During Game 2 of the Dallas-Oklahoma City series tonight, I got to wondering about the ridiculous advantage Dallas has in terms of playoff experience. Based on rosters found here and excluding any inactive players, the Mavericks have a 652 to 382 game advantage in playoff experience.
When you look at minutes played, the advantage is even larger at 7452 to 22161 (almost 3:1, and that’s excluding inactive Caron Butler, whose 1221 minutes would be significant). Dallas has 8 players on its roster with 1000 or more playoff minutes, (Kidd, Nowitzki, Marion, Stojakovic, Terry, Butler, Chandler, Haywood) whereas Oklahoma City has only 1 such player (Perkins).
Here are all the players on each team’s roster ranked by total playoff minutes (as of the start of Game 2). With the series tied at 1, it will be interesting to see whether experience or youth and athleticism prevail.
| Player | Games | Minutes | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Kidd | 132 | 5325 | DAL |
| Dirk Nowitzki | 114 | 4723 | DAL |
| Shawn Marion | 82 | 3126 | DAL |
| Peja Stojakovic | 87 | 3019 | DAL |
| Jason Terry | 73 | 2609 | DAL |
| Kendrick Perkins | 81 | 2117 | OKC |
| Caron Butler | 31 | 1221 | DAL |
| Tyson Chandler | 43 | 1164 | DAL |
| Brendan Haywood | 42 | 1000 | DAL |
| Nazr Mohammed | 57 | 922 | OKC |
| Kevin Durant | 19 | 772 | OKC |
| Russell Westbrook | 19 | 694 | OKC |
| Nick Collison | 30 | 641 | OKC |
| James Harden | 19 | 531 | OKC |
| Serge Ibaka | 19 | 530 | OKC |
| Jose Barea | 30 | 529 | DAL |
| DeShawn Stevenson | 28 | 512 | DAL |
| Thabo Sefolosha | 28 | 488 | OKC |
| Daequan Cook | 20 | 316 | OKC |
| Eric Maynor | 19 | 239 | OKC |
| Nate Robinson | 20 | 140 | OKC |
| Brian Cardinal | 11 | 107 | DAL |
| Royal Ivey | 11 | 62 | OKC |
| Rodrigue Beaubois | 4 | 31 | DAL |
| Ian Mahinmi | 4 | 24 | DAL |
| Corey Brewer | 6 | 23 | DAL |
| Byron Mullens | 1 | 4 | OKC |
| Cole Aldrich | 0 | 0 | OKC |
| Robert Vaden | 0 | 0 | OKC |
| Dominique Jones | 0 | 0 | DAL |
