For all the grousing of the long 82-game NBA regular season, it does make for a significant sample size. Habits developed over the six-month slog of basketball are telling as far as trying to figure out what a team’s identity is. Teams tell us who they are—not in the span of one night, or even one week, or even one month. But over the course of 82 games, nearly 4,000 minutes of basketball, trends emerge that help define who the contenders are and what their possible weak points could be. It also helps expose the pretenders, teams soaring above their talent level thanks to statistical anomalies.
It is not always the case that these trends carry over to postseason play. Anything can happen in the playoff gauntlet. No amount of analysis could have led to the conclusion that the 73–9 Golden State Warriors would lose three straight games and blow a 3–1 lead in the NBA Finals. But most of the time, trends that can be observed over the course of a regular season, backed up by 82 games’ worth of evidence, are indicative of playoff performance. There’s a reason the NBA postseason is usually chalk as they come; only two champions in league history have been lower than the three-seed.
-copy-29e15046.jpeg?w=600)
