Wednesday, September 30, 2020

NBA Finals 2020 Bracket Math

My original NBA play-by-play simulator had the Bucks winning it all, but analyzing the simulator's head-to-head results a step further correctly predicted the Heat coming out of the East.

So I re-ran just the NBA Finals 10,000 times, given the continued lack of home court and the current rosters (Rondo is back now for the Lakers, for example). The sims continue to love the Heat - far more than the betting markets do, where they're around 3/1 underdogs.

# GamesMIA in...LAL in...
49.5%3.9%
516.9%8.7%
618.8%12.1%
716.7%13.4%
61.9%38.1%

The Lakers only win the title about 2/5ths of the time - which is even more bullish than FiveThirtyEight, which has them as whopping 27% underdogs.

Prediction Machine, meanwhile, is more in line with the market - projecting the Lakers to win 4/5th of the time, in line with the conventional wisdom of "Lakers in 5":

# GamesMIA in...LAL in...
41.5%17.9%
53.9%25.0%
66.3%21.9%
78.2%15.3%
20.0%80.0%

FiveThirtyEight attempts to address for differences in the playoffs - such as LeBron's habit of coasting through the regular season and turning it on in the postseason. Even so, I don't think either of our models are appropriately accounting for this - both LeBron, and his entire team, upping their effort level in the postseason.

The Heat's system is certainly the better one mathematically, but I honestly don't trust my own work here - I wouldn't bet against LeBron.

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