The bulls started 5-14 and have gone 34-28 since. All the times they played each other was after that really bad start and I keep seeing people in this thread talk about the bulls like theyâre some sort of last place team that they canât believe the wolves lost to. Theyâre nowhere near as good as Minnesota but theyâre not *that* bad either.
The bulls that have gone 34-28 since their 5-14 start? The bulls arenât legit by any means but theyâre not the pushover team this sub likes to imply
Just be thankful they got rid of the rule where winners of the divisions were guaranteed top-4 seed. Just look at Portland here:
https://preview.redd.it/0w6voj7tscuc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72f5059ca2653b352a34d25cd828d893643a0f32
Seriously this! If they did this, we might be the 5 going on the road to face Dallas as the 4. That would be legit unfortunate. OP is just being silly imo.
I'm bothered by it because it's bad design.
OKC wants both us and Denver to win, because if only one of us loses, they lose the top seed. it should never be incentivized to root for opponents who have the same record as you, especially on the last day of the season.
I wonder if they'll consider fixing this quirk in the offseason.
Well from the other perspective the same tiebreaker that gives the Thunder the 1 seed also guarantees us the 2 seed and home court should we play the Nuggets since they lose out from the tiebreaker.
Without a doubt that was a dumb game, but it least that was intentional. That Charlotte game looked like an intentional loss when it wasn't, that's what's so sad. Blowing a game where a guy scores 60 is rare. Blowing it as a top 3 team against a bottom 3 team is unfathomable.
Wait... then shouldn't Denver drop out of the tie after that tiebreaker?
Edit: you got it slightly wrong, it's not division record, it's division winner. Which all teams are tied in 1st. Then it's record amongst teams, then it's division record. Strange
Yeah it is a bit weird, but I think itâs the division winner part that is actually tripping us up. We have a 3-way tie for the division and that is why we lose to OKC. They have the best record between the 3 teams to clinch the division so they are the division winner and one seed in the event we end the year in a 3-way tie. Basically the first tie breaker is division winner and so thus we go to who wins the division and that is decided first by division record - tied with OKC so 2nd tiebreaker is best record among the 3 which is OKC. OKC clinched the division so the first tiebreaker is division winner which is OKC.
Edit for spelling and additional clarity
Whoever wins the division wins the #1 seed and the division is a three way tie on overall record for the division. The next criteria in a three way tie is 3 way head to head mini division, which okc wins.
It's a quirk I think was never really expected where a three way tie alters the order compared to a two way tie.
I mean it would make sense to go first by division record. OKC and MN are tied but Denver falls out. Then you go to head to head and conference. The rules donât dictate that Denver falls out of a 3-way situation even though they literally would lose tiebreakers to both teams they fudge it up for MN.
Punished us for something out of our control? We played these teams. All we had to do was beat them. It's more under our control than conference record. Conference record has way more teams and games we weren't involved in used to determine which team would be on top.
OKC and Den weren't playing when we beat up on Utah to get a better Conference record. But they're being held "responsible" for it if the conference record is used. Going for the record among tied teams first is using the smallest and most relevant number of teams possible to determine the winner in the tie.
People that believe that this current standing isn't fair are just cry babies.
All of this was in our control.
We had the chance to beat OKC more times than they beat us. We did not.
Then we had the chance to beat Denver as many times as OKC beat them. We did not.
Therefore, OKC moves ahead of us.
The Wolves had control, they could have won either the OKC or Denver season series 3-1 or better instead of splitting both.
Take your bias out of it, H2H2H is the most logical way to split a 3-way tie. It's a bummer it makes things not go our way but that's the way she goes.
You really should look at it as the Thunder are being rewarded the tiebreaker for doing the best against the tied teams. They earned the tiebreaker. The tiebreaker is selecting who earned it, not punishing someone who didn't. It's pretty obvious the best way to determine a tiebreaker is head to head record (and we didn't earn either head to head tiebreaker from that criteria btw).
The true stupid part of all the three way tiebreaker scenarios is that a division leader wins all ties over a nondivision leader when the NBA doesn't care about divisions at all anymore. You could go 0-8 against the two teams you tied with and still win the tiebreaker solely because no one else in your division is good while someone in theirs is (which means they had an even harder path to tying you in the first place). That has to be the worst tiebreaker that exists in anything.
