, and while the NBA doesn’t offer a concentrated dose of March Madness like college basketball, the April/May/June marathon will set course soon.
Almost all of those 20 teams are still unsure who they’ll play along their playoff journey, or what seed they might land. But we do know some numbers that will matter over the months to come—so here are eight facts and figures to help make sense of the upcoming playoff field. Stats are through Tuesday’s games, unless otherwise noted.
Plus-3.2 Points per 100 Possessions
Once again, the Nuggets are awesome when Nikola Jokic is on the floor and terrible when he isn’t. This season, Denver has a plus-12.7 net rating with Jokic on, per Cleaning the Glass, and a minus-11.5 rating with him off, making for by far the largest on/off split among players with at least 1,000 minutes. (Jokic’s on/off swing is 24.2 points per 100 possessions; the biggest swing for a non-Nugget is 14.4 points per 100, for San Antonio’s Tre Jones.)
But the takeaway from that minus-11.5 figure is more nuanced than just concluding Denver can’t function without its MVP. The Nuggets have indeed been abysmal when replacing Jokic with a true reserve center this season—but they’ve trodden water just fine when staggering starters and using Aaron Gordon as a small-ball backup 5.
Nuggets coach Mike Malone hasn’t turned to the Gordon-at-center lineups as much as he’s subbed in DeAndre Jordan or Zeke Nnaji for Jokic. But he’ll surely pivot to much heavier Gordon-at-center usage in the playoffs because that approach worked wonders last postseason. The 2022-23 Nuggets had a plus-4.0 net rating with Jokic off the court in the playoffs, as they almost exclusively used Gordon and Jeff Green—and not Jordan or Nnaji—as their big men.
That plus-4.0 net rating is very similar to the Nuggets’ plus-3.2 mark with Gordon at center this season. Suffice it to say, if the Nuggets are winning the non-Jokic minutes, they’re winning the game in question—and likely repeating as champions, too.
16 Points per Game
A dozen players this season have made their teams at least five points better per 100 possessions, according to estimated plus-minus. Here are five of those stars. What else do they have in common?
- Joel Embiid (first in EPM)
- Giannis Antetokounmpo (fourth)
- Kawhi Leonard (tied for seventh)
- Tyrese Haliburton (10th)
- Donovan Mitchell (11th)
The answer, unfortunately, is that the members of this quintet are either currently injured or recently returned from injury (or, in one case, still seeming to suffer the effects of an injury). And the speed of their recoveries could dictate the course of the playoffs this spring.
Embiid might be in the best shape of anyone on this list, which is surprising for a player who underwent knee surgery this year and might not have returned at all. But the reigning MVP has looked strong, if not quite at his more-than-a-point-per-minute pre-injury pace, since returning to the court at the start of April. The 76ers are undefeated this month and now positioned as a dangerous lower seed in the Eastern Conference bracket.
Giannis and Kawhi both warrant greater question marks; the former suffered a calf strain on Tuesday, while the latter hasn’t played in April due to a knee injury. The Bucks have been outscored without Giannis this season, ditto the Clippers without Kawhi; neither team could survive an extended playoff absence from its best player.
Finally, Haliburton and Mitchell pair nicely together because they’re not quite at the same level as Embiid, Giannis, or Kawhi, and both star guards are back in the lineup but clearly still hampered by their maladies. Haliburton made a premature return from a hamstring strain to preserve his chances at an All-NBA slot, due to the new 65-game minimum—but in the two months since his return, the Pacers point guard has filled the box score less, been less aggressive in calling his own number, and shot worse from the field. Both his per-game and efficiency numbers have cratered.
Meanwhile, Mitchell has played in only seven games since the start of March, and he’s looked just as lost as his team. As Mitchell goes, so goes Cleveland: He exploded in January, as the team embarked on a 17-1 run, but has been horrendous while dealing with the aftereffects of a knee injury. In those seven games, Mitchell’s averaging just 16 points and five assists per game while shooting 37 percent from the field (34 percent on 3s).
