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

Were Cavs best team to miss playoffs in last decade? Final Verdict

It’s exceedingly difficult to compare NBA teams across eras, which is why we kept our window to just 10 years. Even in that decade, however, a number of teams popped up as being much better than (1) their eventual place in the standings, and (2) multiple other teams that made the playoffs. The Cavs belong among that group.

Do they belong at the top of the group? Probably not. They were a better team than the 2017-18 Denver Nuggets who just missed the playoffs and overachieved by a few wins, but it’s hard to make the case against the other three. In particular, the two teams from 2013-14 that somehow missed the postseason in a grueling West, the Phoenix Suns and the Minnesota Timberwolves, were teams that should have been a part of any postseason in almost any year.

In fact, if we blow this evaluation open, the Timberwolves and Suns rank 1-2 in SRS for all teams to miss the playoffs since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976-77. Again, comparing a team from the 1970s to one from 2014 is tricky, but suffice it to say that the West was at an all-time level of strength that year.

What we can say about the Cavs is that they are the best Eastern Conference team to miss the playoffs in the past decade, by far. Only one other East team even shows up in the top-12 teams by SRS to miss out.

Moving forward, this means that the Cavs of last year were not playing above their heads and were even better than their final landing spot would indicate. That gives them a very strong foundation on which to build, and it portends good things for the future of this group in this season and beyond.