This shouldn’t be happening; 8 seeds don’t beat 1 seeds at home to take 2-0 series leads in the National Basketball Association. 8 seeds usually don’t beat 1 seeds at all in the NBA, with only the 1994 Denver Nuggets, 1999 New York Knicks, and the 2007 Warriors ever emerging victorious since the NBA moved to the sixteen-team playoff system in 1984. Out of those three only the Warriors won a best-of-seven game series, with the Nuggets and Knicks emerging victorious under the old best-of-five first round rules. Coincidentally the only other 2-0 deficit faced by a 1 seed was also under the best-of-five rules when the 1993 Lakers got the 2-0 stranglehold on the Phoenix Suns and promptly proceeded to drop each of the next three games. This isn’t just about 1 seeds versus 8 seeds though, this is about the 2016-2017 Chicago Bulls.
Before the season my buddy Cory and I got together and debated the fortunes of each of the NBA’s thirty teams. On some teams, we arrived quickly at a consensus; the Brooklyn Nets were going to be terrible and the San Antonio Spurs were going to do what they have done since 1997-1998 win 50+ games and give opponents a bad time. Other teams we argued for over half an hour about with no conclusions until the regular season could be played. The team that Cory and I most strongly disagreed on was this season’s edition of the Chicago Bulls. Cory thought they were a legitimate playoff threat in the Eastern Conference, I said they’d be lucky to win 35 games.
For much of the year, it looked like I would be right as Chicago struggled to win with any consistency. Somehow, a team which ranked in the bottom ten in Field Goal Percentage, Three-Point shooting percentage, and Points Scored made the playoffs. A team managed to field a playoff squad during the small-ball, three-pointer revolution with little more than scrappy role-players and inconsistent slashers (players who shoot close to the basket by driving towards it) who may as well have been shooting one of those improperly inflated carnival basketballs all season. (According to Sports-Reference the team’s effective field goal percentage, a metric which weighs that threes are worth more than twos, was worst in the league) Their second-best player is a thirty-five-year-old Dwyane Wade whose best days are long in the rearview mirror. Yet in spite of this, they are beating the Celtics. How is this possible?
It boils down to two factors, firstly, the Celtics can whine in print media about being disrespected as much as they like but they have the worst point differential of a number 1 seed since the 1978-1979 Seattle Supersonics at a meager 2.7 points, meaning per game they only outscore opponents by that much. For comparison, the top five seeds in the Western Conference all have better marks in that statistic by at least a full point per game.
In addition to Boston being weaker than expected for a one-seed the Rajon Rondo Revenge Tour is in full swing. Rondo was once a key part of two Celtics teams that made the NBA Finals winning in 2008 and losing in 2010 both times facing the Los Angeles Lakers. His tenure with the Celtics effectively ended when he tore his Anterior Cruciate Ligament in 2013 as he was traded to Dallas in 2014 and his partial season in Texas was a disaster, to say the least as he clashed with coach Rick Carlisle. His season in Sacramento last year was also uninspiring despite leading the league in assists. In two games versus the Celtics in this year’s playoffs when Rondo has been on the floor the Bulls are outscoring his old team at a 16 point rate per 100 possessions which is in the most nonanalytical verbiage an intense buttkicking. The Celtics have to win tomorrow night in Chicago because 1 seed or not no team has come back from a 3-0 playoff deficit in NBA History. As much as it pains my ego, Cory may have been right.
Update: Rajon Rondo is out indefinitely with a broken thumb and while this is a huge loss for the Bulls they still have homecourt tonight for Game 3.
Featured Image via Wikimedia Commons/User: Kelly
