TODAY’S SPORTSTAT — Is yet another Celtics-76ers matchup in store?
By JERRY TAPP
The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers each won Game One in their NBA playoff series. Should they continue and win their first-round series (Boston over Milwaukee and Philadelphia over Miami), the Celtics and 76ers would meet in the Eastern Conference semi-finals. What makes that potential matchup noteworthy is that Boston-Philadelphia matchups in the NBA playoffs are the most frequent NBA playoff matchups in NBA history.
Since the league began, the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers franchises have met 20 times in the NBA playoffs, most of any matchup in league history. The two teams have played 100 playoff games and the Celtics have won 12 of the 20 series. The two teams, however, have not met in the post-season since 2012.
Here’s a look at the NBA playoff series matchups that have happened 10 or more times in league history.
Number of times franchises have faced each other in NBA playoffs (franchises are listed below by current city)
20: Boston Celtics-Philadelphia 76ers
15: Boston Celtics-New York Knicks
12: Atlanta Hawks-Boston Celtics
12: Boston-Los Angeles Lakers
12: Detroit Pistons-Los Angeles Lakers
12: Los Angeles Lakers-Phoenix Suns
12: Los Angeles Lakers-San Antonio Spurs
11: Los Angeles Lakers-Sacramento Kings
11: Los Angeles Lakers-Portland Trailblazers
10: Atlanta Hawks-Los Angeles Lakers
10: Golden State Warriors-Philadelphia 76ers
10: New York Knicks-Philadelphia 76ers
10: Phoenix Suns-San Antonio Spurs
Of the current eight first-round playoff series, the Boston-Milwaukee matchup has been the most frequent; these two franchises are playing in the post-season for the sixth time in league history.
At the other end, the New Orleans-Portland series is the first time these franchises have ever faced each other in the playoffs.
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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.