A 29-point showing in a win over Memphis on Wednesday offers hope that perhaps Mitchell will be whole again by the start of the playoffs. But neither the Pacers nor Cavaliers will make much noise unless their lead guards rediscover their All-Star forms.
199.6 Pounds
The NBA’s smallest team by height is the Warriors, at an average of 6 feet, 5.6 inches per player (weighted by minutes played, based on an analysis of Basketball Reference data). That makes sense, given coach Steve Kerr’s proclivity for playing without a true center. The Knicks (6 feet, 5.8 inches) are the only other team with an average height below 6-foot-6.
The Warriors aren’t the NBA’s smallest team by weight, however; that would be the Thunder, with stringbean Chet Holmgren at center. Oklahoma City’s average team weight, based on B-Ref figures, is just 199.6 pounds, followed by the Warriors at 206.9 pounds as the only other team below 210. Interestingly, the Thunder have a top-10 defense, but none of the next eight lightest teams do.
On the other end of the scale (literally), the NBA’s heaviest teams are the Suns (225.2 pounds on average), Magic (224.3), and Nuggets (224.2), and the tallest team is the Magic (6 feet, 7.7 inches), followed by the Timberwolves, Nuggets, Spurs, Lakers, and Celtics (all at 6 feet, 7.1 inches).
Of course, the last two NBA champions come from either end of that spectrum: the small and skinny Warriors in 2022, the big bad Nuggets in 2023. Thus, a playoff matchup in 2024 between two of these opposites—like Warriors vs. Nuggets or Timberwolves, or Thunder vs. Lakers—would pose a fascinating clash of aesthetics and styles.
5.3 Extra Points per Game off Turnovers
Much of the angst around Oklahoma City’s playoff chances concerns the young team’s lack of size. Coach Mark Daigneault likes to position four perimeter players around Holmgren in the middle, meaning the Thunder are vulnerable to bruising opposing bigs. In particular, Oklahoma City’s 29th-place defensive rebounding rate highlights the team’s difficulty in this area, with opponents generating numerous extra scoring opportunities every game. (It’s worth noting, however, that OKC is a much more respectable 14th in defensive rebounding rate since the All-Star break, per CtG.)
But a hidden advantage helps Oklahoma City make up for that weakness, and then some. The Thunder force the most turnovers in the league, per CtG, and commit the third-fewest; they score 5.3 more points off turnovers than their opponents, which is by far the largest margin in the league. OKC’s advantage in points off turnovers is more than double that of any other team except Philadelphia (plus-3.5), and also greater than the Thunder’s deficit in second-chance points (where they’re outscored by 3.9 points per game).
Oklahoma City’s two-way turnover advantage starts with its lead guard: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will win this season’s steals title and, on the offensive end, has the lowest turnover rate among players with at least a 30 percent usage rate. But the entire team is opportunistic and disciplined, and could leverage that approach into crucial extra possessions in its first playoff appearance in four years.
9.2 Minutes per Game
Jalen Brunson keeps assuming heavier burdens, and he keeps excelling despite the added stress. First, he leapt from a role as Luka Doncic’s sidekick to the Knicks’ lead guard, and now he’s operating as essentially his team’s sole creator, with Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett in Toronto and Julius Randle out for the season with a shoulder injury.
Since Randle’s last game on January 27, Brunson ranks first in the NBA in time of possession (9.2 minutes per game), usage rate (35.3 percent), and field goal attempts (23.7 per game), edging out former teammate Doncic in all of those categories. Brunson has adapted to that workload with aplomb, averaging 31 points with solid efficiency in that stretch and keeping his team in the mix for a high playoff seed.
But will that sort of on-the-fly heliocentrism work in the playoffs? New York has received healthy contributions from Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Hart, and Miles McBride over the last two months, but none of those players is adept at creating his own shot; nor is 3-and-D specialist OG Anunoby, who returned (again) from an elbow injury last week.
