Does Orlando Play More Interesting Games Than Golden State?

Ok, no. But I couldn’t think of a better headline.

However, by one extremely incomplete measure of the interest level of a game, the Magic are tops and Golden State is at the bottom. So far this season 75% of the running time of all Magic games has seen neither team with a double digit lead, highest in the league. On the flipside, Golden State’s games are “competitive” for only 53.5% of the time:

While this is not a great measure of quality of play, it is revealing in terms of how little suspense there really is as to the outcome of many of Golden States contests. By now, you’ve probably heard of the Warriors extended winning streak in games which they take leads of 15 or more, but if anything, this might undersell the level of dominance, of sheer control they tend to have over games.

Combing through play-by-play logs of this season, the Warriors have held double digit leads for an astonishing 40.4% of their time on the floor. This is far and away the highest in the league.[2. San Antonio is second, with a still historically great 33.9% of time with a 10+ point lead.] In fact, since the 2004/05 season[2. Which I consider the start of the truly “modern” period of NBA history due to the implementation of many of the rule changes which enable the current pace and space era.] no team prior to this season has spent even a third of its floortime with an advantage of 10 or more. The 2007/08 Celtics championship team achieved the highest mark over a full season, at 31.8%. Thus, if the season ended today, the Warriors and Spurs would have legitimate claims to being the most dominant teams regular season teams of the past decade or so.

Unfortunately, the earliest year for which I have play-by-play logs available in the format needed for this analysis is 96/97, preventing a comparison between the 72 win 95/96 Bulls squad which these Warriors are chasing. However, the no-slouches-themselves Chicago team from that first season available to me did have double digit leads for 33.7% of their regular season floor time, so I would imagine the comparison between the slightly better Bulls from the earlier season and this year’s Warriors would be close.

All in all, Golden State has lead for 74.2% of their minutes, the best of any team since at least 96/97.

On the flipside, this season’s Lakers are in dangerous territory indeed. Perhaps because of their devotion to starting Kobe Bryant and or “teaching” “lessons” in “humility” to their best young prospects, the Lakers tend to fall behind early and stay behind. They have led for only 21.4% of their minutes this season. The only worse team in recent history are the 2011/12 Bobcats who were so bad that not only did they destroy “Bobcats” as a team name, but they invented the term “Bobcatting” for finishing last in Offensive AND Defensive Rating in the same season. Those ‘Cats led for just 21.1% of their floor time.

Some other ins and outs of this season, the Spurs have actually spent a greater portion of time up 20 or more than have the Warriors, 12% to 10.6%, though as likely as not this has to do with San Antonio’s greater degree of garbage time dominance which allows them to maintain and extend big leads in contests already decided than the Warriors. Since 1996/97, five teams have had 20 point leads for at least 10% of their minutes. Those teams include 4 champions (those 96/97 Bulls, the 07/08 Celtics, the 13/14 Spurs and last year’s Warriors) and the hard luck 12/13 Thunder who lost Russell Westbrook for the post-season in their first playoff game.

Of the teams with the top 9 percentages of 20 point or more leads, that Thunder team was the only one to not at least make the NBA Finals, aside from the 2013/14 Timberwolves team that is. That last Kevin Love Minnesota season remains one of the great enigmas of recent memory, finishing 40-42 despite an expected record of 48-34 according to point differential and a stunning propensity to lose close games.[3. Perhaps closing games with JJ Barea instead of Ricky Rubio which great frequency had something to do with that? #NeverForget.]

The summary of every team’s percentage of floor time leading or trailing of doing so by at least 10 and 20 as well as the time spent in tie games is listed below. The “Competitive%” is the amount of in which neither team had a double digit lead, while the “Blowout%” reflects total time with a score margin of 20 or more: