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Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2024 9:27 pm
by Crow
My quick 1st cut guesses:
Celtics 24%
Cavs 9
Knicks 6
Thunder 15
Warriors 12
Timberwolves 5
Mavs 7
Nuggets 7
Griz 3
Suns 2
Field 10
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2024 6:45 pm
by Crow
Celtics are 5-3-0 on 4 factors with 3 tiers of performance. Cavs 4-2-2. Thunder 3-1-4. Warriors 4-1-3. Different ways to overall excellence but Celtics mix seems best to me.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2024 6:24 am
by Crow
By SRS the second tier has become small.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2024 6:52 pm
by Crow
Celtics fade a bit to 4-4-0 on 4 factors with 3 tiers of performance. Cavs improve to 5-1-2. Thunder stay 3-1-4. Warriors change to 3-3-2. Thunder mix here is least impressive in group.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2024 5:51 pm
by Crow
Within top 9 by SRS, Celtics have best offensive efficiency but 4th worst defense. Thunder 3rd worst offense but best defense. Cavs 2nd best offense, 2nd worst defense. Warriors 6th and 4th is one of the more balanced. Mavs 4th and 7th.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2024 11:08 pm
by Crow
Winning % on the road is a key difference between 1st and 2nd tier teams right now and likely will remain important in playoffs.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 6:36 pm
by Crow
Overall the playoff teams compared to their regular season average:
Shot worse, turned it over less, offensive rebounded more, got more FT / FGA
Shot defended slightly better,
forced less turnovers, defensive rebounded slightly more, gave up slightly less FT / FGA.
The average 2024 playoff opponent was slightly worse than a 4 seed on net rating at +4.2. +5 or better teams have edge on average but specific matchups will vary in difficulty and probably unevenly.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 9:16 pm
by Crow
7 teams with highest win% are on average strong on own efg%, opponent efg% (the 2 biggest / most important factors) and own to%. Slightly better or worse on average for other 5 factors.
Thunder, very best on 3, 2nd worst in group on 3, worst on 2.
Only the Cavs are best on a factor besides Thunder. Everybody else has a 2nd or 3rd best, with Celtics having 2. Celtics and Thunder tie for most top 4s at 3, Cavs and Griz at 2.
For top and bottom 10s, it is:
Cavs 3-2
Celtics 5-1
Knicks 4-1
Thunder 3-4
Rockets 2-2
Griz 5-2
Nuggets 5-1
Thunder, the worst balance. 3 teams with only 1 factor weakness.
Cavs had 2 11th place factors, so were almost 5-2.
Celtics were 4-1 in last regular season and 4-0 in playoffs. High strength count and low weaknesses worked for them.
Cumulative ranks on 3 factors where the 7 excel on average, Cavs, Celtics and Thunder and nobody else close. Thunder with the worst factor performance on these 3 factors (own efg% / 13th best).
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2025 4:02 pm
by Mike G
As of yesterday, b-r.com gave OKC a greater than 50% chance of winning the title. I don't recall ever seeing that.
Just 8 teams with as much as 1% chance of winning it all.
Here are their chances of winning their conference, and the Finals; meeting in the middle is their chance of winning
should they reach the Finals (given that their opponent is currently unknown.) It's just the ratio of the other 2.
Code: Select all
WCF west Fin F/C F/C Fin east ECF
.69 OKC .51 .75 .40 .19 Cle .47
.11 Mem .05 .43 .40 .15 Bos .38
.10 Hou .04 .42 .21 .02 NYK .11
.04 Den .01 .35
.03 Dal .01 .33
No one else with 1/5 of a %.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/fr ... _prob.html
Cavs are more likely to reach the Finals, but the Celts have just as good a chance of winning it, once there.
Cle with 88% chance of being the top seed would give them an easier path to the ECF.
OKC is now a full 5 ppg better (SRS) than those 2. And Holmgren may get back?
p.s. The Mavs were a bit stronger last year and managed to upset 3 teams to reach the Finals. What are the odds?
