How Much Does Pre-Christmas Play Affect Postseason Chase?

Christmas Day is widely viewed as the unofficial start of the NBA season, but how much do those early-season games matter in the hunt for the NBA playoffs?

‘Tis the day before Christmas and all through the Association,
Teams are taking a peek at the playoff berths they’re a’chasin.

My hokey attempt at holiday fare aside, the NBA season is between 31.7 percent and 37.8 percent complete, depending on how many games your favorite team already has in the books.

The NBA is taking Christmas Eve off, as usual, in advance of a quintet of Christmas matchups featuring a rematch of last year’s NBA Finals as well as some of the biggest names in the league—including Anthony Davis, Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, Tim Duncan, James Harden the Blake Griffin–Chris Paul tandem.

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Oh, and the Los Angeles Lakers are playing for some reason, as well.

Christmas is viewed widely in the sports world as the unofficial start to the NBA season, with a sort of implied belief that anything that happened before Dec. 25 is trivial, mere window dressing to the big moments ahead.

Tell that to the 2014-15 Oklahoma City Thunder.

If it’s true a team can’t actually earn a spot in the NBA playoffs before Christmas, the Thunder in 2014-15 proved that you can definitely lose one.

Struggling through injuries to stars Durant and Westbrook, Oklahoma City got off to a horrid 3-12 start before getting healthier and surging to win 10 of 14 before the holiday to get to 13-16 at the Christmas break.

That had them 2½ games off the pace of the eighth-place Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference, but the Thunder wound up losing that eighth spot on a tiebreaker to the New Orleans Pelicans after the Suns set in the West.

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The Pelicans had made up a one-game deficit to get the final spot out West, while the Boston Celtics had trailed the Brooklyn Nets by 1½ games for eighth in the East.

That was the biggest deficit any team made up to reach the postseason in the post-Christmas NBA last season.

Going back to the 2004-05 season, the first in which the NBA expanded to 30 teams, there haven’t been a lot of teams that made up huge amounts of ground to make the playoffs.

The largest deficit a team made up since then was in 2005-06 by the Sacramento Kings, who went from 3½ games out of eighth place at Christmas to finish eighth at 44-38, going 34-22 after the holiday after putting up a 10-16 pre-Christmas mark.

The Kings’ reward was a six-game first-round loss at the hands of the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs, but it is significant in that it was the last time Sacramento was in the postseason party.

The Memphis Grizzlies have made up three-game deficits in three different seasons since 2004-05, turning the trick in 2004-05, 2010-11 and 2013-14. The 2004-05 New Jersey Nets have the only other comeback of at least three games.

Three times—the Eastern Conference in 2012-13 and the West in both 2006-07 and 2008-09—the eight teams holding playoff positions on Christmas morning claimed them at the end of the season.

So what about when the league was smaller?

Prior to the most recent expansion, four teams have eliminated 4 ½-game deficits to make the playoffs—including two in the same season, the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets in 1982-83.

The others were the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1984-85 and the Lakers in 2002-03.

That Lakers team was an anomaly in that the three-time defending champions started 3-9 with Shaquille O’Neal on the shelf. They continued to struggle once The Diesel was back, limping into Christmas with an 11-18 record.

After a Christmas Day loss to the Kings, however, the Lakers went 39-13 the rest of the way, finishing 50-32 and earning the fifth spot in the Western Conference bracket.

Their reign ended with a six-game loss to San Antonio in second round.

The 1984-85 Cavaliers, meanwhile, had the NBA’s worst record at Christmas—5-20. A 31-26 finish got the Cavs into the eighth spot in the East, where young coach George Karl’s charges stole a game from Boston in the first round before rolling over.

Neither the Knicks nor Nuggets in 1982-83 got out of the second round.

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But such post-holiday comebacks have been rare, even in the earliest years of the league where most of the Association qualified for a playoff berth.

The Philadelphia Warriors erased a three-game deficit to climb out of last place and get the third spot in the Eastern Division in 1957-58 and the Minneapolis Lakers did the same in the Western Division in 1955-56, two of only seven teams from 1946-47 through 1969-70 to reach the postseason after not being in a playoff position on Christmas morning.

But the most significant part of all of this is that just one team—the Houston Rockets in 1980-81—got as far as the NBA Finals after not being in a playoff position at Christmas.

That Rockets club, led by Most Valuable Player Moses Malone, played at a 14-21 clip before the holiday and was 26-21 afterward, finishing sixth in the Western Conference at 40-42.

Upsets of the Lakers and Spurs in the first two rounds of the playoffs got Houston to the conference finals against another 40-42 club, the Kansas City Kings.

The Rockets hammered the Kings in five games before losing to the Celtics in six games in the Finals—marking the last sub-.500 team to play for an NBA championship.

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So for those teams that will wake up Christmas morning on the outside looking in, you’re looking at a thankless task … and one that has never resulted in a big shiny trophy at the end.