Alex Speers

You do get a few more outliers.

The 2005 Pistons, who lost to the Spurs.

They were ranked 24th half-court offense.

2007 Cavs, who also lost to the Spurs, ranked 25th.

And then the 2023 Heat, who had their miracle run to the finals, lost to Denver.

They ranked 23rd.

But in general...

The average rank for a half court offense that just made the finals was 6.3.

And in total, out of the 44 teams to make the finals over the last 22 years, only four had a bottom half half court offense in the regular season.

If you look at all 88 teams that at least made a conference finals, only nine teams had a bottom half half court offense.

And the average rank that you needed to make a conference finals was the seventh best half court offense in the league.

So now I want to take a look at the current standings, see how this year's crop of teams stack up.

So I'm just going to read you the top 10 half-court offenses in order.

So we're starting off with Denver, the Lakers, Milwaukee, number three, surprise to me, OKC, Boston, Cleveland, San Antonio, that's seven, Golden State, Minnesota, and the Knicks.

Now, there were four teams currently in the top six of their respective conference who are not in the top 10 for half-court offense.

That would be Toronto at 15th, Philly at 17th, Detroit at 18th, and then Houston at 19th.

Now, clearly the most interesting name there is Detroit because if this ranking held and the Pistons won the championship this season, Detroit would have the worst-ranked half-court offense of the last 22 years.

I do want to say, though, I do think there's some beautiful symmetry, however, with the fact that two of the outliers to make a finals were the 04 and 05 Pistons.

This is in their DNA to some extent.

But the whole reason I started thinking about this was because of that Spurs-Pistons game.