The streak continues again - no regular season 7 seed has failed to make the playoffs in the play-in era. This year, a 10 seed finally made the playoffs, featuring the Miami Heat. However, their run should end shortly, with only a 5% chance of beating Cleveland.
OKC is an absolute dominant favorite - over 50% chance of winning the title seems aggressive, but they did have the best point differential in the history of the NBA (+12.9). This feels similar to 2019, when models had Milwaukee as a dominant favorite, no one really seemed to trust it, and Toronto swooped in and won the title. Could say the same thing last season though - Boston was dominant in the regular season, no one really seemed to trust it, and they didn't really meet much resistance throughout the playoffs.
The bigger wrinkle this year is how tight the West is outside of OKC - other than Memphis getting steamrolled by them, I have all lower seeds advancing out of the first round in the West.
Including the top 2 seeds in the East, there is over a 90% chance one of the top 3 contenders wins it all (OKC, Boston, and then Cleveland). No one else has better than a ~1 in 50 shot.
