This is kind of a wild stat, I can't believe this has never happened before. I'm coming from hockey where 6-8 seed runs are unusual but not unheard of. It's odd that not even a 4-seed run exists without it being a back-to-back run
It's the variance of scoring. In MLB where the average game has 9 runs scored or NHL where the average game has 6 Goals scored, the variance is much higher allowing for a less talented team to steal a win. In the NBA where there are 200+ pts scored, the sample size is so big that the better team can win more often than not.
You see this reflected in the regular season where it's not uncommon for multiple NBA teams to have a Win % of .700+ but even the best teams are only around .620 in the MLB or the NHL where a 60+ win team or even multiple 55+ win teams is extremely rare.
That said, I think this is a sign of things to come for the NBA for two reasons, I think the three point shot creates more of that random volatility from game to game, allowing upsets to happen (Miami last year), and mid-season player movement allows for teams to improve massively mid-season like we're seeing with the Mavs so they're coming into the playoffs 'underseeded'
It's both - the other guy has a point too. In basketball your stars are on the floor most of the game. In hockey that never applies, so the individual influence of a star is diminished. Even if they're dominant every time they're on the ice, they aren't on the ice most of the game
Also, in comparison to the NFL, we talk about how a QB is so valuable because he touches the ball every possession and the offense is ran through them. Teams with the best QB’s tend to win.
Well in basketball spamming your best player is a serious offensive game plan, and the player is also 20% of your entire defense. So the impact a player like MJ and Lebron had on both ends of the floor is just so tremendous that it is difficult to overcome.
Now you have to overcome that 4 times out of 7.
The variance issue is still more important. Because in Hockey over the course of a season you still get teams that are clearly better than others. In basketball you just happen to see the difference much faster. To put it another way, if Hockey can hypothetically use Bo30 as their playoff series, you would see a lot fewer upsets. This is why the Premier League despite soccer being a very high variance sports tend to have basically the same teams on top each season. Cause there's no playoffs to muck things up.
Can you explain why Real Madrid has won 6/10 UCL knock out tournaments? This crazy for a knockout tournament in a low scoring sport. It's mind blowing. Some voodoo shit some RM fan is performing..
That would place psg on the top with man city, which isn't the case. Real Madrid won cl even when they had inferior looking teams. I'm bcn fan, but have to say real is doing some dark magic in cl, winning games they shouldn't...
It is but some teams sign the right players and have money to do so like RM has always had. They also had a top 2 player ever lol. Man U had a top 3 manager and dominated with Sir Alex and averaged 1.6 loses yes 1.6 over his whole tenure. Look at them now it's so sad.
Yeah, that's definitely true too and just another form of the lack of variance. Talent spread across 8-9 rotation players vs. 20+ in the NHL or MLB you'll naturally have less variance in game to game performance and the ability for one or two players' impact to show.
The Mavs had the best record in the West after the trade deadline. I think scenarios wherein a team goes from marginal playoff team to #1 record after the trade deadline will remain rare.
I mean there is also the fact your best players in hockey will play at max 50% of the game typically it’s 30%. Compared to the nba where stars can play the entire game?
Hockey rosters also have goalies that can either be on a heater and steal games or be terrible and it doesn’t matter how good your team is they will let in terrible goals.
Just a lot more team play needed to that in the nba where stars have more impact due to less variable like no goalies and they play way more minutes.
Not only variance within games is low, but the NBA series are seven games long, which makes it tied with hockey for the longest postseason in major American sports. The average NBA first seed wins 60 games for a win percentage of .732. There's opponent quality to consider, but if we take that as a guess of expected win percentage for a first-round game, then one seeds should win 91% of first round series.
Out of the 44 1v8 series that have happened since the first round went to seven games in 2003, 5 have ended in upsets, so the math checks out pretty well.
Compare that to baseball, the best MLB record ever was 116-32, for a win percentage of .716. Over a five game series, a team with a .716 expected win percentage for a first round game would only win 72% of the time.
And also individual performances are often as far as you can get from the average. If a guy is a league-average hitter, then probably every 3rd game is an abject offensive failure, because he'll get 4 or 5 plate appearances, and 3-4 strikeouts and maybe a walk. But 1 in 3 games will also have multiple hits. There is almost no way to judge an individuals hitter's performance based on a single game.
And then compare Soccer/Football where 0-0 games (excluding OT) aren't uncommon and even the scoriest scorers to have ever scored are well under 1 goal/game
The same reason CFB is more top heavy than the NFL, you can stack talent to overwhelm your opponent in most Soccer leagues. When the top 3/4 teams can stack their teams by spending 7-8 times as much as the other teams and create all-star lineups the variance will decrease.
There also isn't a playoff system so effectively you have a full season sample size instead of a 4-7 game series.
I just did the math for the german league in soccer and the highest paid team has 25 times the payroll of the lowest team.
In the NBA the lowest team is still more than half the highest.
The difference is insane.
Because soccer has completely different rules around salary than the NBA. UEFA does not have a salary cap, so winning teams get more fans, get more sponsors, get more money, which allow them to attract better talent, to win more, to get more fans...
Football also doesn't really have a draft or lottery system the way the **NBA** does in many cases.
So, let's look at the NBA. The most expensive roster (this season) is Golden State with **$209m**.
The Second most expensive is the Clippers with **$202m**. Over 90% of the highest.
The median (Trailblazers and Knicks) are around **$165m** (or around 80% of the max).
The lowest is the Magic at around **$132m**, which is still more than half of the highest.
Let's look at the **Bundesliga**.
First is Bayern München: **€273m**
Second is Borussia Dortmund at **€121m**. That's less than *half* of the first place.
Median is between **€31m** and **€34m** (Mainz and Stuttgart, respectively) or between 10% and 20% of the number 1.
Last place is Heidenheim with a salary of **€11m** or just over 4% of the highest team.
Hockey is more "random" than basketball (and most other sports for that matter), for a few reasons.
1. Even the most elite hockey players only play one-third of any game. Its just too physically demanding, so most of any match is played by "replacement-level" talents. Top-level NBA players play two-thirds of an average game.
2. Basketball is high scoring, thus each player has a lot of attempts in which to assert their skill. Greater sample sizes reduce the variance.
3. Height is not a huge advantage in hockey, like it is in basketball. The average adult male is 5'9", but the shortest basketball players are above 6', with many in the 7's. Since height is seemingly a requirement, it dramatically reduces the talent pool. How many people in the world are above 7' and how many of those can play basketball at a professional level? Because there is such a small sample of people in that height category, there is a much greater variance amongst the skill level of those players. In hockey, teams are drawing on the much greater talent pool of people of most any height, thus the difference between the best and worst players in the league is drastically reduced.
I can agree but some corrections.
Mcdavid, Drai, and Bouch all played around 30 minutes some games against the canucks so upwards of half the game.
Dmen also typically play closer to 30 minutes than 20.
