More parity: Investigating this NBA season's ultra-competitive nature

It’s early, give it time.

Ah, we’re only a couple months in.

Wait, the league is as tight as it's been in *how* manyyears?

With less than two months remaining in the regular season, allbut four teams are in the thick of the NBA playoff hunt. All of thesquads that are still in contention have at least 24 wins undertheir respective belts.

As of the morning of Feb. 23, only six franchises enter thesecond half of the campaign with more than 35 wins. In order, theyare the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets,Philadelphia 76ers, Cleveland Cavaliers and Memphis Grizzlies.

The rest of the field is essentially towing that .500 line,whether it’s five games above or five games below the middlingmark. According to a Jan. 29 post by NBA data analyst Tom Bassine,the top regular-season teams have not been as dominant as usualcompared to past years. Just six days prior to Bassine's post,NBA University tweeted a graph that put that information intoperspective historically.

This graph says: The NBA has its greatestlevel of parity since 1984 pic.twitter.com/76rE0bKTFV

(The Ringer's Rob Mahoney also put together a great article on thesubject.)

Referring to that graphic, it's been almost 40 years since theNBA has seen this kind of parity. And while there has been someseparation (along with roster changes) since the end of January,players and coaches around the league acknowledge that this seasonjust feels different.

“This seeding is crazy,” Cavs star Donovan Mitchell toldBasketball News. “You could win four in a row and be second. Youcan lose four in a row and be 10th. The league is competitive. Ithink it's one of the most competitive years since I've been in theleague. It's just one of those things where everybody's beating upon each other and the teams that you consider lottery teams aren'tplaying like lottery teams, to be honest."

Mitchell mentioned the way the Orlando Magic have had the BostonCeltics number. He brought up the Oklahoma City Thunder’s fight,and how teams like the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons havecome to play no matter who’s been out there.

“You’ve got to give the guys and got to give the organizationand coaches credit. You’ve got to give them credit,” Mitchell said.“Every night they're coming out playing hard, playing to win.That's what makes it tough, there's no guarantees in this league.And seeing teams great from the top to the bottom, continuouslyfighting.”

Consider this: The Miami Heat started a road trip with a letdowna few weeks ago. They lost 122-117 to the bottom-of-the-barrelCharlotte Hornets, and head coach Erik Spoelstra took it hard.However, the next day, Miami was still the ninth-best team in theleague despite being only five games over .500.

“That’s a head-scratcher to me, you know?” Spoelstra toldBasketball News at the time. “Usually, you had the top teams, maybea handful of middle teams and the rest were tanking, and that’s notthe case anymore.”

The Heat came in the very next game and grinded out a 100-97victory in Cleveland. Currently, their record sits at 32-27 as theseventh seed in the Eastern Conference.