The NBA Playoffs are a different sport. This is how to win

It’s April 19, the second game of the playoffs, entering overtime of Game 1 between the former champions Denver Nuggets and their fearsome foe Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers have outshot the Thunder, from two-point and three-point range, and Russell Westbrook committed a bizarre turnover to let the game go to overtime in the first place.

But Aaron Gordon snatches the ball from Norman Powell as he drives from the corner. The Nuggets miss in transition, but Westbrook grabs the offensive rebound and earns free throws. Later, Nikola Jokic gets his fingertips on a pass meant for Ivica Zubac, and Christian Braun leaps out of bounds to seal the steal. Westbrook grabs his own missed triple. Gordon grabs another offensive rebound later. The Clippers make more shots, shoot a better percentage, and hit more triples in overtime.

But the Nuggets win because they claw away more possessions.

The start of the playoffs foreshadow what’s to come. If you thought winning the possession battle was significant in the regular season, it has become even more important in the playoffs. It helped the Nuggets against the Clippers, of course, though that strength turned into a deficit in the next round against the Oklahoma City Thunder — who define a modern NBA which is in turn defined by the possession battle.

Teams that committed fewer turnovers than their opponents won 59 percent of all games in the regular season. That rose to a preposterous 73 percent in the playoffs. That gap of 14 percentage points represents the largest gap of any statistic when comparing winning differential between the regular season and the playoffs. But it’s far from the only one to have changed by a wide margin.

The statistics are all taken from NBA Visuals. (And it is a selection of statistics, with more examples on the excellent site.) The chart is ordered by winning differential between the playoffs and regular season. So for example even though winning the efficiency battle (whether tracked by effective field-goal (eFG percentage) or regular field-goal (FG) percentage) resulted in a win in the playoffs quite frequently, both correlated with winning less frequently in the playoffs than the regular season.

But some aspects of efficiency did matter more in the playoffs: making the tough shots. In fact, while regular eFG percentage winning rate dropped by three percentage points in the playoffs, pull-up FG percentage’s correlation with winning rose by 11 percentage points. Similarly, the winning differential given from winning the long mid-range FG percentage battle rose by 11 percentage points as well.

Both marks are significant and reveal truths about the modern NBA.

In the regular season, most (but not all) teams can generate highly efficient looks on an average possession. That is less true in the crucible of the playoffs. The point of this piece is not to litigate those changes, but suffice to say that increasingly legal physicality, decreased pace, more specified game-planning, and (perhaps) increased effort all combine to mean offenses are far less advantaged in the postseason than the regular season. As a result, winning is defined to a larger extent by making the tough shots — pull-ups, middies — which become even more of a necessity.

In the regular season, a variety of teams could chew through wins with a picturesque shot chart. Teams like the Boston Celtics (first), Minnesota Timberwolves (fifth), Cleveland Cavaliers (seventh), and Golden State Warriors (ninth) all ranked in the top 10 for frequency of shots in the regular season taken at the rim or from deep. All four teams saw their frequency of such shots drop in the playoffs but only by minuscule margins, and all ranked within the top five among playoff teams for such shots.

Yet the Indiana Pacers, on the other hand, ranked 23rd in rim and three-point frequency combined in the regular season, and that frequency fell by more than three percentage points in the playoffs. Though they ran more actions in the half court than virtually any other team, with a black belt in clipboard kung fu, many of their best players — Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, TJ McConnell — opted for long-midrange attempts at a percentile rank of 80 or higher. Yet Indiana’s first-shot half-court efficiency practically remained identical in the playoffs while virtually every other team’s dropped.

Mid-range shots seemed to matter more in the playoffs. And in the playoffs, those picturesque-shot-chart teams (Boston: 4-0, Cleveland: 5-1, Minnesota: 5-1, Golden State: 4-2) still shredded opponents when they managed to outshoot opponents on their more difficult pull-up jumpers. Everyone won a vast majority of games when outshooting opponents on pull-up jumpers. Again: making your mid-rangers matters more in the playoffs when (relatively) little else can be mined from the depths of the half court.

