NBA Contenders: How the Mighty Have Fallen

The NBA has traditionally been ruled by a select few. The rich stay rich and the poor lie to themselves about the draft lottery. It's rare for teams to win an NBA title, and those, that do, have typically won one before. This year could be different though. The NBA may be facing a complete overhaul of its elite teams.

In 1972, the NBA split into two conferences. Since then between four and eight teams from each conference have made it to the NBA playoffs. And, in the same time it was very common to see teams that made the finals stay in the top half of their conference in terms of playoff spots. Here's a chart of how long it had been since a top seed had made it to the finals, by conference.

jsFiddle for chart.

To clarify, for 1972-1978, I only considered top two seeds. Until 1984, I only considered top three seeds. And, of course, since then top four seeds are the standard.

As I mentioned, it's rare for a conference to have a team in contention that far removed from the finals. That's what makes this year absurd. Currently, the Bulls (4th seed) and the Rockets (4th seed) are the most recent NBA finals attendees at the top of the playoff race! Neither has been there since Michael Jordan was still relevant! This doesn't happen! The previous worst dry spell was in 2002 when the Pistons were the best the Eastern Conference had to offer, and they hadn't made the finals since the "Bad Boys era." That only applied to the Eastern Conference. The 70s were when the NBA was the "most fair." and even then the teams in the finals had all been there within the previous decade. In fact, the last season the Western Conference had a top seed more than five years removed from the finals was in 1975, when the Warriors won it all! Is this fate?

Now, the reason for these trends isn't hard to spot. The NBA has been ruled by several dynasties: the Celtics, Lakers, Bulls, and Spurs. And, of course, some of these dynasties have had multiple runs. That's why this year is so bizarre. None of the NBA's royalty is currently competing. None of the recent finals attendees are in great shape. Now, that could change. The Mavericks and Cavaliers could both turn it on down the stretch. This season could end like all of the others. But as it stands right now? The NBA finals landscape looks nothing like it ever has before.

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