Day-to-Day: Parity or mediocrity in the NBA?

The Step Back Day-to-Day NBA Podcast

Is the NBA plagued by mediocrity? We look at parity in the league this year compared to recent seasons and if NBA teams are clustered in an abnormal way in the latest episode of The Step Back's Day-to-Day NBA Podcast, hosted by Jason Mann. Chris Barnewell joins the program to look at the distribution of NBA teams in tiers in 2017, finding major changes in the number of teams between .501 and .600 winning percentages and between .301 and .400 from a season ago. We contrast those numbers with averages for the past five years and see if we find any patterns. We talk about the race for the Western Conference No. 8 seed and decide whether Denver, Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, Minnesota or Dallas has the best chance to make the playoffs. We also discuss who we think is most likely to emerge from the morass of the Eastern Conference, between Washington, Charlotte, Indiana, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and New York. We also talk about Chris' recent article on Elfrid Payton (http://fansided.com/2017/01/23/elfrid-payton-orlando-magic-wins/), how much better the Magic are when he plays well, and how much he can help Aaron Gordon develop as well.