On April 20, 1986, Michael Jordan nonchalantly scored 63 points against the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Many NBA fans can tell you that, and I’m sure 100,000 people claim to have been at the Boston Garden that day.
What is little-known about Jordan’s 1986 Bulls, however, is that they are statistically the worst playoff qualifier in NBA history, managing a 30-52 mark and .366 win percentage during a regular season in which Jordan played just 17 games.
In fact, the San Antonio Spurs, who finished last in the Midwest Division, qualified for the playoffs that same year.
How was this possible? Back then, eight teams still made the playoffs in each conference, but this was prior to the last wave of NBA expansion, so only seven of 23 NBA teams failed to make the playoffs in 1986.
MLB has never seen a sub-.500 team make the playoffs, let alone one that won fewer than 40 percent of its games, but the detractors that cried against the Wild Card expansion in 1994 may be up in arms again following Commissioner Bud Selig’s declaration that he is open to the idea of expansion.
“The pragmatism is what’s most difficult,” Selig said. “The question is how do you do it and what form does it take? A lot of people have different opinions.”
Luckily for Mr. Selig, he needs to go no further than this article to answer that question.