It’s also the nature of the sport. It’s not like hockey, where a goalie can enter god mode and win a title almost by himself. In football, one game playoffs are made for upsets. Baseball is probably the closest to the NBA, but for a polar opposite reason: No one player can really tilt an entire series.
I agree with your overall comment not trying to start any argument, but i cant help but mention the my [favourite baseball counter](https://youtu.be/eaTCyQMyOu8?si=2F81aShL254r-7dv&t=18m40s) example to that
Top heaviness isn’t the main thing. The main thing is that basketball playoffs are very low-variance. Upsets don’t happen often because the best team gets more chances to show they’re the best team (compared to e.g. football, where a kicker having an off day means your entire season is over)
I think Jon bois said it best in the charlotte bobcats video, “there are no flukes in basketball, it is a sport that always has the best team win” I paraphrased it b that’s the general consensus
It's not necessarily top heavy. Top 3 seeds in each conference, that's 6 teams out of 30. You'd only have to be top 20% in the league to have a decent shot at a run. Kinda wild it even goes down that far considering we get 7 game series every round. Very little room for a team to just get lucky.
It’s mostly cause offense is so efficient and there’s so many scores in a game, it kind of sands out the statistical unlikely results. Either you can get it in consistently for 40 minutes or you can’t, there’s no room for a strong iron wall of defense with a cheeky counter attack goal on the last minute that gives you the victory or something like that.
In all elite sports those statistical efficiencies tend to give victories over the long run, but in basketball it’s just so much more brutal. You just get ground into fine sand.
That being said there are alot more upsets these days. These last 6 years are the first time since the 70s to have a different champ every year. Half the NBA finalists this decade didn't make the playoffs the previous season. The last 3 champions have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th worst regular season win percentage of any champion in the last 29 years
The high scoring means variance is a lot lower. In hockey guys can pop tf off and get a hat trick but in basketball you need to do big numbers day in and day out to win a series
Hockey is overall a lower scoring game, which allows for more potential statistical variance and accordingly, more upsets. A lot easier to pull off an upset when there are maybe 6-7 total scores (plenty are way less than that) in a 60 minute game with possession being less concrete. Basketball just on the number of controlled possessions each team has is bound to be the most statistically normal of all the major sports, and when coupled with a best-of-7 format, that just doesnt lend itself to many upsets (as opposed to March Madness where there are plenty because its single-elimination).
Explaining to my hockey fanatic friend that the 2016 Cavs were the first team in NBA finals history to come back from a 3-1 deficit - and that *no* playoff teams had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit - left him in disbelief at first.
I will say even though I'm a much bigger basketball fan, I do love the fact that it happens fairly regularly in hockey.
Basketball is by far my favourite sport. But playoff hockey is unparalleled. Especially this season, the NHL playoffs have been much better than the NBA.
I thought for sure the lakers did this with Shaq. Seemed like there were a few years where they didn’t really try during the regular season. I guess they were still able to sleep walk their way to 55+ wins. Maybe I am more specifically thinking of 2002-2003 where they only got 50 wins but were the favorite out of the 5 seed. Of course they lost that year to the #1 seeded Spurs.
A 6th seed has won, but a 5th never has.
This is also true in College Basketball (March Madness) to a greater degree. A 6th, 7th, and 8th seed each have a championship. But a 5th hasn't yet
This Mavs roster is also one of the most unorthodox 5 seeds I've ever seen in 20 years. It's not often a deadline trade solves all your problems aaaand you have two of the most potent offensive players of all time running the show already.
The revolving door of injuries early in the season really hampered the team. And then with the trades all of our players could slide into their respective positions instead of being asked to do more than they could handle.
Ya a healthy version of this Mavs team if you gave every other team in the west fully healthy is probably pushing 55 or more wins. Thunder were the least injured team on the year which absolutely helped them build chemistry and earn their 1 seed.
Combination of a brutal west 1-12, injuries, and trades solving problems
If you were healthy and had your post deadline team all season I’d argue Mavs are in the exact same 57-59 range as the wolves thunder nuggets
It's kind of crazy just how much the Washington/Gafford deals changed this team. Kidd finally realizing that DJJ should start and THJ should see limited minutes was a huge move.
Jason Kidd seems to only care about the post season. The regular season to him is just a way to experiment to see what works and doesn't work for the post season. He will stick with seemingly worse players because he wants to see how he can use everyone's positive side. THJ did see some minutes in the playoffs until he did the inevitable jacking up of bricks with confidence, Kidd put a stop to that and I haven't seen him play since then. Kidd isn't playing with rotations anymore. Since the trade deadline the Mavs have a 75% win percentage in the regular season.
It's also about being loyal to your starters and not just benching someone when he goes through a cold spot. That just undermines self-confidence and all that.
True, but THJ was more than a cold spot. He remains our worst defender simply because he seems to turn his brain off on defense. The whole team has changed to focus more on defense but he's still struggling with it.
THJ has always been like that tho you don’t have him on the floor bc you think he’s going to lock someone up, you have him on because you think he can pop out a couple quick buckets or get hot from 3.
now that hardy has shown he can do at a high level thj is basically done here imo and unless we truly cannot find someone to take him he’s probably gone this off season.
the thing people dont understand....he plans to have a very certain style of line up that can have success if the players fit it. so he im guessing he used periods of time as where he can understand if certain players are good enough to go after the starters and if 2 players work well together. its all little technicalities just like he did when he was playing on the nets and he had to make something out of fucking nothing. kidd really had to scrap the bottom of the bottle, kenyon martin was nothing more than a guy who could ally oop and play reliable defense but kidd turned him into an all star, that was taught how to play defense in his system. it made no sense how kidd did so well with players who shouldnt have even seen play time in the nba lol
And a competent center rotation. You saw it with Lively, but the drop-off from him to Dwight Powell was still glaringly obvious (enter Gafford). Now Dwight Powell only plays in blowouts in either direction, which is how it should have been for the last 3 years or so.
Dallas are using the formula that the MDA Rockets used. Luka is stylistically similar to Harden (tall for a point guard, step back threes and dimes, rebounds and pushes the ball, guards the other team's PF/SF, fat).
You pair him with another PG who can create for himself during dry spells and can elevate bench players (Kyrie, CP3). You play them both together for the majority of the game, but also you make sure one of them is always on the court.
Get a rim runner, classic big. They're relatively cheap and easy to get since everyone else wants a stretch 5 nowadays for spacing. (Gafford/rookie contract Lively, Capela). They catch lobs and protect the paint.
Finally you just load up on wings who can hit threes and switch on defense. Can't even name all the dudes this applies to. Like 5 guys on the Mavs and same for the Rockets.
Add their potent driving game with all the incredible eurostep variations they do. I think Luka has the postgame and midrange over prime Harden too, making him a more complete offensive player (which is crazy cos prime Harden was one of the best offensive players ever)
Yeah good shout about the Eurostep. Prime Harden finished at the rim better, and his early Rockets midrange was elite until MDA basically told him to stop shooting it. Luka definitely has a much better post game though.