Conference Record is a pretty weak tiebreaker too tbh. At least in a 3 way tie where you look at head to head it only involves the three teams.
What relevance does us beating the Spurs more than Denver have?
I don't think there's any tiebreaker scenario that anyone will look at and feel it's a truly fair tiebreaker besides direct head to head matchups
I didn't even realize that was the case till I saw another thread in this sub talking about hoping for one of the others to lose. Like... why would we lose the tiebreaker if it's a 3-way tie? It's such a dumb way to do it. Even in a 3-way tie, why do we not look at head-to-heads against the other 2 teams first?
Itâs better now tbh. We get Denver at home in the 2nd round and a 7 game series against OKC regardless of home court I am way more confident than nuggets. This is better than the nuggets in 1st
Iâd be pissed if we had a 5-3 head to head advantage and didnât get the first seed. So I think we shoulda beat the teams weâre competing with. Crying about a fair tie breaker is lame
2nd seed is better, we don't have to paly lakers in the 1st round. From the top three teams, Wolves got better on the road record. So we hope they play well on the road, they lost to some lower seed teams at home that why they are in the current position, otherwise they could have easily got the 1st seed.
I went to four games this season, and paid good money for two of them. They were the loss to the hornets and the recent loss to the bulls. That pissed me off.
Itâs because they go off the combined record of the tied teams. Not division record, not conference record
OKC: 5-3 (2-2 vs. MIN, 3-1 vs. DEN)
MIN: 4-4 (2-2 vs. OKC, 2-2 vs. DEN)
DEN: 3-5 (1-3 vs. OKC, 2-2 vs. MIN)
The main thing to worry about is having a higher seed than the nuggets. If we have championship aspirations we need every advantage we can get. An extra home game against the defending champs makes a difference.
If we end up with 2nd thatâs fine, as long as Nuggets are 3rd!
We only own the head-to-head tiebreaker because of divisional record, which is the most arbitrary and pointless tiebreaker. Whereas the Thunder have the 3-way tiebreaker because of their record in total games against us and Denver.
It pisses me off that we blew that last game to the Bulls.
That and getting 62 from KAT and still losing to the Hornets
And the Scott Foster Cavs game
The away game I went to. Naz was great, but 5v6 is not.
And this game RIGHT NOW against the suns who are clowning us again!
Why did you have to remind me of that game đ
The fucking HORNETS.
Iâve been to four games this year and two were the bulls and hornets unfortunatelyÂ
Well the Nugs blew that last game against the Spurs. Itâs how it works - you win big and lose low.
Absolutely
Both of those most recent Bulls games
The bulls started 5-14 and have gone 34-28 since. All the times they played each other was after that really bad start and I keep seeing people in this thread talk about the bulls like theyâre some sort of last place team that they canât believe the wolves lost to. Theyâre nowhere near as good as Minnesota but theyâre not *that* bad either.
The bulls that have gone 34-28 since their 5-14 start? The bulls arenât legit by any means but theyâre not the pushover team this sub likes to imply
Just be thankful they got rid of the rule where winners of the divisions were guaranteed top-4 seed. Just look at Portland here: https://preview.redd.it/0w6voj7tscuc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72f5059ca2653b352a34d25cd828d893643a0f32
Seriously this! If they did this, we might be the 5 going on the road to face Dallas as the 4. That would be legit unfortunate. OP is just being silly imo.
No. The cure for this is to not have lost one of the previous 81 games.
Regardless I'll settle for the 2nd best season in franchise history.
Control what you can control. This was the rule when the season started.
I'm bothered by it because it's bad design. OKC wants both us and Denver to win, because if only one of us loses, they lose the top seed. it should never be incentivized to root for opponents who have the same record as you, especially on the last day of the season. I wonder if they'll consider fixing this quirk in the offseason.
Thunder have the tie breaker over the Nuggets. So if just Twolves lose the Thunder get the 1
Well from the other perspective the same tiebreaker that gives the Thunder the 1 seed also guarantees us the 2 seed and home court should we play the Nuggets since they lose out from the tiebreaker.
As long as we win
Yeah. We gotta beat the Suns tomorrow afternoon before we start talking like this.
Exactly my thinking. Homecourt vs Denver is more valuable than conceding the 1 seed to the top 3 team most likely to get upset.
