LesGrossman wrote:Its specific to the NBA compared to other, mostly european sports and leagues, that the point difference does not matter in the placement taht leads to the playoffs. In football for example, if you have even points, the tie breaker is usually the goal difference.
That is the reason why teams have their rookies play garbage time - it doesnt matter wether you lose by 1 or 50. At least thats what i think - adn what the question was about. Does it matter by how many points teams won, at any point int he NBA season?
TLDR: No, it does not matter.
According to
https://ak-static-int.nba.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/06/NBA_Tiebreaker_Procedures.pdf,
"Tiebreaker Basis – 2 Teams Tied
(-) Tie breaker not needed (better overall winning percentage)
(1) Better winning percentage in games against each other
(2) Division leader wins a tie over a team not leading a division
(3) Division won-lost percentage (only if teams are in same division)
(4) Conference won-lost percentage
(5) Better winning percentage against teams eligible for the playoffs in own
conference (including teams that finished the regular season tied for a playoff
position)
(6) Better winning percentage against teams eligible for the playoffs in other
conference (including teams that finished the regular season tied for a playoff
position)
(7) Better net result of total points scored less total points allowed against all
opponents (“point differential”)
Tiebreaker Basis – Three or More Teams Tied
(-) Tie breaker not needed (better overall winning percentage)
(1) Division leader wins tie from team not leading a division (this criterion is
applied regardless of whether the tied teams are in the same division)
(2) Better winning percentage in all games among the tied teams
(3) Division won-lost percentage (only if all teams are in same division)
(4) Conference won-lost percentage
(5) Better winning percentage against teams eligible for the playoffs in own
conference (including teams that finished the regular season tied for a playoff
position)
(6) Better net result of total points scored less total points allowed against all
opponents (“point differential”)
Playoff Tie-Break Procedures
(1) (a) Ties to determine the division winners must be broken before any other
ties.
(b) When a tie must be broken to determine a division winner, the results of
the tie-break shall be used to determine only the division winner, and not
for any other purpose.
(c) When three or more teams are tied, teams will be assigned a seeding
based on the multi-team tiebreaker basis above. If three or more teams
have equivalent records, the first tiebreaker criteria that creates
differentiation applies. If two or more teams remain tied after applying
that criteria, the team(s) that are not tied are assigned their seed and the
tiebreaker criteria restarts with the remaining teams.
Example: Teams A, B, and C are all tied at the end of the season. None of
the teams are division winners, and Team A had a 4-0 record in common
games, and Teams B and C had a 1-3 record in common games. Team A
would receive the highest seed, and the 2 Team tiebreaker would then
apply to Teams B and C to determine their relative seed.
(2) If application of the criteria in subparagraph a. or b. does not result in the
breaking of a tie, the playoff positions of the tied teams will be
determined by a random drawing."
LesGrossman wrote:Also, am i right to assume that a missed shot with foul is not counted at any point? If you pull game data from NBA.com, those do not appear as misses, right?
Shots where fouls occur are only counted as a field goal attempt when the attempt is successful (it will then also count as a made field goal). Otherwise, the field goal attempt is not counted.
If you just look at data alone, its like the foul was never taken. For example, in the game that happened today, Davis Bertans attempted two field goal attempts, but on one he got fouled so the shot attempt did not count. If you wanted to see that attempt based on nba.com's internal stat video viewer you would need to look at the foul of the player who fouled on the shot (see here:
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=205&GameID=0022200325&Season=2022-23&dir=A&flag=1&sort=dsc&title=Bey%20S.FOUL%20(P1.T4)%20(P.Fraher)). These are specified as shooting fouls, but only by a player and not on a specific player.