Making NBA Playoffs > Passing Bar Exam

The first round of the NBA Playoffs has begun.

Basketball lovers will be treated to near-daily basketball coverage for the next two months. Two months! Game 7 of the NBA Finals, if necessary, is scheduled for June 18.

Between now and then, 16 teams will compete to hoist the prestigious Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy.

But let’s reflect how the 16 teams got to this point.

The NBA's regular season runs from October to April, with each of the 30 NBA teams playing 82 regular-season games. So, after seven months and a season of 1,230 total games, the playoff field doesn’t even reduce the potential field by half. With 30 NBA teams, and 16 of them making the playoffs, that means 53.33% of the teams make the playoffs.

At the beginning of the season, a team is more likely to make the playoffs than not!

Let’s put this into perspective.

It’s more likely for an NBA team to make the playoffs than it is for a bar examinee to pass the bar exam. Collectively, the average overall bar passage rate for the 21 jurisdictions for which the National Conference of Bar Examiners has released data so far is just 48.71%. Moreover, 15 of the 21 jurisdictions have overall bar passage rates lower than the NBA playoff rate of 53.33%.

I understand that only about 1.2% of draft-eligible college basketball players make it to the NBA, resulting in those playing in the NBA the best among the best. But one would think that there would still be a higher standard to making the NBA playoffs than the current 53.33%.