A few hours after the Wolves clinched a playoff spot for the fourth straight season and avoided the play-in tournament by winning 17 of their final 21 regular-season games, this message from a Daily Delivery podcast listener arrived via email:

"Podcast idea would be to rank the Wolves worst losses of the year that could've swung their seeding up to 2 or 3 if those games had gone other way. The one game I went to was the Wizards with my 8 year old for his birthday to see Ant … who ended up getting sick … so we got 20 minutes of Joe Ingles. Wizards had lost 21 road games in a row before beating the Wolves."

Congratulations to the Wolves?!

The thing is, this sentiment is prevalent among Wolves fans. It's particularly loud on social media, where at any moment during a game you might think they were down 50 in the NBA Finals only to find out they are ahead by eight in the second quarter of a November game.

Chip Scoggins and I talked about this on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast, but let's dive deeper into the fact and/or fiction.

Did the Wolves cost themselves a better seed in the playoffs — one that could have given them home-court advantage and/or helped them avoid a first-round meeting with the favored Lakers — or is perception stronger than reality?

  • What's not debatable is that margins in the Western Conference were razor thin. The Wolves earned the No. 6 seed at 49-33. Three teams finished a game ahead of them at 50-32. Two teams finished a game behind them at 48-34. One more win would have made a huge difference for the Wolves, but so would one more loss.
  • Perception: The Wolves lost more heartbreakers than they won. Reality: The Wolves were 11-11 in games decided by three points or fewer. The three teams ahead of them by a game (Lakers, Nuggets and Clippers) were a combined 15-17 in such games.
  • The Wolves did play, by far, the most close games in the NBA. Nobody else had more than 16 games decided by three points or fewer, while the Wolves had 22.
  • Why do we remember the close losses more than the wins? Perhaps because that's how human brains are unfortunately wired. We perseverate on Milwaukee's 24-point comeback with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter but forget the Wolves trailed by 16 with less than five minutes to play before beating Houston earlier this season. We agonize over the overtime loss to Indiana and forget the Wolves were extremely lucky to beat Denver in double overtime.
  • Evidence that they should have finished with a better record: Based on a formula that takes into account point differential in all games, the Wolves should have finished 53-29, which would have been good enough for the No. 2 seed. They also lost three combined games to the four worst teams in the NBA (Utah, Washington, Charlotte and New Orleans). That's more losses than the Clippers (1) and Lakers (2) and the same as the Nuggets (3) against those teams.

In the end, you could conclude that the Wolves underachieved. But the reality is also this: Any path through the West would have been brutal, and the teams the Wolves were jockeying with had their fair share of laments, too.