Which players are making the NBA playoffs for the first time?

In the NBA, 16 out of the 30 teams make the postseason. This is the highest percentage of any major American sports league, and it means that the vast majority of NBA players make it to the playoffs at one point in their careers. They may not do it in their primes or as a meaningful rotation player, but most make it.

In fact, only seven players in NBA history have played at least 500 career games and not played in a postseason game. Tom Van Arsdale leads the way with 929 games, and more recent names such as Omri Casspi and Sebastian Telfair populate the top 10.

Not every player in the goes to the NBA playoffs every season. Who is making the playoffs for the first time, and who is still waiting for their chance?

Among active players, 25 make the “top 100” list of most games played without a postseason appearance. A number of those players will graduate from the list this year as they appear in their first career playoff game. Which players are breaking through to compete in the postseason? And who will they leave behind on the list?

Our accounting for these players becomes even more difficult with the addition of play-in games to the ledger. The entire NBA community will need to decide if they categorize them as playoff games or not. For our purposes we will try to identify any players making it off the list because of the play-in game; in future years the play-in game will simply have to count.

Let’s start with those players who made it off the list this year. For our discussion we’ll try to limit the list to those players with around 3 NBA seasons or more under their belt, somewhere around the 225 games played mark or so.