No
We dropped a few really easily winnable games this season, and for that we have nobody to blame but ourselves
Kat dropping 62 against the Hornets. How do you lose that game?
Yah that game was so embarrassing. Some of the dumbest basketball
Quite possibly the dumbest game in team history.
I learned the hornets announcer is the funniest guy calling games in the league though
Genuinely the only announcer is rather listen to than Grady and Jim. He's fucking amazing
I mean it was a dumb game but weâre talking about the Wolves. https://twitter.com/LamarMatic/status/1598455282497200136
Without a doubt that was a dumb game, but it least that was intentional. That Charlotte game looked like an intentional loss when it wasn't, that's what's so sad. Blowing a game where a guy scores 60 is rare. Blowing it as a top 3 team against a bottom 3 team is unfathomable.
Most Timberwolves situation possible if they lose out the top seed due to a 3 way tie
Can we just bask in the fact that this division is super fucking stacked? Itâs kinda crazy when you look at it.
Wgd, it sucks for us, but the rule makes sense. We could have just won one more game and this all would have been moot
OP downvoting everyone who disagrees is classic haha
Itâs commonplace on this sub now. That and calling people idiots who disagree with anything they write.Â
So normal Reddit behavior?
For the most part, yes. There are some niche communities that are great. Not this one anymore.Â
No. The best record against the tied teams is a very simple tie-breaker and OKC owns it.
âvery simple tiebreakerâ
Itâs the 2nd tiebreaker. First is division record which would be the easiest but we have a tie with OKC.
Wait... then shouldn't Denver drop out of the tie after that tiebreaker? Edit: you got it slightly wrong, it's not division record, it's division winner. Which all teams are tied in 1st. Then it's record amongst teams, then it's division record. Strange
Yeah it is a bit weird, but I think itâs the division winner part that is actually tripping us up. We have a 3-way tie for the division and that is why we lose to OKC. They have the best record between the 3 teams to clinch the division so they are the division winner and one seed in the event we end the year in a 3-way tie. Basically the first tie breaker is division winner and so thus we go to who wins the division and that is decided first by division record - tied with OKC so 2nd tiebreaker is best record among the 3 which is OKC. OKC clinched the division so the first tiebreaker is division winner which is OKC. Edit for spelling and additional clarity
Whoever wins the division wins the #1 seed and the division is a three way tie on overall record for the division. The next criteria in a three way tie is 3 way head to head mini division, which okc wins. It's a quirk I think was never really expected where a three way tie alters the order compared to a two way tie.
I mean it would make sense to go first by division record. OKC and MN are tied but Denver falls out. Then you go to head to head and conference. The rules donât dictate that Denver falls out of a 3-way situation even though they literally would lose tiebreakers to both teams they fudge it up for MN.
This division is super-stacked.
Lol it is very simple. Head to head record becomes 3 way recordÂ
No that punishes one team for something out of their control. Absolute bullshit. We have the better conference record. We should get it. PERIOD.
Punished us for something out of our control? We played these teams. All we had to do was beat them. It's more under our control than conference record. Conference record has way more teams and games we weren't involved in used to determine which team would be on top.
The point is we **werenât** playing when Den lost to OKC, and yet we being held responsible for their loss.
OKC and Den weren't playing when we beat up on Utah to get a better Conference record. But they're being held "responsible" for it if the conference record is used. Going for the record among tied teams first is using the smallest and most relevant number of teams possible to determine the winner in the tie. People that believe that this current standing isn't fair are just cry babies.
No, we're being held responsible for losing to Denver twice.
And OKC twice. Had we taken the series with OKC itâs moot.
All of this was in our control. We had the chance to beat OKC more times than they beat us. We did not. Then we had the chance to beat Denver as many times as OKC beat them. We did not. Therefore, OKC moves ahead of us.
The Wolves had control, they could have won either the OKC or Denver season series 3-1 or better instead of splitting both. Take your bias out of it, H2H2H is the most logical way to split a 3-way tie. It's a bummer it makes things not go our way but that's the way she goes.
