Pelicans' slow start may already have put playoffs out of reach
This was the year the Pelicans were supposed to make a leap forward in the standings, but a disastrous injury-riddled start now has the prospect of making the postseason a long shot, at best.
Yes, we're just 12 games into an 82-game schedule, and even though New orleans is 1-11, they're only five games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.
But Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post looked at the numbers, and found that the odds of making the playoffs are now firmly stacked against the Pelicans.
Just three weeks into the regular season, though, that talk couldn’t be farther from everyone’s minds. After the Pelicans lost to the Thunder in Oklahoma City Wednesday night, they now sit at 1-11. And while the age-old NBA adage is that there’s always time to get things right over the course of the 82-game NBA regular season, New Orleans already appears to have run out of it.
Since the NBA expanded to a 16-team playoff back in the 1983-84 season, 33 teams have finished started the season with either 1-11 and 0-12 records, according to basketball-reference.com. Only one of them — the 1996-97 Phoenix Suns — managed to make the playoffs, and that Suns team managed to do so with a sub-.500 record, something no Western Conference team has done since.
