Why the NBA’s Play-In Lifeline Isn’t Working for 10-Seeds

The Mavericks and Heat probably aren’t the teams to break the curse — but the numbers say it’s overdue.

Tyler Herro and the Miami Heat are looking to become the first-ever No. 10 seed to advance from the NBA Play-In Tournament. (Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

When it was first introduced in 2020, the NBA’s Play-In Tournament was supposed to add some intrigue to the late doldrums of the regular season, giving more teams something to play for while discouraging at least some of the tanking we were used to seeing down the stretch.

Has it worked? Well, there certainly has been more late-season talk around teams avoiding the play-in, fighting for the No. 6 seed in their conference — safely in the playoffs proper — rather than exposing themselves to extra risk as the No. 7 or 8 seed. But in practice, the play-in hasn’t changed that much about who actually makes the playoffs. No 7-seed has ever missed the postseason out of the play-in, only three of eight No. 9 seeds have ever made it over the No. 8, and perhaps most notably, a 10-seed has never advanced in eight tries:

As a matter of fact, a 10-seed has only ever been in a position to possibly advance two times. The way the Page–McIntyre bracket system¹ works, seeds 7-8 must only win one of a possible two games to advance, while seeds 9-10 must win twice to advance — once against each other, and once against the loser of the 7-versus-8 game. No. 9 seeds are 6-2 in that first leg (and then 3-3 in the second leg), while No. 10 seeds are by definition 2-6 — the sole winners coming in 2023 via both the Oklahoma City Thunder and Chicago Bulls — and then 0-2 in the second leg:

In fairness to the No. 10 seeds, it is difficult to win back-to-back road games against teams who, again by definition, have stronger regular-season records than you do. But it is still the case that, statistically, a 10-seed should probably have advanced out of the Play-In at least once by now.

To measure this, I gathered the Elo ratings of each Play-In team since the current format was adopted in 2020-21, and re-simulated each tournament 1,000 times, tracking how often we would expect teams of each seed to advance to the playoffs based on the quality levels of the teams involved:

Based on the simulations, we would have expected slightly fewer No. 7s to advance than we actually saw, slightly more No. 8s and fewer No. 9s. And we would expect about one No. 10 to have advanced by now, despite the comparatively lower caliber of the teams in that spot on average.² In fact, in only 37 percent of simulated “universes” did we see No. 10 seeds go 0-for-8 the way they have in real life.

The conspiratorial among us might point to the incentives that a No. 10 seed faces, and react with minimal surprise. If you’re a team in that situation, you are probably very mediocre at best — the average 10-seed has had 39 wins per 82 games — and would be looking at a very likely, probably quite lopsided first-round loss even if you manage to win both games and make the playoffs as the No. 8 seed in the “real” bracket. The alternative, whether consciously or unconsciously, is to lose quickly and take your chances in the draft lottery, where you at least have some shot at improving for the future.

And indeed, teams seem to be opting for the latter path. In addition to their 0-for-8 record of making it past the Play-In, No. 10 seeds have also been blown out far more than we would think: Based on Elo, we’d expect them to have an average PPG margin of -4.1 in Play-In games; instead, their margin is -13.6, or 9.5 PPG worse than expected. Despite the NBA’s best intentions, there seems to be little motivation for these teams to actually compete and try to make the playoffs, at least in most cases.

Which brings us to this year’s crop of 10-seeds: the Miami Heat in the East and the Dallas Mavericks in the West. Both teams are most known this season for trading away superstars at midseason — Jimmy Butler and Luka Dončić, respectively — and both are among the league’s most disappointing teams in terms of Elo lost since preseason. Both are dealing with a ton of injuries, and both own their own picks in Round 1 of the draft. (That is, if Miami loses the Play-In — their pick would go to OKC if it fell outside the Top 14.)

In other words, neither Miami nor Dallas really seems like it has any reason to think about advancing out of this tournament, losing a lottery pick and setting up a near-certain first-round loss. But as always, that’s why they play the games. And according to my 🏀 2024-25 NBA forecast 📈 (as of Tuesday morning), there is a 38 percent that at least one of them does advance, as the Heat carry a 24 percent chance to make Round 1 of the actual playoffs and the Mavs sit at 19 percent. This could be the year!

Again, though, this is one of those situations where the data and models run up against human factors like incentives and motivation. Sure, maybe this is the season when a 10-seed finally breaks through… or maybe the Play-In will once again remind us that offering teams a postseason lifeline doesn’t mean they’ll take it. In a format built to manufacture drama, sometimes all it really does is expose where the line between trying to win now and planning for the future was all along.

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Filed under: NBA

1. Which, for the record, I really like and wish more sports would adopt a version of.

2. Here are the average pre-Play-In Elo ratings for each seed:
* No. 7 seeds: 1555
* No. 8 seeds: 1536
* No. 9 seeds: 1532
* No. 10 seeds: 1511