Presumably, when opposing defenses have the time to concentrate on a Brunson-specific game plan over the course of a playoff series, they will be able to force the ball out of his hands more often. And then New York might feel Randle’s absence more acutely, much like the 2022-23 Heat, who reached the Finals despite (because of?) Tyler Herro’s absence, but really could have used his shotmaking once their role players sputtered against Denver. Randle is no playoff savior—career 34 percent shooting in the postseason!—but at some point in the coming months, New York might wish it had another scorer to give Brunson a break.
Plus-4.8 Net Rating
Despite a recent swoon without Brandon Ingram, the underlying stats say the Pelicans remain a dark horse contender in the West. New Orleans is only in sixth place in the conference and might not even avoid the play-in round—but the team has the sixth-best net rating in the NBA, at plus-4.8 points per 100 possessions.
But here’s the more prickly Pelicans puzzle. Only four of the team’s rotation players have an on-court net rating of plus-4.8 or better, and none of those players is Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram, or CJ McCollum, the three brightest stars. Nor is Jonas Valanciunas—the fourth-highest-paid player—included. In fact, the McCollum/Ingram/Williamson trio has been outscored this season.
Instead, the four Pelicans rotation players with the best on-court net ratings are Jose Alvarado, Naji Marshall, Trey Murphy III, and Herb Jones. That dissonance reflects the fact that New Orleans is often at its best when coach Willie Green calls on younger and more athletic lineups. The Pelicans have the no. 5 overall defense even though their best players are all offensively oriented; such is the power of role players with stouter defensive chops.
That trend suggests Green will have to make some thorny lineup decisions in the postseason. He’s already proved willing to bench Valanciunas and go smaller in certain matchups; how much further might he go if his team falls behind in a series?
18th-Ranked Defense
Contrary to the cliché, defense doesn’t win champions. Offense doesn’t, either. Instead, it’s balance that generally paves the way for champions in the NBA. As I wrote earlier this season:
The last team to win the championship after ranking 20th or worse on either end of the floor was the 2000-01 Lakers, the ultimate “flip the switch” team, who were 22nd on defense in the regular season. Expand to all Finals teams, not just the victors, and the group gets only a bit bigger. In the past two decades, only the 2022-23 Heat (25th on offense), 2017-18 Cavaliers (29th on defense), and 2016-17 Cavaliers (21st on defense) have reached the Finals while ranking 20th or worse on either end.
So which Finals hopefuls are in the danger zone this season, based on that precedent? Two playoff or play-in teams rank 20th or worse on offense: the Heat (21st) and Magic (22nd). Both Florida teams play a rugged defensive style but may struggle to score enough to advance—unless Miami is ready to unleash more playoff magic this spring.
More teams enter the postseason with worrisome defenses. The Hawks rank 27th on defense and the Bulls 21st—though it’s exceedingly unlikely that the teams slated to meet in the East’s 9-vs.-10 matchup will make a long playoff run, anyway. Indiana’s 24th-ranked defense has been a concern all season.
And while they aren’t technically in 20th place or below, the Bucks and Mavericks are tied for 18th in defensive rating, just half a point better than the 20th-place Nets. Given the star power and expectations for both Milwaukee and Dallas, these teams might suffer the greatest disappointments if their imbalance precludes a deep playoff run.
36.6 Percent 3-Point Accuracy
At some point in the playoffs, the Celtics’ shooting will invariably go cold for a night, and analysts will wonder whether Joe Mazzulla’s team is too reliant on the long range. But Boston is the best team in the NBA for several reasons, and its cavalcade of 3-point threats is one of them: The Celtics lead the league in 3-point makes and attempts, and are basically in a three-way tie (along with the Thunder and Timberwolves) for best 3-point percentage.
Boston’s offensive strategy works so well—the team is scoring 122.2 points per 100 possessions, the highest mark in NBA history and a full two ticks better than the second-place Pacers—because Mazzulla rarely plays anyone who can’t make an open shot from distance. The Celtics have seven players who are (a) attempting at least four 3-pointers per game, and (b) making those tries at a league-average rate or better (36.6 percent). No other team has more than four such players.