Here are their Pythagorean Win% based only on season MOV; Mavs' chances of winning a given game / each series; and chance that they win them in as few games as they did.
Code: Select all
Dal LAC OKC Min Bos
.563 .595 .700 .686 .788
Gm W% .47 .38 .39 .30
Se W% .37 .20 .22 .10
G 6 6 5
in G .29 .15 .08
Chance of reaching the finals: .37*.20*.22 = .016
Chance of doing it in 6-6-5 or less: .004
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 8:14 pm
by Crow
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 12:10 am
by Mike G
ESPN has put out their playoff predictions, so here they are next to the b-r.com chances -- to Reach the Finals, to Win the Finals, and to win should they get there.
Code: Select all
. basketball-reference ESPN
East reach win w/r reach win w/r
Cle .511 .188 .37 .53 .21 .40
Bos .400 .136 .34 .37 .15 .40
NYK .042 .004 .10 .05 .01 .20
Ind .014 .002 .14 .02 .00 .00
Mil .015 .002 .13 .01 .00 .00
Det .016 .002 .13 .01 .00 .00
West reach win w/r reach win w/r
OKC .791 .609 .77 .71 .54 .76
Hou .057 .016 .28 .07 .03 .43
Mem .043 .014 .33 .01 .00 .00
Min .042 .011 .26 0 0 .00
Den .029 .008 .28 .06 .02 .33
LAC .024 .006 .25 .02 .01 .50
GSW .012 .002 .17 .04 .01 .25
LAL .004 .000 .00 .07 .02 .29
ESPN has more faith in the Rockets, even more for the Nuggs and Dubs; and infinitely more for the Lakers.
Grizz and Wolves can forget it.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 2:18 am
by Crow
For Thunder to have 79% chance of making finals they'd have to have almost 93% chance in first 3 rounds or 100% in 1st then 88% in next 2.
For Thunder to have 71% chance of making finals they'd have to have almost 90% chance in first 3 rounds or 100% in 1st then almost 84% in next 2.
I think both estimates are far too high but we'll see.
In regular season they were 82% against top 10, but only 70% against top 16. 3 rounds at these rates would yield 55% to 34% reach finals. Still too high imo.
76-77% win rate in finals? Also way too high imo.
My estimate of Thunder at 26% win finals is roughly equivalent to 85% win in 1st round, 75% in 2nd, 70% in 3rd, 60% in finals.
I guess I have 2 more weeks to decide whether to go higher.
Thunder just 6W-6L against 11-16th best teams (by Sagarin ratings). That could be a problem. Expect 100% win in 1st round or 85%? I essentially went with 85% not knowing the opponent. Could be too high. I don't think it is too low.
BRef and ESPN expect series to be forgiving for the favorite. I don't they will be that forgiving, that many times.
If Thunder chances go down dramatically, the chances of everybody else on the list go up some.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 1:48 pm
by DSMok1
Neil Paine has his live playoff predictions as well, posted at:
https://neilpaine.substack.com/p/2024-25-nba-forecast
He weights prior year playoff performance more, which pushes Boston up and OKC and Cleveland down. Note, it's a fairly simple model that does not include player movement between seasons explicitly.
Current Vegas odds have Oklahoma City and Boston both over 30% chance at the title. Then Cleveland around 15%, then Denver, Lakers, and Golden State around 5%. Knicks around 2%. The rest of the league combined has around 5% odds.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 2:41 pm
by Crow
Hadn't looked at Vegas odds. My chance estimates are flatter / broader and likely to stay that way.
Paine has Celtics and Thunder with more than 50% to win title, if they get there. Wonder what others think the chances are for each if they meet. Cavs have more than 1/3rd chance on 1 of the 2 method sets. Some others do too on at least 1 version but low oddz of getting there. Many of the rest are well below 1/3rd chance in finals. I don't offhand know how often "upsets" happen in finals. In last 7 years, 2 slight underdogs won, depending on whether you use Win%, SRS or something else.
Re: 2025 NBA title contention
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 3:14 pm
by DSMok1