The Houston Rockets started the 2018-19 season at 9-11 and then ended the season at 53-29 and managed to get the 3 seed in the West.

Every team that has finished top 4 since then has been at least .500 by the 20th game.

It’s an interesting stat about how good teams start to separate themselves from the pack and how hard it is to climb back up the standings from a slow start.

By the end of the in-season tournament, we can likely pick out which teams will have home court in the first round of the playoffs, and which teams will be fighting for play-in spots, which is just a crazy stat with 60 games left in the season.

There are currently 16 teams at .500 or within 1 game of being .500, although we are only 6-8 games in and is pretty typical. The next month could be incredibly important for these teams to establish themselves though.

I think this makes the in-season tournament fascinating with which teams really push themselves to stay over that .500 mark.

The only lower seeded teams to make the finals in this window were the 2020 Heat (5), and 2023 Heat (8).