That Boston total includes seven of the eight Celtics who have played at least 1,000 minutes this season; the only exception is Jaylen Brown, who’s taking enough 3s to qualify but comes up just short in accuracy, at 35.6 percent. All five Boston starters are good to great shooters from long range. (Jrue Holiday has taken a step back offensively on his new team, but is quietly up to a career-best 43 percent from distance.) So are key reserves Al Horford, Sam Hauser, and Payton Pritchard.
So how is this team guardable, when everyone exerts meaningful gravity and can punish a defensive mistake? The Celtics’ statistical résumé looks so phenomenal that it seems only they can beat themselves.
Zacht of the Week: Boston’s Historic Conference Lead
Speaking of the best team in the NBA: The 2023-24 Celtics don’t just have the fifth-best point differential of any team in league history. (The top four teams all won the championship.) They’re also dominating their conference in historic fashion, with just 17 losses and a 13.5-game lead in the East. That 13.5-game gap between the Celtics and second-place Bucks is larger than the gap between the Bucks and 10th-place Hawks.
On The Bill Simmons Podcast this week, the boss wondered whether there was any precedent for such a massive advantage for the conference leader. “Do you ever remember anyone having a 14-game lead?” he asked.
Well, unless any readers have memories of the NBA before it merged with the ABA in 1976, the answer is no. In earlier eras with fewer teams, wider gaps were a bit more common; the St. Louis Hawks won the Western Division by 16 games in 1959-60 and 15 games in 1960-61 despite playing fewer than 80 games in both seasons!
But since the merger, the record is a 12-game conference lead, which has occurred three times, most recently with the 2012-13 Heat. With a 13.5-game lead in hand and games remaining against the Knicks, Hornets, and Wizards, the 2023-24 Celtics should comfortably top that record.
Unsurprisingly, previous teams with similarly large leads over the rest of the conference enjoyed tremendous playoff success because of both their own talent and the lack of close competition that could challenge them in the postseason. Out of 11 previous post-merger teams who won their conference by double digits, nine won the championship. The two exceptions both lost in the conference finals: the 2005-06 Pistons, to the Heat, and the 1985-86 Lakers, to the Rockets.
Take That for Data: Will the Mavs’ and Lakers’ Clutch Success Carry Over to the Playoffs?
Two of the most obvious sleeper candidates in the West—can a sleeper be obvious?—are the Mavericks and Lakers, who share a few common traits. Both are led by two superstars. Both have played much better since the All-Star break, suggesting they might be peaking at the right time. And both have been extraordinary in crunch time this season.
Both the Mavericks and Lakers have 23-9 records in clutch games, defined by NBA.com as contests in which the scoring margin was within five points in the last five minutes. The Nuggets (26-13) are the only other team to win at least two-thirds of its clutch games; the overall clutch win percentage for the 20 teams bound for the playoffs or play-in is 55.9 percent.
But does that regular-season success mean anything for the playoffs? I’ve written before about how clutch performance doesn’t tend to translate from the regular season to the postseason, but what if we look at only the clutch outliers?
Sorry to Mavs and Lakers fans: The answer is still that regular-season clutch performance doesn’t mean much for the playoffs.
Recent anecdotes affirm this null hypothesis. The best clutch team last season was the Bucks, who were 27-8 in close games in the regular season. They proceeded to go 0-2 in clutch playoff games—both of them humiliating losses to the eighth-seeded Heat. The best clutch team in 2020-21 was the 76ers, who went 2-5 in clutch playoff games. The best clutch team in 2019-20 was the Bucks, who went 1-4 in clutch playoff games. The best clutch team in 2018-19 was the Nuggets, who went 3-4 in clutch playoff games.
Those examples are not meant to imply that every good clutch team in the regular season goes on to lose the majority of its clutch playoff games. The mid-2010s Warriors, for instance, were very good in the clutch in both the regular season and postseason (albeit with one very famous clutch loss).
But an analysis of all teams in the 21st century that won at least two-thirds of their clutch games in the regular season reveals that they won only 54.6 percent of their clutch games in the postseason—much closer to 50/50 than their remarkable regular-season marks. The statistical concept of regression to the mean is nearly undefeated.