In all the playoffs, only the Los Angeles Lakers (1-2) and Miluwakee Bucks (0-2) had losing records while shooting a higher eFG percentage than opponents on pull-up jumpers. But take those two Lakers’ losses, for example; in one (April 25), the Lakers (especially LeBron James, scoring 15 points on nine pull-up jumpers) may have shot well on pull-ups but also managed 12 pitiful makes from within 10 feet, and they collected 29 measly points from anyone not named James, Luka Doncic, or Austin Reaves. In the other such loss (April 30), Los Angeles may have outshot Minnesota on pull-ups, but all things are relative — the Lakers shot 3-of-13 from deep and 3-of-13 from 2-point range on those dribble jumpers, so it’s not like it put many extra points on the scoreboard.

What all this means is that it’s hard to lose a game in the playoffs when you have a higher eFG percentage on pull-up jumpers than your opponent. It takes serious failure elsewhere.

Interestingly, some shots matter more in the playoffs simply to the extent that you take them. Winning differential as correlated to overall 3-point attempt rate rose by a miniscule two percentage points from the regular season to the playoffs. But total corner triple attempts mattered much less in the playoffs, with its impact on winning dropping by six percentage points. In fact, taking more corner triples than your opponent in the 2024-25 playoffs has correlated with losing 54 percent of games. (Some of that is surely because the Thunder weaponize turnovers by gapping and stunting quite aggressively off the ball, meaning opponents manage to shoot lots of corner triples. But those opponents also overwhelmingly lose because of other benefits elsewhere for Oklahoma City. More on that later.) On the other hand, above-the-break triples matter much more in the playoffs, with their correlation with winning in the playoffs rising by eight percentage points to 59 percent.

Above-the-break triples are longer than corner triples, sure. So they go in slightly less frequently. But that also means defenders have to travel further distances to defend them. And while the baseline offers a second defender when shooters are run off the line from the corner, drivers attacking closeouts above the break have both directions from which to choose. There are more and better passing options. Above-the-break triples can also be created more easily without passing, on simple pull-ups that require no actions or are means of punishing switches, while corner triples generally need to be created by flurries of ball movement and defensive rotations. It all combines to mean that when defences tighten in the playoffs, corner triples — both makes and attempts — mean less and above-the-break shots mean more.

This continues the trend of difficult, pull-up, and otherwise available jumpers correlating with winning more often in the playoffs than the regular season. In the ease of the regular season, when teams are focused on themselves and have relatively simple gameplans, you don’t need to worry about letting perfect be the enemy of the good because perfection is relatively accessible from a gameplan point of view. Almost any team can create perfect shot charts that would give Daryl Morey wet dreams.

In the playoffs, when teams have weeks to plan for you, with NASA’s best minds developing defensive approaches to take such shots away, sometimes you have to take what you can get. The teams that are best at ‘what you can get’ win more often.

This actually continues a trend over the last several years. I was worried about the small sample size of the playoffs compared to the regular season, so I pulled the same statistics since 2014-15, when tracking data began. And while relationships do vary, the trend line has been positive, with all of pull-up efficiency, long mid-range efficiency, and above-the-break three-point attempts generally correlating more positively in the playoffs than the regular season.

And, more interestingly, this trend hasn’t just been positive, it has also been accelerating. Meaning this has been mattering increasingly more year over year over the past decade.

Making tough shots has always mattered. But in the modern NBA, with every team mining the analytics gold mines for efficiency, and Steph Curry’s shadow looming large over the entire league, it seems that making tough shots matters increasingly more — and by extension creating easy ones matters increasingly less — in the playoffs rather than the regular season. Again: perfection can be accessed in the regular season. Not in the playoffs.

While the Thunder and Pacers had many differences as teams, their similarities were perhaps more instructive. They were both high-frequency driving teams. And both ranked near the bottom of the league for average seconds per touch. In other words, players on both teams made immediate decisions, and at a relatively high rate those decisions were to put the ball on the floor and hit the paint.

Quick decisions and drives have generally been synonymous with modern, high-powered offence. On the other hand, pull-up shooting has generally been more correlative with spread pick and roll and the heliocentrism of the late 2010s and early 2020s. What made Indiana and Oklahoma City’s offenses so terrific in the playoffs was their shared ability to combine both approaches. Take the efficient stuff when available, just like the regular season. Pace, pass, drive, hit the paint, spray the ball, open triples. But when that’s not available, both teams have been among the best at finding adequate shots anyway. The Knicks were arguably better than the Pacers at making the tough shots, but they couldn’t create the easy ones to go along with them. The Cavaliers were arguably better than the Pacers at creating the easy shots, but they couldn’t make the tough ones, too.

