The NBA is heading into the playoffs with a problem it has spent much of the season trying to ignore. Entering Monday, 261 games had been decided by 20 or more points and 90 by 30 or more points, a pace that has fed the league’s unease about bad basketball, tanking and the damage both can do to the product.
That unease sits beside a very different number: 47 games decided by exactly one point and 176 by three points or less. Those figures matter because the league has averaged 49 one-point games and 177 one-possession games over the last decade, a comparison that suggests the season’s margins have not been as far from normal as the blowout totals might imply.
The scale of the scoring only adds to the debate. Scoring around the league is at its highest clip in more than half a century, and that has helped produce nights that can feel one-sided long before the final buzzer. Still, the postseason changes the frame. Tanking drops out of the equation when the games count, and the league gets a chance to show whether its best teams can deliver the competitive basketball that has sometimes been missing in the regular season.
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The playoffs also arrive with a handful of storylines that would be enough on their own. Defending champion Oklahoma City was about to clinch another No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and was again topping the 60-win mark. Detroit had turned itself from a laughingstock into a No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference in just two seasons. Stephen Curry had returned from injury. Giannis Antetokounmpo said he and the Milwaukee Bucks need couples therapy. Chicago’s front office had already been gutted.
J.B. Bickerstaff, whose team’s rise has been part of the season’s brighter side, said the point now is to look back without losing sight of what comes next. He said the group should reflect on where it has been and the work it put in to get there, while understanding this is not the finish. He added that what the team has built together in so little time is special, but there is more food to eat.
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That is the season’s split-screen in a nutshell: a league producing more lopsided nights than it would like, while also carrying enough star power and postseason stakes to keep the next round from feeling predictable. LeBron James put it more bluntly, saying the league is in good hands with the rooks.