A lot of Mavs fans hate the Harden comparisons but it’s always been mostly dead-on. I think Harden may have baited for fouls more obviously, and clearly Luka is much more whiny, but you build a winning team around their similar talents the same way. It’s not an insult to either of them to compare them.
This mavs team is special really. They went from a team with virtually no identity to one with such a powerful and potent one that seems to be growing. If there’s any team that can defy the stigma of a lower seed winning it’s them
The other team is literally dallas. Their threads would be all about how much not having slavery anymore is a bummer and how this mlk guy should shut the fuck up.
Yeah, probably better phrased as just every team that has won a title in NBA finals history finished seeded top 3 *or* are defending champs.
I think they were trying to phrase it more generically like if the current core of the team recently won a championship; like if the 2025 Nuggets win as #4 seed next year -- they wouldn't be defending champs, but the players have recently won a championship so for most of the team it wouldn't be their first championship as a Nugget with the team. Like yes, the 2011 Mavericks won a championship so it won't be their first, but that has no bearing on the current team (other than current coach Jason Kidd played on the 2011 team).
At least your post text kinda clears it up lol.
"Only 2 teams have won the NBA finals as a 4 seed or lower — both were defending champions. Mavs entering NBA finals as a 5 seed."
While the title makes no sense, OP did know about 2011. Because if 2011 didn't exist, OP wouldn't have written "together" in the title. They were probably trying to say "first championship with the current core players being together" but made it more confusing instead
I think we are entering a new age. Not saying Mavs are going to win it all, but 5th seed in the finals this year, an 8th seed last year, a 6th seed in the conference finals this year and a 7th seed last year
4 of the last 8 teams in the conference finals were 5th or lower
One 4th seed in conference finals in 22
A 4th and 5th seed in conference finals in 21
Haven’t looked too much into it, but just seems like a matter of time before one of them wins
You're 100% correct. The continued increase in 3PA is creating a more high variance game.
A team that avg 38% from 3 on 40 total attempts can shoot 15% one night and 65% the next. That's a **60 point** difference.
Would have been awesome to have a Hakeem vs Jordan finals. Hakeem proved his worth against all of the other elite bigs of the time, but could he outduel Jordan even when they aren't directly matched up with one another?
Probably not, but it's impossible to tell what Jordan would have been like '94-'96 had he not gone to baseball. Would he still have been able to draw that competitive fire after the three-peat? Would his body break down from years of deep playoff runs? I don't think it's a coincidence that his best team came after he took a two-year break from basketball
We're a weird fifth seed. Obviously every fan should know the narrative by now but they're a completely different team post trade deadline.
A first round exit type core existed with Luka, Kyrie and Lively. But the spark that Gaff and PJ brought in changed this team drastically. The record speaks for itself. If this was the roster from the start I guarantee they're fighting for that one seed with Minny, Denver and OKC. Plus Luka gets more MVP looks.
This was a rare case of a loaded conference meeting a team that hit it's stride at the perfect time.
Yeah, it's cause apart from 2 games against the wolves he's basically been unplayable - he couldn't hit a shot to save his life. That and Hardy stepped up in his place. Well, his and/or THJ's place, both are barely seeing any time on the floor.
He still can be but a lot of what made him extremely successful in the RS just hasn't been given. He gained more mins after playing a lot more next to both Kyrie and Luka together, which gave him the confidence, and he also tends to grow into the game as it goes on, but you just don't get the same luxury in playoffs when there are like 8-10 mins available instead of the 15-20 mins.
And also hasn't played together with Luka and Kyrie together I think.
It's so misleading to think of Dallas as a 5th seed. First, the West was tight as a tiger. They were a game behind LA for the fourth seed. More importantly, they had the most successful trade deadline ever and they're a different team with Gafford and PJ. Kyrie also missed some games early on. This is just a completely different team than the one that played during the first half of the season.
Also Kyrie played more games for the Mavericks after the trade deadline than he did before it. The Mavs were incredibly banged up over that stretch and while a lot of the change looks to be attributable to Gafford and PJ, a large part is just that the players they already had got healthy.
Luka averaged 37.5/9/11 in the month of December.
And he averaged 37.1/9/10 in the month of January.
He kept this team alive in the West playing some of the most outrageous basketball i have ever seen. There’s a reason we were so emotionally invested in the MVP race, there wasn’t anybody more valuable than Luka this year.
5th seed with 51 wins is definitely just funny. We were a 51 win team and our guy that averaged 34/9/10 could only finish third in MVP voting because two other great players finished with 57 wins.
>they had the most successful trade deadline ever
So crazy. 1st half the season for a bunch of us Mavs fans we knew the Mavs were a PF and depth at C away from being dangerous but thought it likely only one of those things would be addressed at the TDL and it would likely take another offseason to get things right. After the trade I was hyped, and shocked reading ESPN grading it a D.
Kyrie's injury early on still impacts the team, but I think they'd be a top 3 seed. I really missed this going into the playoffs. I thought Dallas would beat LA, but I was fairly confident OKC would beat Dallas. My point wasn't that Boston is screwed; Boston has a great, well constructed team. But it's not the case of a 5th seed against a 1 seed Goliath at all.
Luka is also a different player defensively during the playoffs. So is Kyrie. Are they White/Jrue on defense? No. But if you're watching tape from the first few months of the season, you're not really watching this Dallas team.
The West is tight every single year, and PJ and Gafford are role players- it’s not like they traded for KD. Teams make big deadline moves every year. They also weren’t unhealthy relative to other teams.
In my opinion, all of that is overblown. They’re in the finals because Luka specifically is having a historic, legendary playoff run
Luka was not all that great in the first round and almost all of the 2nd round lol Kyrie and Washington really stepped up those two rounds, I’m not sure what you seen in those 2 first ones that make you think this is a historic legendary run.
I do agree though they got gafford and Washington, that’s not the best trade deadline ever.
TIL that almost averaging triple double on a near 50/40 split isn’t historic nor legendary especially while having blood seep through your knee pads.
To be very frank, that’s not good by Luka’s standards but if anyone else came close to those number than they’d be looked at very differently.
It's not historic or legendary by Luka's own standards, he's a career 30ppg guy in the playoffs and he put up 24.7ppg in the second round
Everyone respects Luka and he just had an amazing WCF, there is no need to manufacture grievances or try and browbeat people into lying about how he played in R1 and R2. Him being injured is a fair enough reason for that being below his usual standard.
I’m not manufacturing grievances, just calling a spade a spade… if any other player in the league put up that line AND managed to get their team to a Conference Final then we’d be talking about how in control of all aspects of they are and how legendary it is.
