Data story · NBA Playoffs

NBA playoff overtime games since 2011, and the longest ones.

In 61 of the 80 playoff overtime games from 2011 to 2026, one team led a minute before the end of regulation and was caught. That team went on to win only 32 of them: barely better than a coin toss.

Every strip on this page is a real NBA Playoffs strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about NBA Playoffs.

How to read the strips

Each strip is one playoff game, tip-off on the left, one band per minute. A band shows the score at the end of that minute: purple when the away team was leading, gold when the home team was leading, and pale when it was close. A regulation game has 48 bands, and each five-minute overtime adds five more, so you can count the overtimes on the right-hand end.

All strips are drawn at the same width, so a longer game has thinner bands. Beside a regulation strip, an overtime strip looks finer-grained, which is one of the clues the game gives you.

How often it happens

OvertimesGamesBands per strip
One7153
Two658
Three263
Four168

That is about one playoff game in seventeen. Overtime gets more common deeper into the bracket, until the Finals: 5% of first-round games went to overtime, 6% of conference semifinals and 9% of conference finals, but only 4 of 91 Finals games. Home teams won 46 of the 80, 58%, slightly below their 60% in all playoff games.

Overtime rarely produces a blowout: 47 of the 80 were decided by five points or fewer, and none by more than 12.

The longest game: four overtimes

2019 West semifinals, Game 3: Nuggets at Trail BlazersSixty-eight bands. The score was level at the end of regulation and of each of the first three overtimes, and neither team ever led by more than nine at a minute mark. Portland won 140–137.
Tip-offFinal Buzzer
  • Away Leading
  • Tied
  • Home Leading

It is the only quadruple-overtime game in the data, and its strip is pale almost the whole way, with fourteen lead changes between minute marks. The closest playoff games has more like it.

Two ways to reach a third overtime

2013 First Round, Game 4: Nets at BullsLook at the purple block just before band 48: Brooklyn led by 14 with three minutes of regulation left, and the score was level by the end of regulation. Chicago won 142–134 in the third overtime.
Tip-offFinal Buzzer
  • Away Leading
  • Tied
  • Home Leading
2011 West semifinals, Game 4: Thunder at GrizzliesThe other way round. Memphis led by 17 in the second quarter; Oklahoma City led by eight with five minutes of regulation left. Sixty-three bands later the Thunder won 133–123.
Tip-offFinal Buzzer
  • Away Leading
  • Tied
  • Home Leading

The Brooklyn collapse is the extreme version of the pattern in the lede: a lead that looks safe on the strip a few bands from the end, and then a pale band at 48.

Overtime in the Finals

2013 NBA Finals, Game 6: Spurs at HeatSan Antonio led by 12 late in the third quarter, and the strip is level again at the end of regulation. Miami won 103–100 in overtime and took the series in Game 7.
Tip-offFinal Buzzer
  • Away Leading
  • Tied
  • Home Leading

Three of the other Finals overtimes came in the Warriors and Cavaliers rivalry, told in the Warriors dynasty page. And only one Game 7 in the data went to overtime, covered in NBA playoff Game 7s.

What the strip cannot show. Each band is the score at the end of a minute, so the last seconds of regulation, where most overtimes are forced, fall inside a single band. In this Game 6 the strip shows the score level at the end of minutes 47 and 48 and nothing of what happened in between.

Huezle shows one real game at a time. Count the bands, then try to name the two teams.

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Questions

What is the longest NBA playoff game since 2011?

Game 3 of the 2019 Western Conference semifinals, which Portland won 140–137 over Denver after four overtimes. It is the only quadruple-overtime playoff game from 2011 to 2026.

How many NBA playoff games go to overtime?

From 2011 to 2026, 80 of 1,339 playoff games, about one in seventeen. Seventy-one ended after one overtime.

How many NBA Finals games have gone to overtime since 2011?

Four: Game 6 of 2013 (Heat over Spurs), Games 1 and 2 of 2015 (split between the Warriors and Cavaliers) and Game 1 of 2018 (Warriors over Cavaliers).

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