[Murray] For the first time in the history of the NBA an Eastern Conference team (The Charlotte Hornets) has missed the playoffs for ten consecutive seasons.
For the first time in the history of the NBA an Eastern Conference team has missed the playoffs for ten consecutive seasons.
> It’s not easy to make the playoffs, but it is also just as hard for Eastern Conference teams to miss them for a decade. No franchise missed the playoffs for 10 straight years before the merger, even before the league expanded the playoff field in 1984.
> That changed when the Clippers franchise missed the 1986 playoffs. A team that started as the Buffalo Braves in 1970 and relocated to become the San Diego Clippers in 1978 was in Los Angeles by the mid-1980s and on a drought that the league had never seen. The Clippers spent the entire 1980s out of the playoffs, the only team to ever pull off those depths of futility. Ultimately, the Clippers franchise missed the playoffs for 15-straight seasons, ending the streak in 1992.
> Since then, only five other franchises have ever spent a decade out of the playoffs, and all of them were in the West: the Dallas Mavericks (1990-2000), the Golden State Warriors (1994- 2006), the Minnesota Timberwolves (2004-2017), the Phoenix Suns (2010-2020) and the Sacramento Kings (2006-2022, breaking the record the Clippers set).
> East teams have always found a way to make the playoffs before hitting a 10-year streak, although some teams have come close. The Hawks had an eight-year drought from 1999 to 2007, while Washington had an eight-year drought from 1988 to 1996.
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