The Pacers were Goldilocks’ Team, at least of the East.

Making tough shots mattered hugely, but there is one statistic that has mattered by an even wider margin when it comes to winning rate differential between the playoffs and regular season: having extra shooting possessions.

No team won the possession battle by a wider margin than the Oklahoma City Thunder. There are a variety of commonalities in the factors that have changed by the largest positive and negative margins. And the Thunder define those commonalities. In many ways, the means by which the Thunder won games has become synonymous with the modern NBA itself.

The Thunder aren’t just dominating the playoffs; they’re defining what playoff domination constitutes.

If shot-making and possessions mattered most, then the Thunder represent the platonic ideal of that ethos. In Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder employ not just the MVP and Finals MVP, but also the toughest shot-maker in the playoffs. He shot 46.5 percent on 9.2 pull-up 2-pointers per game in the playoffs, both preposterous marks, especially given that no one attempted 9.0 pull-up 2-pointers per game this season. Add in that he shot 50.0 percent from the short midrange, and did it almost all unassisted, and it’s clear Gilgeous-Alexander is incredibly efficient on shots that defences are begging offensive players to attempt. There’s no winning for a defence when it comes to him.

Furthermore, Oklahoma City’s defense — historic — gave the Thunder a machine that simply churned out possession advantages, game after game. To that point, the Thunder’s turnover percentage differential versus opponents in the regular season was plus-4.6 percentage points. Which is the second-largest gap in a single season in NBA history. And the Thunder’s gap in the playoffs grew to 4.9 percentage points. (As a point of comparison, the 95-96 and 96-97 Bulls are two of the other top-15 playoff marks in history. It seems Michael Jordan’s two best teams also featured the same recipe of extra possessions and tough shot-making.)

The impact of the players who most powerfully drove the possession differential shows up in the numbers. Alex Caruso had the third-highest on/off differential on the Thunder in the playoffs, above Gilgeous-Alexander. And he, not coincidentally, also led the Thunder (and was top five in the playoffs) in on/off differential for opposing turnover percentage.

Take the Finals as perhaps the most instructive example of the power of these factors.

Through the Finals, any team that both had a higher eFG percentage and fewer turnovers than the other was undefeated, a perfect 4-0. (Translation: The league never should have led the Thunder pair Caruso with Gilgeous-Alexander.)

And yet the Pacers didn’t (almost) shock the Thunder through luck or heart. They (almost) did it by beating the Thunder at their own game. In Game 3, you would have been forgiven for thinking the Pacers were the actual Thunder, especially as Tyrese Haliburton and Bennedict Mathurin rained in pull-up jumpers, and TJ McConnell stole inbounds passes to steal extra possessions. On the other hand, the Thunder lost their modern ball movement (one of their lowest pass-total games of the season) and shot 7-of-21 on pull-up mid-rangers, as Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t able to turn the corner and was off-rhythm with his jumper because of pressure. Indiana won both major categories of modern playoff dominance.

That didn’t last. When the chips were down, and with Haliburton playing injured and then not playing at all due to re-injury, the Thunder were the best at defining modern playoff basketball.

If ‘make your shots and take more of them’ is the future of playoff basketball, then that’s not such a profound realization. But it’s clear that NBA teams are only re-discovering the power of that maxim recently.

It is meaningful that the winning differential has been accelerating for all of the most impactful statistics. The league is growing into the future, and that future is increasingly defined by singular areas of dominance. Pull-up shooting is clearly a necessity for playoff success, and it must also unlock easy buckets, rather than simply subsist as an entirety of an offense unto itself. And defense must be built to give your offense as many extra kicks at the can as possible. Other teams have tried this in the past, but the Thunder are combining all these visions of the future into one Unified Theory of Basketball.

There aren’t multiple definitions of what the future of NBA basketball can look like, not really. There is one vision, with a variety of teams trying to master it. The Pacers came close, and the Nuggets did well. But no one could out-define the Thunder. And they’re clearly going to be the best at these definitive qualities for the foreseeable future.

Until the next team redefines the zeitgeist of the next future.