Dallas’s recent clutch triumphs have been particularly exciting, in part because the team’s stars have a penchant for making tough shots in tense moments (see: Kyrie Irving’s lefty buzzer-beater against the Nuggets). But it’s not as if the Mavericks have a long track record of clutch success; after drafting Luka Doncic, Dallas had been a roughly average clutch team before this season.
Over the weekend, Dallas stole a clutch win when the Rockets’ Jabari Smith Jr. missed two free throws in the closing seconds, Dante Exum sank a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, and the Mavericks never looked back in overtime. That victory provided both a key win for Dallas’s place in the standings and a set of spectacular highlights—but that’s probably not a replicable formula for future victories. Once the playoffs begin, the Mavericks should be just as likely to lose close games as any other team.
Fast Breaks
1. An Easy Proposal for Tanking Reform
The two most egregious tanking efforts of the season belong to Utah and Toronto. The Jazz started 26-26 but are 3-24 since. (That’s a 9-73 pace over a full season.) Meanwhile, the Raptors are 2-17 in their last 19 games. (That’s also a 9-73 pace.)
What does this duo have in common? They’re each trying to retain protected picks. Toronto owes the Spurs a top-six-protected pick and now has the sixth-worst record in the league; Utah owes another team (probably the Thunder, but it’s complicated) a top-10-protected pick and has ducked all the way back to the eighth-worst record.
Throughout recent NBA history, the most nauseating tank jobs have largely come in this fashion, from the Mavericks’ fine-worthy tank to keep a top-10-protected pick last season (which turned into Dereck Lively II after a draft night trade) to the Warriors’ slide for a top-seven-protected pick in 2012 (which turned into Harrison Barnes). Mark Madsen’s infamous 3-point-fest in 2006 helped the Timberwolves keep a top-10-protected pick. This distinction is especially apparent now that flattened lottery odds mean teams no longer pursue races to the very bottom of the standings as aggressively as they once did.
Look at that pattern, and a simple fix to curb the worst tanking impulses emerges: When teams are trading future protected picks, let them negotiate top-four protections (because the top four picks are doled out via lottery) or top-14 protections (to account for every team that misses the playoffs), but nothing in between. That way, there would be no more incentive to maneuver toward a specific threshold in the standings, and decent teams like the Jazz, Raptors, and last year’s Mavericks would continue to compete all the way through the end of the regular season. Get on it, NBA!
2. Charting Victor Wembanyama’s Season-Long Improvement
This week, we updated the Ringer Top 100 player rankings for the final time this regular season. Unsurprisingly, Jokic finished as the wire-to-wire no. 1 player. Perhaps more surprisingly, Victor Wembanyama soared into the no. 16 spot, ahead of a number of established All-Stars and max-contract cornerstones. Wemby followed an upward trajectory in each monthly update all season long: He began the preseason at no. 67 in our rankings—before ever playing a regular-season NBA game—then jumped to no. 56 in December, no. 52 in January, no. 38 in February, no. 24 in March, and finally no. 16 in April.
Frankly, even 16th might not be high enough for a player with Wembanyama’s skill set and production; the DARKO projection system says that, right now, the 20-year-old rookie is a top-10 player in the league. How soon until he reaches the top five, according to both the advanced metrics and our eye test? It might not be long, given his current climbing pace.
3. A Final, Memorable Fast Break
Finally, we must end the final Kram Session of the season with the most cringeworthy lowlight of the season. I’ve tried to avoid dropping in singular plays in this column—that’s what instant reactions on Twitter are for—but a particular play from the Bulls’ loss to the Knicks this week was too jaw-dropping to pass up. After all, this is the Fast Breaks section, and this blooper came on a 3-on-0 fast break.
So take it away, Torrey Craig and Andre Drummond! (Spare a thought for Drummond, who needed to sprint back on defense immediately afterward and then sprained his ankle.) We’ll see you in the play-in next week.