Parsed through this season’s data, and I will admit that the people who kept harping about our scheduling difficulty have a very valid point. I wasn’t aware how big of a discrepancy there was in actual games against playoff teams until I dove into the numbers. So for all those that I dismissed about strength of schedule, mea culpa.
Here’s what I found out.
- We played 33 games against non playoff teams. That’s 2 less than the next lowest! We specifically only played 3 games against the bottom feeders: Portland, SA, Memphis, Utah
- We played 5 games each against Phoenix and NO, I believe due to IST (NO in the bracket play and then Phoenix as a fill in after IST was done)
- The teams in the playoffs averaged 40 games against non playoff teams. Remove us from the numbers to make it apples to apples, and call it 36-37 games
All of that said, our record against non PO teams was not good enough. Teams in the playoffs averaged 30 wins against teams not in the playoffs vs our 23 wins. They essentially had to play slightly better than .400 ball against playoff teams to make the playoffs. We were 23-26 against playoff teams which put a premium on taking care of business against everyone else