The seeding games were very exciting in the Western Conference. Until the last days of competition, there were four teams trying to get the two spots for the play-in game, which will later become the Portland Trail Blazers and the Memphis Grizzlies. In the end, Portland beat Memphis and qualified for the postseason, becoming the first team since 1996/97 to make the playoffs with a losing record.
This season was expected to be better for the Blazers after reaching the Western Conference Finals last season, but they struggled to find themselves and get the victories they needed to advance past the regular season. One Reddit user recalled the last time one team actually made the postseason with a losing record; that time three squads made it to the big party with an under .500 average.
In 1996-97, as the 69-13 Bulls were gearing up for a fifth championship, three Western Conference teams made the playoffs with a losing record: the Suns (40-42), Timberwolves (40-42), and Clippers (36-46). Meanwhile, in the East, the worst playoff team that year was the Washington Bullets at 44-38.
Since that season, no sub-.500 Western Conference team has made the playoffs until now. Precisely four Western teams have qualified with an even .500 record in that span, most recently the 2016-17 Blazers.
But over in the East, it’s fairly routine for .500 or sub-.500 teams to qualify: It’s happened 29 times in those 24 years, including this year’s Brooklyn (35-37) and Orlando (33-40) squads. That’s 15 playoff teams at exactly .500 and 14 below .500.
The most egregious year for the East was 2003-04, when four teams qualified at .500 or worse: the New Orleans Hornets (41-41; they hadn’t moved to the West yet), Bucks (41-41), Knicks (39-43), and Celtics (36-46).
And there was also a four-year stretch from 2006 to 2009 when 12 teams in the East at .500 or below made the playoffs, or three a year.
The West has been the stronger conference for several years now and this is the biggest proof of that. It took 23 years to see another team making the postseason with a losing record while the East has seen plenty of teams, even #6 seeds with a losing record.
The Trail Blazers finally found the pace they were looking for before and now it’s time for them to keep that momentum in front of the big favorite Los Angeles Lakers. Damian Lillard and co. know that this record doesn’t mean anything in the playoffs, they are here and it’s 0-0 again.