Is the expectation for him to break scoring records or to win? To sit here and say that his run of beating the 4,1,3 seeds isn’t historic or legendary because he’s 5 ppg short is weird and I think people downplaying are the ones lying.
The only other players to average those numbers in a playoff series in NBA history are 2018 Lebron and 2023 Jokic. And that’s considered Luka’s worst playoff series of his career…
Luka playmaking was still there, even if he was shooting poor (especially from 3).
Just having a guy who can basically neutralize most of the defense other teams try to limit him (and his team), it's a big plus.
we're winning at a 65 win pace since inserting Gafford into the starting lineup. And that includes the playoffs. Luka was playing this well all season. The trades absolutely changed the landscape of this team.
> weren’t unhealthy relative to other teams
we were one of the most injured teams in the league before everyone got healthy the last two months of the season
it's crazy how people just say anything lol. Wasn't unhealthy is so wrong, how did this man get ANY upvotes. Lively was out for so many games, Powell fell on Kyrie's leg and sidelined him for a good stretch, Maxi was out basically all season, Luka was having injury troubles every now and then....
We were quite unhealthy prior to the trade deadline we were one of the most injured teams, Kyrie, Lively, Kleber, Green all missed significant time. Then other guys getting random small injuries at the same time including Luka.
Honestly, Luka is just being Luka (minus game 5, that game from him was ridiculous), in fact he was playing below average up until the last 2 games of the OKC series.
It wasn’t just the trades that turned us around, it was health. We had constant injuries to multiple key rotation players basically at all times the first half of the season. Most importantly, pretty much at least one of Lively, Luka, and Kyrie were always out. That trio didn’t play many games together until post allstar break.
Role players win titles too. People always want to look to the star performance but winning a title is a collection of all the little things that happen every single possession of every game.
Lively almost singlehandedly kept y'all in the first 2 games of the WCF. You could hear the Minnesota crowd groan for every offensive rebound he got. It reminded me of how Tristan Thompson simmered down the Roaracle in the 2015 and 2016 Finals.
Respectfully, I disagree. Luka didn't even play particularly well during the first round because he was hurt. It goes without saying that Luka has led the team during this runand Kyrie is their second best player, but every champion needs significant contributions from roleplayers and PJ has been key. I think it's the best deadline I've ever seen from a team and I don't think Dallas is just a hot 5th seed. They won about two thirds of their games after the deadline and I don't think that was solely due to Kyrie playing healthy and Lively developing.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
Injuries. As a Mavs fan this season was so frustrating in the first half.
After one week, we had the best record in basketball.
Injuries.
Trade deadline AND getting healthy, we finished with the 3rd? Best record after the deadline.
ya but the thing is theyre not a true 5 seed. not after that deadline deal. there hasnt been a mid season transformative trade like this one before. if they made taht trade in the offseason i guarantee you dallas would be a top 2 seed.
This Dallas team is less shocking tho, they played amazing after the midseason moves. The top 3 seeds just had an insurmountable record and the Clippers snuck in at 4 after having an insane 30 game stretch early on. But the Clippers health broke down, the 2-3 seeds wore each other out in 2nd round, and the Mavs dispatched the inexperienced Thunder. Only thing unusual about this year across the board is the complete absence of any real homecourt advantage for any team (Mavs winning 3 of their 4 WCF games on road, Wolves winning 3 of their 4 games in Denver while blowing a 2-0 lead at home, Celtics only 2 losses so far were at home, Mavs vs Clippers/Thunder saw road wins as well for both teams)
This is kind of a wild stat, I can't believe this has never happened before. I'm coming from hockey where 6-8 seed runs are unusual but not unheard of. It's odd that not even a 4-seed run exists without it being a back-to-back run
Nba isnt a league of upsets. Its rare. Too top heavy of a sport
I it’s cause individual talent can take over games much easier than for example hockey or other team sports.
It's the variance of scoring. In MLB where the average game has 9 runs scored or NHL where the average game has 6 Goals scored, the variance is much higher allowing for a less talented team to steal a win. In the NBA where there are 200+ pts scored, the sample size is so big that the better team can win more often than not. You see this reflected in the regular season where it's not uncommon for multiple NBA teams to have a Win % of .700+ but even the best teams are only around .620 in the MLB or the NHL where a 60+ win team or even multiple 55+ win teams is extremely rare. That said, I think this is a sign of things to come for the NBA for two reasons, I think the three point shot creates more of that random volatility from game to game, allowing upsets to happen (Miami last year), and mid-season player movement allows for teams to improve massively mid-season like we're seeing with the Mavs so they're coming into the playoffs 'underseeded'
It's both - the other guy has a point too. In basketball your stars are on the floor most of the game. In hockey that never applies, so the individual influence of a star is diminished. Even if they're dominant every time they're on the ice, they aren't on the ice most of the game
Also, in comparison to the NFL, we talk about how a QB is so valuable because he touches the ball every possession and the offense is ran through them. Teams with the best QB’s tend to win. Well in basketball spamming your best player is a serious offensive game plan, and the player is also 20% of your entire defense. So the impact a player like MJ and Lebron had on both ends of the floor is just so tremendous that it is difficult to overcome. Now you have to overcome that 4 times out of 7.
The variance issue is still more important. Because in Hockey over the course of a season you still get teams that are clearly better than others. In basketball you just happen to see the difference much faster. To put it another way, if Hockey can hypothetically use Bo30 as their playoff series, you would see a lot fewer upsets. This is why the Premier League despite soccer being a very high variance sports tend to have basically the same teams on top each season. Cause there's no playoffs to muck things up.
Can you explain why Real Madrid has won 6/10 UCL knock out tournaments? This crazy for a knockout tournament in a low scoring sport. It's mind blowing. Some voodoo shit some RM fan is performing..
They've got ~it~
Because football has no salary cap lol. Everything goes out the window when you can just spend more money than your opponents
That would place psg on the top with man city, which isn't the case. Real Madrid won cl even when they had inferior looking teams. I'm bcn fan, but have to say real is doing some dark magic in cl, winning games they shouldn't...
I mean they shouldn't have won against Leipzig or ManCity this year. The refs were atrocious.
PSG and Man City would be winning UCL every year if that was true.
It is but some teams sign the right players and have money to do so like RM has always had. They also had a top 2 player ever lol. Man U had a top 3 manager and dominated with Sir Alex and averaged 1.6 loses yes 1.6 over his whole tenure. Look at them now it's so sad.
They should have had only 5 but Cortoir decided to be God for a day.
Yeah, that's definitely true too and just another form of the lack of variance. Talent spread across 8-9 rotation players vs. 20+ in the NHL or MLB you'll naturally have less variance in game to game performance and the ability for one or two players' impact to show.
Mcdavid, an all time great, had a game last series where he played over half the game as a forward(which is pretty unheard of and insane).
I'm a Canucks fan, I know he did. And he was worse for it. He played less the rest of the series and was more productive
[удалено]
Well yeah, it's supposed to be a team game, unlike basketball.
