The most insane NBA stat of the moment

[celticsclay]

39

This is the number of consecutive losses for Minnesota, Lakers, Sacramento, Denver, Orlando and Philadelphia combined.

If we wanted to we could also add that Indiana is 1-9 in their last ten games with the only win coming against Orlando. It is mildly remarkable these teams have played this many games without playing each other. Not sure I have seen 6 teams on a combined 39 game losing streak before, but it kind of goes to show how silly the idea of the celtics tanking is at the moment. 

[celticsclay]

#rondo
#tradeprince
#deflategate
#freeyoung

[fairweatherfan]

It's been a couple days but 37 in a quarter is still much more insanier. 

I agree that a bottom 5 record is probably not something anyone should seriously be expecting by now.  We're not a good team but too good for that.  My avatar says what I think about the playoff talk, too, though. 

[Nerf DPOY]

It's been a couple days but 37 in a quarter is still much more insanier. 

I agree that a bottom 5 record is probably not something anyone should seriously be expecting by now.  We're not a good team but too good for that.  My avatar says what I think about the playoff talk, too, though. 

The avatar's the first thing I noticed. You can switch to Herm Edwards for the tanking threads.

[celticsclay]

I guess people don't really realize or appreciate how crazy a collective streak this is.

This is 20% of the league that have lost the equivalent of 80 baseball games in a row. It would be one thing if it was just two teams on 18 game losing streaks or something, but really shows how big the divide is between the good and bad teams in the league at the moment. Even the odds of them not playing each other are slim.

[fairweatherfan]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that 39 straight across 6 teams is not particularly unusual.  Only looking at the end of the season standings, you can find 37 straight across 6 teams just two years ago.  45 straight across 6 teams 3 years ago, though that's mostly Charlotte's 23-gamer.  It's interesting to note but in a 30 team league things like that will happen with decent regularity.

[bdm860]

I guess people don't really realize or appreciate how crazy a collective streak this is.

I don't know how crazy it is, but it would help if you gave some comparisons, is there a record for this kind of thing?  How does it compare to other times?  Otherwise it just seems like a very random stat.

The way I think about it, usually after the 1st day of the season, there's a combined 15 game losing streak out there, so I'm not really wrapping my head around what makes this special.

Poking around the wayback machine a little with the NBA standings page (is there a better way to do this?), it doesn't seem like this is anything that special.  Just last year on 3/24/14, Detroit, Milwaekee, Philly, and Orlando had a combined 45 game losing streak, and you could add a couple other teams (to match the 6 teams in the OPs example) on 2 game skids to make it 49.  I'm sure with a little digging just around teams with 20+ game losing streaks, you can find several more examples of such combined losing streaks.

[celticsclay]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that 39 straight across 6 teams is not particularly unusual.  Only looking at the end of the season standings, you can find 37 straight across 6 teams just two years ago.  45 straight across 6 teams 3 years ago, though that's mostly Charlotte's 23-gamer.  It's interesting to note but in a 30 team league things like that will happen with decent regularity.

Like I said if you have one 1 team that has 23 losses in a row it is pretty unremarkable to find a bunch of other teams on 3 game losing streaks. However, I guess finding 6 teams that have all lost 5 in a row seems pretty eye opening to me as well 5 teams that have lost 6 or more in a row. It seems just from the law of averages that the teams would play each other if nothing else and are really incapable of beating even a halfway decent team. If there are a bunch of times where it is common to have 20% of the league losing 5 or more games in a row than I stand corrected, but don't remember seeing it very frequently.

[celticsclay]

I guess people don't really realize or appreciate how crazy a collective streak this is.

I don't know how crazy it is, but it would help if you gave some comparisons, is there a record for this kind of thing?  How does it compare to other times?  Otherwise it just seems like a very random stat.

The way I think about it, usually after the 1st day of the season, there's a combined 15 game losing streak out there, so I'm not really wrapping my head around what makes this special.

Poking around the wayback machine a little with the NBA standings page (is there a better way to do this?), it doesn't seem like this is anything that special.  Just last year on 3/24/14, Detroit, Milwaekee, Philly, and Orlando had a combined 45 game losing streak, and you could add a couple other teams (to match the 6 teams in the OPs example) on 2 game skids to make it 49.  I'm sure with a little digging just around teams with 20+ game losing streaks, you can find several more examples of such combined losing streaks.

BDM thanks for taking the time to look that up. TP for you. Again like with the other poster that is a streak primarily made from one team (Philly 24 games).

[Celtics18]

We can do our part to keep that streak alive against the T-Wolves tonight. 

[footey]

How much is the combined losing streak tied to the daily improvement of Okafor? 

He is going to be a great NBA player in my book.

[celticsclay]

We can do our part to keep that streak alive against the T-Wolves tonight.

i hope we go. I will also add that this list does not even include the knicks. Whole lot of terrible.

[Fafnir]

Well the minimum number of combined consecutive losses for the entire league (given uniform games played) is 15

So yeah I don't think 39 is that impressive When you look at a bunch of lottery teams together.

[loco_91]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that 39 straight across 6 teams is not particularly unusual.  Only looking at the end of the season standings, you can find 37 straight across 6 teams just two years ago.  45 straight across 6 teams 3 years ago, though that's mostly Charlotte's 23-gamer.  It's interesting to note but in a 30 team league things like that will happen with decent regularity.

Agreed - don't conflate the probabiltiy of a particular set of 6 teams being such a streak with the probability that there is a set of 6 teams on such a streak. There are nearly 600,000 possible subsets of 6 out of 36, so these two numbers are very different.

[celticsclay]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that 39 straight across 6 teams is not particularly unusual.  Only looking at the end of the season standings, you can find 37 straight across 6 teams just two years ago.  45 straight across 6 teams 3 years ago, though that's mostly Charlotte's 23-gamer.  It's interesting to note but in a 30 team league things like that will happen with decent regularity.

Agreed - don't conflate the probabiltiy of a particular set of 6 teams being such a streak with the probability that there is a set of 6 teams on such a streak. There are nearly 600,000 possible subsets of 6 out of 36, so these two numbers are very different.

Feel like we have a bunch of debbie downers. Including Indiana we 7 teams that are playing .05 ball over the last two weeks or so with a record of a 1-48.
If anyone wants to tell me that 7 teams winning a combined 1 game out of 49 in a row is not unusual, go ahead, but I think and feel it is.