Were Cavs the best NBA team to miss playoffs in last decade?

Were Cavs best team to miss playoffs in last decade? What happened last year

Last season the Cleveland Cavaliers entered the year as a surefire losing team, the kind of group that is too young to make more than an incremental improvement on the previous year’s ineptitude. Yet even with health against them at every turn, the Cavs turned in a surprise leap up the win column and the standings, ultimately finishing 44-38 on the year.

That was tied with the Brooklyn Nets for seventh in the Eastern Conference, and due to the tiebreaker, the Cavs settled in at eighth. That meant a showdown with those Nets for a playoff berth, which the Cavs lost; their second crack at the playoffs was against Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks, and they barely lost that contest to fall out of the playoffs entirely.

Looking across the river at the Western Conference, 44 wins would have placed the Cavs eighth as well, two ahead of the LA Clippers. Whereas the East’s play-in mix included a pair of 43-win teams in the Atlanta Hawks and Charlotte Hornets, the West had the 36-win New Orleans Pelicans and the 34-win San Antonio Spurs. The top of the West was stronger than the East, but the bottom dropped out precipitously.

Wins don’t tell the full story, though. The Cavs had a point differential of +2.1, which was sixth-best in the East and would have set them in the playoff field proper. SRS, or Simple Rating System, evaluates a team’s point differential and strength of schedule to assign a team rating; their 2.04 SRS was also sixth in the East and 13th in the league.

The numbers suggest the Cavs were a solid playoff team that slightly underperformed in wins, but mostly got caught in a tough middle class and lost a coin-flip single-elimination game. In many other years they would have been an easy playoff team and this young core would have cut their teeth in a real seven-game series. Does that mean they’re the best team of the past decade or so to miss the playoffs?