Rummpd
01-03-2011, 04:34 PM
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/news/story?id=5984175
League trend: Division leaders likely to stay on top
Even though we are not yet halfway through the 2010-11 regular-season schedule, history suggests that the best teams should have already separated themselves from the pack. Over the six seasons since the NBA realigned for the 2004-05 campaign, 83.3 percent of the teams that led their division as of New Year's Day have gone on to win at least a share of the division title. Via Basketball-Reference.com, all six eventual division champions were on top on Jan. 1, 2010, with the Denver Nuggets starting out in a tie with the Portland Trail Blazers and ending up even with the Utah Jazz, who were two games back on Jan. 1.
The Jazz were also involved in one of the two biggest post-New Year's comebacks, rallying from a 2.5-game deficit to win the Northwest Division in 2007-08. The Boston Celtics made up a deficit of the same size in 2004-05, surging forward after a deadline deal for Antoine Walker. That history is bad news for the Dallas Mavericks and Orlando Magic, both of whom still harbor aspirations of winning their respective divisions despite trailing the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, respectively, by four games apiece.
In fact, using 2.5 games as a rough limit on realistic comebacks, the only team that is apparently close enough to make a run the rest of the season is the Oklahoma City Thunder, who trail the Utah Jazz by a half-game in the Northwest.
Winning a division no longer holds the significance it once did; it does not even guarantee home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. However, the results can also be generalized to other races involving playoff seeding. Most notably, the Los Angeles Lakers have slipped 6.5 games behind San Antonio in the battle for the top seed in the West, a deficit that will be tough to make up. Hollinger's Playoff Odds echo that point, giving the Lakers just a 6.5 percent chance of winning the conference during the regular season
League trend: Division leaders likely to stay on top
Even though we are not yet halfway through the 2010-11 regular-season schedule, history suggests that the best teams should have already separated themselves from the pack. Over the six seasons since the NBA realigned for the 2004-05 campaign, 83.3 percent of the teams that led their division as of New Year's Day have gone on to win at least a share of the division title. Via Basketball-Reference.com, all six eventual division champions were on top on Jan. 1, 2010, with the Denver Nuggets starting out in a tie with the Portland Trail Blazers and ending up even with the Utah Jazz, who were two games back on Jan. 1.
The Jazz were also involved in one of the two biggest post-New Year's comebacks, rallying from a 2.5-game deficit to win the Northwest Division in 2007-08. The Boston Celtics made up a deficit of the same size in 2004-05, surging forward after a deadline deal for Antoine Walker. That history is bad news for the Dallas Mavericks and Orlando Magic, both of whom still harbor aspirations of winning their respective divisions despite trailing the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, respectively, by four games apiece.
In fact, using 2.5 games as a rough limit on realistic comebacks, the only team that is apparently close enough to make a run the rest of the season is the Oklahoma City Thunder, who trail the Utah Jazz by a half-game in the Northwest.
Winning a division no longer holds the significance it once did; it does not even guarantee home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. However, the results can also be generalized to other races involving playoff seeding. Most notably, the Los Angeles Lakers have slipped 6.5 games behind San Antonio in the battle for the top seed in the West, a deficit that will be tough to make up. Hollinger's Playoff Odds echo that point, giving the Lakers just a 6.5 percent chance of winning the conference during the regular season