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Time for a little bit of sober reckoning, my friends. So here you go:
The six teams that were above the red line in the Eastern Conference at the end of May in 2016 are the six teams that made the playoffs. Four of the six above the red line at that point in the West made the playoffs (Sporting KC and Seattle bumped San Jose and Vancouver).
In 2015 it was five of six in the East (Orlando City got bumped while Montreal climbed in), and five of six in the West (San Jose out, Portland in).
We all know, because of what Seattle and D.C. did last year and because of what Portland did in 2015, that things can change late in the game. But those are very clearly outliers in the recent history of the league, and the chance seem to be that the old cliche "You are what your record says you are" really does start to apply right about now.
Let's take a look at a few games:
