As part of Friday's post about the 2011 Heat's possible '07 Patriots connection, I had to run a little query splitting up every team's per-game point differential by each quarter of their season, and I thought we could make some use of that data today as well. To win 60+ games in today's NBA, a team needs to win 73% of its games, and that typically requires an average PPG differential of +7. This doesn't necessarily mean they played like a +7 team all season long, though -- if we break the season down into fourths (including playoffs), we find that only six teams in NBA history have ever played like a +7 team at every stage of the campaign:

Even for a 60-win-caliber team, it's tough to maintain that level all season, especially given the fact that playoff games drag your 4th quarter differential down with their pesky increased opponent strength. Here's how the 60-win teams of recent vintage did it:

As you can see, meaningless late-season games and tough playoff contests have a real tendency to put a damper on a team's PPG differential, even among NBA champions:

Still, while even very good teams will see their PPG differentials decline steadily as the season goes on (all-time 60 win teams typically lose 3.2 PPG of differential between the 1st and 4th quarters of their season), here are the teams whose +7 or better early-season performances really told us nothing about how they would finish the year:

Obviously, personnel changes can play a huge role here; the 1978 Blazers were cruising along, ready to defend their '77 title, when league MVP Bill Walton broke his foot and was lost for all but 2 playoff games. However, sometimes teams simply start the season playing above their heads, and they just can't sustain the hot streak... like the 2010 Atlanta Hawks, who went from playing +8.4 ball (the equivalent of a 62-win team) early in the season to -1.1 (the equivalent of a 38-win team) late despite very little roster shuffling.

And finally, let's conclude the post at the opposite end of the spectrum, with teams who whose +7 play in the 4th quarter of the season represented the biggest improvement from the 1st:

This isn't the first time we've had an excuse to marvel at the 2001 Lakers' dissociative identity disorder, and it probably won't be the last, but... wow. Only two teams have ever been +11.8 or better in the 4th quarter of a season, the '96 Bulls and the '01 Lake Show. The only difference between the two? The former played like a +11.9 team in quarters 1-3 of their season, the equivalent of 68 wins over 82 games... The latter played at a +2.5 level aside from the last 1/4 of their season, the equivalent of a mere 48-win team. Needless to say, no other team in NBA history has ever gone from a 48-win-caliber team for 3/4 of their season to GOAT levels for the final 1/4. It might be the single greatest instance of switch-flipping in sports history.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 9:21 am and is filed under Analysis, Data Dump, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.