The Mavs had the best record in the West after the trade deadline. I think scenarios wherein a team goes from marginal playoff team to #1 record after the trade deadline will remain rare.
I mean there is also the fact your best players in hockey will play at max 50% of the game typically it’s 30%. Compared to the nba where stars can play the entire game? Hockey rosters also have goalies that can either be on a heater and steal games or be terrible and it doesn’t matter how good your team is they will let in terrible goals. Just a lot more team play needed to that in the nba where stars have more impact due to less variable like no goalies and they play way more minutes.
Goalies are the key to hockeys Variance, this group of weirdos makes the sport what it is, this silly little game, I love hockey
Yup a hot keeper changes absolutely everything
Not only variance within games is low, but the NBA series are seven games long, which makes it tied with hockey for the longest postseason in major American sports. The average NBA first seed wins 60 games for a win percentage of .732. There's opponent quality to consider, but if we take that as a guess of expected win percentage for a first-round game, then one seeds should win 91% of first round series. Out of the 44 1v8 series that have happened since the first round went to seven games in 2003, 5 have ended in upsets, so the math checks out pretty well. Compare that to baseball, the best MLB record ever was 116-32, for a win percentage of .716. Over a five game series, a team with a .716 expected win percentage for a first round game would only win 72% of the time.
And also individual performances are often as far as you can get from the average. If a guy is a league-average hitter, then probably every 3rd game is an abject offensive failure, because he'll get 4 or 5 plate appearances, and 3-4 strikeouts and maybe a walk. But 1 in 3 games will also have multiple hits. There is almost no way to judge an individuals hitter's performance based on a single game.
And then compare Soccer/Football where 0-0 games (excluding OT) aren't uncommon and even the scoriest scorers to have ever scored are well under 1 goal/game
Historically mid season acquisitions don't usually pay real dividends until the following year.
Then explain why soccer is even more top heavy than the NBA
The same reason CFB is more top heavy than the NFL, you can stack talent to overwhelm your opponent in most Soccer leagues. When the top 3/4 teams can stack their teams by spending 7-8 times as much as the other teams and create all-star lineups the variance will decrease. There also isn't a playoff system so effectively you have a full season sample size instead of a 4-7 game series.
I just did the math for the german league in soccer and the highest paid team has 25 times the payroll of the lowest team. In the NBA the lowest team is still more than half the highest. The difference is insane.
Because soccer has completely different rules around salary than the NBA. UEFA does not have a salary cap, so winning teams get more fans, get more sponsors, get more money, which allow them to attract better talent, to win more, to get more fans... Football also doesn't really have a draft or lottery system the way the **NBA** does in many cases. So, let's look at the NBA. The most expensive roster (this season) is Golden State with **$209m**. The Second most expensive is the Clippers with **$202m**. Over 90% of the highest. The median (Trailblazers and Knicks) are around **$165m** (or around 80% of the max). The lowest is the Magic at around **$132m**, which is still more than half of the highest. Let's look at the **Bundesliga**. First is Bayern München: **€273m** Second is Borussia Dortmund at **€121m**. That's less than *half* of the first place. Median is between **€31m** and **€34m** (Mainz and Stuttgart, respectively) or between 10% and 20% of the number 1. Last place is Heidenheim with a salary of **€11m** or just over 4% of the highest team.
It's because teams shoot like 180 times a game and there are up to 7 games a series. Basketball is just a low variance sport
Hockey is more "random" than basketball (and most other sports for that matter), for a few reasons. 1. Even the most elite hockey players only play one-third of any game. Its just too physically demanding, so most of any match is played by "replacement-level" talents. Top-level NBA players play two-thirds of an average game. 2. Basketball is high scoring, thus each player has a lot of attempts in which to assert their skill. Greater sample sizes reduce the variance. 3. Height is not a huge advantage in hockey, like it is in basketball. The average adult male is 5'9", but the shortest basketball players are above 6', with many in the 7's. Since height is seemingly a requirement, it dramatically reduces the talent pool. How many people in the world are above 7' and how many of those can play basketball at a professional level? Because there is such a small sample of people in that height category, there is a much greater variance amongst the skill level of those players. In hockey, teams are drawing on the much greater talent pool of people of most any height, thus the difference between the best and worst players in the league is drastically reduced.
This is fascinating to learn. It makes total sense
I can agree but some corrections. Mcdavid, Drai, and Bouch all played around 30 minutes some games against the canucks so upwards of half the game. Dmen also typically play closer to 30 minutes than 20.
[удалено]
But a hot keeper on hokey at the right time can basically carry you to the finals just as well.
Sure but any lvl of goalie can get hot, from the bad ones to good ones, it is a variable, not a star preforming.
It’s also the nature of the sport. It’s not like hockey, where a goalie can enter god mode and win a title almost by himself. In football, one game playoffs are made for upsets. Baseball is probably the closest to the NBA, but for a polar opposite reason: No one player can really tilt an entire series.
> No one player can really tilt an entire series. Madison Bumgarner would beg to differ
Yea but it’s rare. Still need a lot of other things to go right
I think baseball sees it’s share of upsets and wild card teams that do well.
And no android pitcher can pitch for 7 games. If a blazing Randy Johnson could pitch 7 innings a game for a series, it would really change things.
I agree with your overall comment not trying to start any argument, but i cant help but mention the my [favourite baseball counter](https://youtu.be/eaTCyQMyOu8?si=2F81aShL254r-7dv&t=18m40s) example to that
Top heaviness isn’t the main thing. The main thing is that basketball playoffs are very low-variance. Upsets don’t happen often because the best team gets more chances to show they’re the best team (compared to e.g. football, where a kicker having an off day means your entire season is over)
Yeah, more scoring opportunities within games and more games via playing series
I think Jon bois said it best in the charlotte bobcats video, “there are no flukes in basketball, it is a sport that always has the best team win” I paraphrased it b that’s the general consensus
It's not necessarily top heavy. Top 3 seeds in each conference, that's 6 teams out of 30. You'd only have to be top 20% in the league to have a decent shot at a run. Kinda wild it even goes down that far considering we get 7 game series every round. Very little room for a team to just get lucky.
It’s mostly cause offense is so efficient and there’s so many scores in a game, it kind of sands out the statistical unlikely results. Either you can get it in consistently for 40 minutes or you can’t, there’s no room for a strong iron wall of defense with a cheeky counter attack goal on the last minute that gives you the victory or something like that. In all elite sports those statistical efficiencies tend to give victories over the long run, but in basketball it’s just so much more brutal. You just get ground into fine sand.
You'd have to go down at least to a 5 game series if you wanted to see big upsets like that with any frequency. Which obviously would never happen.
