TODAY’S SPORTSTAT — T-Wolves, Magic on track to end playoff droughts
By JERRY TAPP
If the NBA playoffs were held today (a silly thought considering the season is barely a month old), there would be a few surprises regarding which teams would make the group of 16 playoff teams and which ones would not.
The biggest surprise would probably be that the Cleveland Cavs, who made the finals last year, would not even make the playoffs.
Of the teams that are currently sitting with a playoff spot, there are five that have not played a post-season game in a long time:
The Minnesota Timberwolves, who are currently third in the Western Conference standings, have not made the playoffs since the 2003-04 season. The Orlando Magic, who are currently third in the Eastern Conference standings, have not made the playoffs since 2011-12. Another team that has not made the playoffs since 2011-12 is the Philadelphia 76ers; they have the sixth spot in the Eastern Conference.
Another pair of teams that have not played in the post-season since 2012-13 currently has two of the 16 playoffs spots: the New York Knicks and the Denver Nuggets.
The big question is whether or not the teams noted above will finish the season with a spot in the playoffs. For now, their play this season has the league taking notice.
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.