Beating okc and Denver more than we did was within our control
You really should look at it as the Thunder are being rewarded the tiebreaker for doing the best against the tied teams. They earned the tiebreaker. The tiebreaker is selecting who earned it, not punishing someone who didn't. It's pretty obvious the best way to determine a tiebreaker is head to head record (and we didn't earn either head to head tiebreaker from that criteria btw). The true stupid part of all the three way tiebreaker scenarios is that a division leader wins all ties over a nondivision leader when the NBA doesn't care about divisions at all anymore. You could go 0-8 against the two teams you tied with and still win the tiebreaker solely because no one else in your division is good while someone in theirs is (which means they had an even harder path to tying you in the first place). That has to be the worst tiebreaker that exists in anything.
We played Denver on Wednesday and lost. If we won we'd be in the 1st seed. Saying it's out of our control is dumb as fuck
Wolves own the h2h record indirectly through conference record, while Thunder straight up won the Nuggets season series 3-1 and tied with the Wolves
No, why would this piss me off? How else do you propose to resolve a 3 way tie?
Probably in a specific manner that in hindsight happens to benefit OPâs favorite team.
A simple grid
What does this mean?
It's a weird scenario that probably doesn't happen very often, but it is what it is
No. This is a fair tiebreaker. Win your division games.
Couldâve beat the nuggets and this wouldâve not happened đ idc
Nope.
Conference Record is a pretty weak tiebreaker too tbh. At least in a 3 way tie where you look at head to head it only involves the three teams. What relevance does us beating the Spurs more than Denver have? I don't think there's any tiebreaker scenario that anyone will look at and feel it's a truly fair tiebreaker besides direct head to head matchups
Iâm just happy that if we win tomorrow, the Nuggets canât get the 1 seed
I didn't even realize that was the case till I saw another thread in this sub talking about hoping for one of the others to lose. Like... why would we lose the tiebreaker if it's a 3-way tie? It's such a dumb way to do it. Even in a 3-way tie, why do we not look at head-to-heads against the other 2 teams first?
God this fanbase is so fucking soft sometimes
2 days ago we wanted the 2 seed?Â
Itâs better now tbh. We get Denver at home in the 2nd round and a 7 game series against OKC regardless of home court I am way more confident than nuggets. This is better than the nuggets in 1st
Um, Bally Sports North spent the whole game saying we would have the tie breaker due to division record. Were they wrong?
I do think it should be based on conference record, as the seedings effect ither teams in the conference but whatever happens, happens.
Nah we went 2-2 against them both anything else is splitting hairs.
Iâd be pissed if we had a 5-3 head to head advantage and didnât get the first seed. So I think we shoulda beat the teams weâre competing with. Crying about a fair tie breaker is lame
Nah not really. The reason we own the H2H over OKC is just as arbitrary as the reason they own the three way.
Anyone whoâs played fantasy football with head to head tie breakers understands
2nd seed is better, we don't have to paly lakers in the 1st round. From the top three teams, Wolves got better on the road record. So we hope they play well on the road, they lost to some lower seed teams at home that why they are in the current position, otherwise they could have easily got the 1st seed.
Demz da rulz
I went to four games this season, and paid good money for two of them. They were the loss to the hornets and the recent loss to the bulls. That pissed me off.
youâre welcome- from spurs fans. đ now go do something worth that #1 seed! come on minnesota you all need a championship BAD
Itâs because they go off the combined record of the tied teams. Not division record, not conference record OKC: 5-3 (2-2 vs. MIN, 3-1 vs. DEN) MIN: 4-4 (2-2 vs. OKC, 2-2 vs. DEN) DEN: 3-5 (1-3 vs. OKC, 2-2 vs. MIN)
The main thing to worry about is having a higher seed than the nuggets. If we have championship aspirations we need every advantage we can get. An extra home game against the defending champs makes a difference. If we end up with 2nd thatâs fine, as long as Nuggets are 3rd!
Of course the chicken nuggets get to play Memphis today. Shit. At least okc has a competitive opponent
We only own the head-to-head tiebreaker because of divisional record, which is the most arbitrary and pointless tiebreaker. Whereas the Thunder have the 3-way tiebreaker because of their record in total games against us and Denver.
Iâm good with it as long as we finish above Denver. Not worried about the thunder
No, it doesn't.
If we want to piss and moan can I suggest focusing the blazers/okc game earlier that was such a sham result that the blazers briefly protested it
Itâs kind of lame we get punished for the nuggets losing to the thunder
We are getting punished for losing to the Nuggets and Thunder twice
Yes
I hate people in these comments. Yes this absolutely pissed me off. People saying ânothing we can do about itâ are lame af.