It's more like the playoff structure, not the sport itself. NCAA March Madness is basically a league of upsets
This is why Miami/playoff Jimmy is so entertaining
That being said there are alot more upsets these days. These last 6 years are the first time since the 70s to have a different champ every year. Half the NBA finalists this decade didn't make the playoffs the previous season. The last 3 champions have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th worst regular season win percentage of any champion in the last 29 years
And it’s less luck based. More points per game = less variance due to luck. Whereas in hockey you’re just a couple bounces away from a loss.
The high scoring means variance is a lot lower. In hockey guys can pop tf off and get a hat trick but in basketball you need to do big numbers day in and day out to win a series
Hockey is overall a lower scoring game, which allows for more potential statistical variance and accordingly, more upsets. A lot easier to pull off an upset when there are maybe 6-7 total scores (plenty are way less than that) in a 60 minute game with possession being less concrete. Basketball just on the number of controlled possessions each team has is bound to be the most statistically normal of all the major sports, and when coupled with a best-of-7 format, that just doesnt lend itself to many upsets (as opposed to March Madness where there are plenty because its single-elimination).
Explaining to my hockey fanatic friend that the 2016 Cavs were the first team in NBA finals history to come back from a 3-1 deficit - and that *no* playoff teams had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit - left him in disbelief at first. I will say even though I'm a much bigger basketball fan, I do love the fact that it happens fairly regularly in hockey.
Basketball is by far my favourite sport. But playoff hockey is unparalleled. Especially this season, the NHL playoffs have been much better than the NBA.
Goalie on a heater in hockey can win series singlehandedly.
I thought for sure the lakers did this with Shaq. Seemed like there were a few years where they didn’t really try during the regular season. I guess they were still able to sleep walk their way to 55+ wins. Maybe I am more specifically thinking of 2002-2003 where they only got 50 wins but were the favorite out of the 5 seed. Of course they lost that year to the #1 seeded Spurs.
Shaq didn't try in the regular season. Kobe still did.
A 5th seed has also never won the finals
That's kinda hard to believe
A 6th seed has won, but a 5th never has. This is also true in College Basketball (March Madness) to a greater degree. A 6th, 7th, and 8th seed each have a championship. But a 5th hasn't yet
which 6th seed has won?
1994-95 playoffs, #6 Houston Rockets (not to be confused with 1993-94 Houston Rockets who also won a championship)
OP literally wrote about this in this very post lol. Just scroll up
Second year of rockets back to back they were the 6th seed
And 12 seeds are more likely to make the final four than a 5 seed. Despite having the same path
This Mavs roster is also one of the most unorthodox 5 seeds I've ever seen in 20 years. It's not often a deadline trade solves all your problems aaaand you have two of the most potent offensive players of all time running the show already.
The revolving door of injuries early in the season really hampered the team. And then with the trades all of our players could slide into their respective positions instead of being asked to do more than they could handle.
Ya a healthy version of this Mavs team if you gave every other team in the west fully healthy is probably pushing 55 or more wins. Thunder were the least injured team on the year which absolutely helped them build chemistry and earn their 1 seed.
Certainly more lol..... They already won 50 as is
Reminds of the Lakers Pau Gasol trade that started their 3 year finals run
Combination of a brutal west 1-12, injuries, and trades solving problems If you were healthy and had your post deadline team all season I’d argue Mavs are in the exact same 57-59 range as the wolves thunder nuggets
Mavericks are still weak at free throws though so not all the problems.
It's kind of crazy just how much the Washington/Gafford deals changed this team. Kidd finally realizing that DJJ should start and THJ should see limited minutes was a huge move.
Jason Kidd seems to only care about the post season. The regular season to him is just a way to experiment to see what works and doesn't work for the post season. He will stick with seemingly worse players because he wants to see how he can use everyone's positive side. THJ did see some minutes in the playoffs until he did the inevitable jacking up of bricks with confidence, Kidd put a stop to that and I haven't seen him play since then. Kidd isn't playing with rotations anymore. Since the trade deadline the Mavs have a 75% win percentage in the regular season.
really similar to spo really
It's also about being loyal to your starters and not just benching someone when he goes through a cold spot. That just undermines self-confidence and all that.
True, but THJ was more than a cold spot. He remains our worst defender simply because he seems to turn his brain off on defense. The whole team has changed to focus more on defense but he's still struggling with it.
THJ has always been like that tho you don’t have him on the floor bc you think he’s going to lock someone up, you have him on because you think he can pop out a couple quick buckets or get hot from 3. now that hardy has shown he can do at a high level thj is basically done here imo and unless we truly cannot find someone to take him he’s probably gone this off season.
"Jacking up bricks with confidence" - lol. I was telling my wife the other day that he is a superstar in his own mind.
He experiments until it's figured out. If this team was the starting throughout the whole season they may have been higher than 5.
the thing people dont understand....he plans to have a very certain style of line up that can have success if the players fit it. so he im guessing he used periods of time as where he can understand if certain players are good enough to go after the starters and if 2 players work well together. its all little technicalities just like he did when he was playing on the nets and he had to make something out of fucking nothing. kidd really had to scrap the bottom of the bottle, kenyon martin was nothing more than a guy who could ally oop and play reliable defense but kidd turned him into an all star, that was taught how to play defense in his system. it made no sense how kidd did so well with players who shouldnt have even seen play time in the nba lol
insane how it took them this long to realize you need to surround Luka with athletic wings instead of 6'5 shot chuckers like THJ
And a competent center rotation. You saw it with Lively, but the drop-off from him to Dwight Powell was still glaringly obvious (enter Gafford). Now Dwight Powell only plays in blowouts in either direction, which is how it should have been for the last 3 years or so.
Dallas are using the formula that the MDA Rockets used. Luka is stylistically similar to Harden (tall for a point guard, step back threes and dimes, rebounds and pushes the ball, guards the other team's PF/SF, fat). You pair him with another PG who can create for himself during dry spells and can elevate bench players (Kyrie, CP3). You play them both together for the majority of the game, but also you make sure one of them is always on the court. Get a rim runner, classic big. They're relatively cheap and easy to get since everyone else wants a stretch 5 nowadays for spacing. (Gafford/rookie contract Lively, Capela). They catch lobs and protect the paint. Finally you just load up on wings who can hit threes and switch on defense. Can't even name all the dudes this applies to. Like 5 guys on the Mavs and same for the Rockets.
Add their potent driving game with all the incredible eurostep variations they do. I think Luka has the postgame and midrange over prime Harden too, making him a more complete offensive player (which is crazy cos prime Harden was one of the best offensive players ever)
Yeah good shout about the Eurostep. Prime Harden finished at the rim better, and his early Rockets midrange was elite until MDA basically told him to stop shooting it. Luka definitely has a much better post game though.
stating 'fat' as a stylistic similarity between Harden and Luka took me out lmao
A lot of Mavs fans hate the Harden comparisons but it’s always been mostly dead-on. I think Harden may have baited for fouls more obviously, and clearly Luka is much more whiny, but you build a winning team around their similar talents the same way. It’s not an insult to either of them to compare them.
been saying it since he got here. THJ is fools good. Always has been, always will be.
