NBA Predictions: How will the Utah Jazz do in the playoffs?

History of 55-win teams

In July, the Ringer did a video praising the Utah Jazz for their successful offseason. They compared them to the 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks who racked up 60 wins in the regular season. However, that Hawks team couldn’t hold a candle to LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the playoffs. They got swept in the Eastern Conference Finals and never made it back.

The Ringer has a valid point: the Utah Jazz haven’t had an MVP-caliber player since Karl Malone. That was what killed the Hawks in the playoffs. When the stakes were the highest, their team of good but not great players couldn’t handle the overpowering star power of their opponent. It was more practical to expect James to carry his team than to have 5-7 Atlanta Hawks firing on all cylinders.

Recently I’ve done a study of all the teams that have won 54, 55, or 56 regular season games since the 1999-2000 season. I picked up 35 teams, and only five of these teams made it to the Finals.

Two of them were Kobe/Shaq Laker teams (2001 and 2004), one was an Allen Iverson-led Philadelphia 76ers team (2001), one was the 2004 Detroit Pistons (who we will talk about later), and the most recent one was a LeBron James/Miami Heat team (2014).

So basically if your team wins about 55 games, they are unlikely to make it to the Finals; and even if they do make it to the Finals, it was most likely because they were built around a superstar or two. The Utah Jazz don’t have one of those superstars on their roster.

Teams lacking a superstar player may crush it during the regular season; they might even earn themselves a nice playoff seed, but almost always they will choke in the playoffs.

The 2015-16 Toronto Raptors are a prime example: they relied heavily on their all-star backcourt of DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry. They brought a new excitement to the Toronto Raptors franchise. They even won 56 games, earned the 2nd seed in the East, and sported a top 5 offense.

But when push came to shove, they were eliminated in six games by LeBron and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Conference Finals. The next two years after that they were swept by the Cavs in the Conference Finals. So close, yet so far from a title.

Another example is the grit ‘n grind Memphis Grizzlies. They won 56 games in 2012-13, and 55 games in 2014-15. But their best efforts just weren’t good enough in the playoffs. They got swept in the Conference Finals in 2013 and have never been back since. Neither the Raptors nor Grizzlies had a superstar on their roster.

Even the 2014-15 San Antonio Spurs were the defending champions led by a mixture of deteriorating stars and rising star Kawhi Leonard. They won 55 games but were still the 6th seed in the loaded Western Conference. They got an unlucky matchup against a young, athletic Clippers squad and got bounced in the first round.

Notice a common theme here? Each team had a lack of a superstar(s), a top five player in the world. If the Western Conference really is as strong as most people think it is, then the Jazz are headed for a rough season where 55 wins might only get you a first-round exit.

Now that we’ve analyzed how 55-win teams have performed, let’s take a look at how the 3-seeds have performed historically.