HANG TIME NEW JERSEY – The Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs were the three best teams in the league last season. The Heat and Thunder met in The Finals, while the Spurs tied for the league’s best regular season record and fell to the Thunder after winning their first 10 playoff games.

So it’s logical that Miami, OKC and San Antonio are three of the four teams that are returning more than 80 percent of last year’s minutes on this year’s roster.

Though they added Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis to the mix, the Heat are bringing back players that logged 97 percent of last year’s minutes. Only Eddy Curry, Juwan Howard and Ronny Turiaf, who totaled just 494 minutes last season, are gone. The Thunder have 91 percent of their minutes coming back, and the Spurs have 87 percent coming back.

So, who is the fourth team returning more than 80 percent of last year’s minutes? Is is the Bulls, Pacers, Grizzlies or Celtics?

Nope. It’s the Sacramento Kings.

The Kings, who finished 14th in the Western Conference at 22-44 last season, are returning 11 players who logged 88 percent of last year’s minutes on this year’s roster. They’re young, with several players who need time to develop and another Lottery pick (Thomas Robinson) added to the mix. Still, Sacramento was in the bottom 10 of the league both offensively and defensively last season, and will obviously need a lot of improvement from within to make any sort of move up the standings.

Continuity worked pretty well for the Philadelphia 76ers last season. They returned an amazing 99 percent of their minutes from 2010-11, won 18 of their first 25 games, and had the league’s No. 1 defense for much of the year. While they eventually dropped to eighth place in the East, they did finish with the conference’s third best point differential.

In recent years, there has been a pretty strong correlation between continuity and success, which makes sense. The good teams (like the Heat, Thunder and Spurs) keep their players and stay good. And there are few examples of teams as bad as the Kings bringing back such a high percentage of their minutes.

Last year’s Timberwolves are one. Though they went 17-65 in 2010-11, the Wolves brought back 80 percent of those minutes. They added Ricky Rubio and were 21-20 (and a half game out of a playoff spot) before Rubio was lost for the season. So maybe there’s some hope for the Kings.

Here’s a full list of all 30 teams, sorted by what percentage of last year’s minutes they’re returning on this year’s roster. Not surprisingly, the Houston Rockets rank last…

Returning minutes

Rank	Team	2011-12 MIN	Ret. Players	Ret. min.	Ret. %
1.	Miami	16,040	13	15,546	96.9%
2.	Oklahoma City	15,990	12	14,521	90.8%
3.	Sacramento	15,915	11	14,014	88.1%
4.	San Antonio	15,940	13	13,854	86.9%
5.	Detroit	15,965	9	12,171	76.2%
6.	Utah	16,165	11	12,257	75.8%
7.	Memphis	15,940	9	12,016	75.4%
8.	Milwaukee	15,865	10	11,328	71.4%
9.	Indiana	15,990	8	11,145	69.7%
10.	Toronto	15,965	9	10,829	67.8%
11.	Washington	15,865	9	10,410	65.6%
12.	Denver	16,040	11	10,148	63.3%
13.	Cleveland	15,965	10	9,814	61.5%
14.	Chicago	15,940	7	9,738	61.1%
15.	Boston	15,940	6	9,613	60.3%
16.	L.A. Clippers	15,965	8	9,476	59.4%
17.	Minnesota	15,940	7	9,256	58.1%
18.	Charlotte	15,890	8	9,224	58.0%
19.	New York	15,940	6	9,172	57.5%
20.	Golden State	15,915	8	8,959	56.3%
21.	Dallas	16,065	7	8,810	54.8%
22.	L.A. Lakers	16,065	8	8,686	54.1%
23.	Portland	15,965	7	8,155	51.1%
24.	Phoenix	15,840	5	7,656	48.3%
25.	Orlando	15,965	7	7,671	48.0%
26.	Atlanta	16,165	5	7,434	46.0%
27.	Philadelphia	15,915	5	7,207	45.3%
28.	Brooklyn	15,890	6	6,612	41.6%
29.	New Orleans	15,940	6	5,827	36.6%
30.	Houston	16,065	5	4,747	29.5%

Category: NBA.com/Stats / Tags: , Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Sacramento Kings, san antonio spurs / 4 Comments /

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