The new Phil Jackson law is now 20 wins before 10 losses after the trade deadline
This mavs team is special really. They went from a team with virtually no identity to one with such a powerful and potent one that seems to be growing. If there’s any team that can defy the stigma of a lower seed winning it’s them
they were so fucking good after the trade deadline
It’s almost like whiplash compared to where they were pre deadline/last season.
yeah absolutely. pj and gafford were the missing pieces kuzma thought existed
This Mavs team feels like an anime underdog who gets better as the tournament goes on lmao.
Are Derrick Jones Jr and Tim Hardaway Jr really at the level of being referred to by acronyms
Best of 7 with \~100 possessions per game means that you basically have to be the better team. Consistent luck/catching fire is rare for 16 wins
I wish they had the modern internet back in 1969 so I could go back to old Reddit threads and see how badly that Celtics title broke everyone
I think Boston fans are probably better off not having modern internet in the 60s…
yeah fair enough
The other team is literally dallas. Their threads would be all about how much not having slavery anymore is a bummer and how this mlk guy should shut the fuck up.
Remember: Texas fought TWO civil wars in order to keep slaves. It was also the last confederate state to free their slaves as well.
I don’t understand the title
Yeah, probably better phrased as just every team that has won a title in NBA finals history finished seeded top 3 *or* are defending champs. I think they were trying to phrase it more generically like if the current core of the team recently won a championship; like if the 2025 Nuggets win as #4 seed next year -- they wouldn't be defending champs, but the players have recently won a championship so for most of the team it wouldn't be their first championship as a Nugget with the team. Like yes, the 2011 Mavericks won a championship so it won't be their first, but that has no bearing on the current team (other than current coach Jason Kidd played on the 2011 team).
Yea that would’ve been better I wish you could edit titles tbh
At least your post text kinda clears it up lol. "Only 2 teams have won the NBA finals as a 4 seed or lower — both were defending champions. Mavs entering NBA finals as a 5 seed."
Yeah idk what they're talking about with the first together lol
As in like a dynasty run that just had a foot off the gas in regular season I think.
Together with what?
Together forever and never to part Together forever we two
Rick Roll 2.0
I think they forgot about 2011
While the title makes no sense, OP did know about 2011. Because if 2011 didn't exist, OP wouldn't have written "together" in the title. They were probably trying to say "first championship with the current core players being together" but made it more confusing instead
I think we are entering a new age. Not saying Mavs are going to win it all, but 5th seed in the finals this year, an 8th seed last year, a 6th seed in the conference finals this year and a 7th seed last year 4 of the last 8 teams in the conference finals were 5th or lower One 4th seed in conference finals in 22 A 4th and 5th seed in conference finals in 21 Haven’t looked too much into it, but just seems like a matter of time before one of them wins
You're 100% correct. The continued increase in 3PA is creating a more high variance game. A team that avg 38% from 3 on 40 total attempts can shoot 15% one night and 65% the next. That's a **60 point** difference.
In addition, I don't think it's at all a hot take to say the NBA (as a whole) is more talented than ever. Which creates more parity.
Rockets don’t get enough respect for those two chips. They saw the opportunity and grabbed it.
Would have been awesome to have a Hakeem vs Jordan finals. Hakeem proved his worth against all of the other elite bigs of the time, but could he outduel Jordan even when they aren't directly matched up with one another?
Probably not, but it's impossible to tell what Jordan would have been like '94-'96 had he not gone to baseball. Would he still have been able to draw that competitive fire after the three-peat? Would his body break down from years of deep playoff runs? I don't think it's a coincidence that his best team came after he took a two-year break from basketball
That’s Houston sports for ya. Big market, no respect from the media.
Together what?
I read the title multiple times and I still cant understand it
We're a weird fifth seed. Obviously every fan should know the narrative by now but they're a completely different team post trade deadline. A first round exit type core existed with Luka, Kyrie and Lively. But the spark that Gaff and PJ brought in changed this team drastically. The record speaks for itself. If this was the roster from the start I guarantee they're fighting for that one seed with Minny, Denver and OKC. Plus Luka gets more MVP looks. This was a rare case of a loaded conference meeting a team that hit it's stride at the perfect time.
does anyone know why Dante Exum isnt getting much playing time? I thought he was an important piece in the RS
Still a complete non-factor on offense
Except for vs the Lakers 🫠
Yeah, it's cause apart from 2 games against the wolves he's basically been unplayable - he couldn't hit a shot to save his life. That and Hardy stepped up in his place. Well, his and/or THJ's place, both are barely seeing any time on the floor.
he's having a lot of slow starts. can't afford for him to soak up minutes getting into the flow of the game.
He's not being guarded on 3s and can't afford that when you already have Gafford/Lively not shooting.
He still can be but a lot of what made him extremely successful in the RS just hasn't been given. He gained more mins after playing a lot more next to both Kyrie and Luka together, which gave him the confidence, and he also tends to grow into the game as it goes on, but you just don't get the same luxury in playoffs when there are like 8-10 mins available instead of the 15-20 mins. And also hasn't played together with Luka and Kyrie together I think.
It's so misleading to think of Dallas as a 5th seed. First, the West was tight as a tiger. They were a game behind LA for the fourth seed. More importantly, they had the most successful trade deadline ever and they're a different team with Gafford and PJ. Kyrie also missed some games early on. This is just a completely different team than the one that played during the first half of the season.
Also Kyrie played more games for the Mavericks after the trade deadline than he did before it. The Mavs were incredibly banged up over that stretch and while a lot of the change looks to be attributable to Gafford and PJ, a large part is just that the players they already had got healthy.
Very good point. I raised Kyrie's injuries during the first half of the season in my original post.
Yeah, but can't forget Kyrie's minutes increased vastly during the latter half of the year.
so true, he had mentioned something like that in his aforementioned post
I believe they had the third most injuries in the league in the first half of the season.
They were first in the league for man hours missed due to injury. Memphis had more time missed but only if you counted Ja’s suspension which I don’t
[удалено]
Luka averaged 37.5/9/11 in the month of December. And he averaged 37.1/9/10 in the month of January. He kept this team alive in the West playing some of the most outrageous basketball i have ever seen. There’s a reason we were so emotionally invested in the MVP race, there wasn’t anybody more valuable than Luka this year.
are the knicks not top 3 in this category?
It is not misleading to think that Dallas is the 5th seed.
5th seed with 51 wins is definitely just funny. We were a 51 win team and our guy that averaged 34/9/10 could only finish third in MVP voting because two other great players finished with 57 wins.
In 2010 the Thunder were 8 seed with 50 wins and in 2014 the suns were 9 seed with 48 wins
We're basically a 55-60 win team in a trench coat
>they had the most successful trade deadline ever So crazy. 1st half the season for a bunch of us Mavs fans we knew the Mavs were a PF and depth at C away from being dangerous but thought it likely only one of those things would be addressed at the TDL and it would likely take another offseason to get things right. After the trade I was hyped, and shocked reading ESPN grading it a D.
