Were Cavs the best NBA team to miss playoffs in last decade?
Were Cavs best team to miss playoffs in last decade? Other teams
The Cavs were easily the best team to miss the playoffs last season; both the Charlotte Hornets and LA Clippers, the other “winning” teams to miss out, were well behind the Cavs in net rating and SRS. What about the past decade?
From 2012-13 through 2021-22, only three teams won 44 or more games and missed the playoffs. All came before the “play-in” era, so these teams all missed out because of a high bar set by the top-eight teams in their conference that year. Unsurprisingly, all three teams played in the Western Conference, perennially the better conference in the post-Michael Jordan NBA. Those three teams: the 2013-14 Phoenix Suns, the 2014-15 Oklahoma City Thunder, and the 2017-18 Denver Nuggets.
Looking at SRS instead of win-loss record tells a slightly different story. The aforementioned SUns and Thunder still show up, but the Nuggets show to be overachievers and fall back behind the Cavs’ mark of 2.04. Instead, one new team jumps in, the 2013-14 Minnesota Timberwolves. Let’s look at all four teams for a snapshot of their seasons:
2013-14 Phoenix Suns
The 2013-14 Suns were narratively the closest to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Expected before the season to be a rebuilding squad, a collection of exciting young players and competitive veteran role players drove the Suns to a whopping 48 wins, which somehow wasn’t enough for the playoffs when eight other Western Conference teams won at least 49 games. The Suns would have been the fifth-seed in the East. Goran Dragic had a breakout year averaging 20.3 points per game, making the only All-NBA team of his career, and he led an ensemble cast of players such as Eric Bledsoe, Markieff and Marcus Morris, Channing Frye and P.J. Tucker.
2013-14 Minnesota Timberwolves
Amazingly, the Western Conference in 2013-14 probably had 10 of the best 15 teams in the league. The Suns had the most wins of any team to miss the playoffs in the past decade, and the Timberwolves had the best SRS. If the Suns were closest narratively to this year’s Cavs, the Wolves were closest in actual personnel, as Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio were the co-stars for this group. Love averaged 26.1 points and 12.5 rebounds per game and made second-team All-NBA. The Wolves’ SRS was 3.10, ninth-best in the league, but a difficult schedule and some late-game bad luck had them win only 40 games, eight games below their expected win-loss.
2014-15 Oklahoma City Thunder
The NBA is a league of stars, and when you lose both of yours the losses start to pile up. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were both hurt to start the year for the Thunder, and ultimately Durant would play only 27 games total and Westbrook 67. The rest of the team was still solid and it helped prop up their win total, but ultimately their 45 wins landed them tied for eighth and without the tiebreaker, losing out on the last spot to a young Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans.
2017-18 Denver Nuggets
Finally, the last time that Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets missed the playoffs was in 2017-18, when the team went 46-36 but still missed out on the postseason. Jokic was just coming into his own, leading the team in scoring for the first time with 18.5 points per game alongside his 10.7 rebounds and 6.1 assists. Gary Harris, Jamal Murray, Paul Millsap and Wilson Chandler filled out the starting lineup around him. They played the Minnesota Timberwolves on the final night of the season in a loser-goes-home game for a playoff berth, sort of the proto-play-in landed on by sheer luck, and it took overtime for Jimmy Butler and the Wolves to prevail and secure the eighth seed. Over in the East, Denver’s 46 wins would have granted them the sixth seed.