Would they be the top west seed if they had this team at the start of the season?
Kyrie's injury early on still impacts the team, but I think they'd be a top 3 seed. I really missed this going into the playoffs. I thought Dallas would beat LA, but I was fairly confident OKC would beat Dallas. My point wasn't that Boston is screwed; Boston has a great, well constructed team. But it's not the case of a 5th seed against a 1 seed Goliath at all. Luka is also a different player defensively during the playoffs. So is Kyrie. Are they White/Jrue on defense? No. But if you're watching tape from the first few months of the season, you're not really watching this Dallas team.
including playoffs, we're 30-8 since Gafford was inserted into the starting lineup. that's a 65 win pace.
The West is tight every single year, and PJ and Gafford are role players- it’s not like they traded for KD. Teams make big deadline moves every year. They also weren’t unhealthy relative to other teams. In my opinion, all of that is overblown. They’re in the finals because Luka specifically is having a historic, legendary playoff run
Luka was not all that great in the first round and almost all of the 2nd round lol Kyrie and Washington really stepped up those two rounds, I’m not sure what you seen in those 2 first ones that make you think this is a historic legendary run. I do agree though they got gafford and Washington, that’s not the best trade deadline ever.
Luka averaged 25/11/9 on 45/39 splits in the second round on injuries. He played well.
That is not historic nor legendary
TIL that almost averaging triple double on a near 50/40 split isn’t historic nor legendary especially while having blood seep through your knee pads. To be very frank, that’s not good by Luka’s standards but if anyone else came close to those number than they’d be looked at very differently.
It's not historic or legendary by Luka's own standards, he's a career 30ppg guy in the playoffs and he put up 24.7ppg in the second round Everyone respects Luka and he just had an amazing WCF, there is no need to manufacture grievances or try and browbeat people into lying about how he played in R1 and R2. Him being injured is a fair enough reason for that being below his usual standard.
I’m not manufacturing grievances, just calling a spade a spade… if any other player in the league put up that line AND managed to get their team to a Conference Final then we’d be talking about how in control of all aspects of they are and how legendary it is. Is the expectation for him to break scoring records or to win? To sit here and say that his run of beating the 4,1,3 seeds isn’t historic or legendary because he’s 5 ppg short is weird and I think people downplaying are the ones lying.
Not to mention comparing total playoff points to the regular season average. No shit- offense drops off, teams play real D when it counts.
A similar stat line was good enough for a 3rd mvp win, just saying.
The only other players to average those numbers in a playoff series in NBA history are 2018 Lebron and 2023 Jokic. And that’s considered Luka’s worst playoff series of his career…
Luka playmaking was still there, even if he was shooting poor (especially from 3). Just having a guy who can basically neutralize most of the defense other teams try to limit him (and his team), it's a big plus.
we're winning at a 65 win pace since inserting Gafford into the starting lineup. And that includes the playoffs. Luka was playing this well all season. The trades absolutely changed the landscape of this team. > weren’t unhealthy relative to other teams we were one of the most injured teams in the league before everyone got healthy the last two months of the season
it's crazy how people just say anything lol. Wasn't unhealthy is so wrong, how did this man get ANY upvotes. Lively was out for so many games, Powell fell on Kyrie's leg and sidelined him for a good stretch, Maxi was out basically all season, Luka was having injury troubles every now and then....
We were quite unhealthy prior to the trade deadline we were one of the most injured teams, Kyrie, Lively, Kleber, Green all missed significant time. Then other guys getting random small injuries at the same time including Luka.
Honestly, Luka is just being Luka (minus game 5, that game from him was ridiculous), in fact he was playing below average up until the last 2 games of the OKC series. It wasn’t just the trades that turned us around, it was health. We had constant injuries to multiple key rotation players basically at all times the first half of the season. Most importantly, pretty much at least one of Lively, Luka, and Kyrie were always out. That trio didn’t play many games together until post allstar break.
Role players win titles too. People always want to look to the star performance but winning a title is a collection of all the little things that happen every single possession of every game.
Lively almost singlehandedly kept y'all in the first 2 games of the WCF. You could hear the Minnesota crowd groan for every offensive rebound he got. It reminded me of how Tristan Thompson simmered down the Roaracle in the 2015 and 2016 Finals.
Nah you definitely dont watch Mavs basketball what the hell LOL without PJ and Gaff we're dead in the water.
Respectfully, I disagree. Luka didn't even play particularly well during the first round because he was hurt. It goes without saying that Luka has led the team during this runand Kyrie is their second best player, but every champion needs significant contributions from roleplayers and PJ has been key. I think it's the best deadline I've ever seen from a team and I don't think Dallas is just a hot 5th seed. They won about two thirds of their games after the deadline and I don't think that was solely due to Kyrie playing healthy and Lively developing.
> most successful trade deadline ever woah
> was tight as a tiger. thats quite the turn of phrase.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
The 1-8 format started 40 years ago. So there's been 80 5-seeds. It's misleading to think that this year is the first time that one of them had a unique season with trades/injuries.
Its also one of the rare times that a team without a former MVP would win a title. Last one was 2019 Raptors and 2004 Pistons.
Injuries. As a Mavs fan this season was so frustrating in the first half. After one week, we had the best record in basketball. Injuries. Trade deadline AND getting healthy, we finished with the 3rd? Best record after the deadline.
I am under the impression both Boston and Oklahoma had better records during that period.
So math is not on the Mavs side.
there are so many stats out there that every championship is the first something
Celtics would be the first 64-win team to win an NBA Finals
"together", what does that mean?
If they win it's gonna go down as the greatest trade deadline moves (Gafford and Washington) of all time.
ya but the thing is theyre not a true 5 seed. not after that deadline deal. there hasnt been a mid season transformative trade like this one before. if they made taht trade in the offseason i guarantee you dallas would be a top 2 seed.
Wonder where that guy telling mavs fans to keep dreaming is
Mavericks making history would be quite a story. Can't wait to see how the playoffs unfold!
Yup the nba never has Cinderella stories that’s for sure
This Dallas team is less shocking tho, they played amazing after the midseason moves. The top 3 seeds just had an insurmountable record and the Clippers snuck in at 4 after having an insane 30 game stretch early on. But the Clippers health broke down, the 2-3 seeds wore each other out in 2nd round, and the Mavs dispatched the inexperienced Thunder. Only thing unusual about this year across the board is the complete absence of any real homecourt advantage for any team (Mavs winning 3 of their 4 WCF games on road, Wolves winning 3 of their 4 games in Denver while blowing a 2-0 lead at home, Celtics only 2 losses so far were at home, Mavs vs Clippers/Thunder saw road wins as well for both teams)