NBA Playoffs 2024 Bracket Math (Post Play-In)

The streak continues - no regular season 7 seed has failed to make the playoffs in the play-in era. However, this year's iteration came at great cost to the respective teams, both losing arguably their best player - Zion Williamson for New Orleans and Jimmy Butler for Miami appear to be looking at lengthy absences. 

But the playoffs are set, and there is one very clear favorite - Boston, with their dominant regular season, is almost 50/50 to win it all - more than the next 3 teams combined (Denver, OKC, and Minnesota).

Denver feels too low, even though they coasted through much of the regular season. And I think if you talk to just about any Boston fan, even with their historic season to date, they would agree Boston feels too high. Miami has the chance to do the funniest thing ever and beat Boston without Butler (10% chance).

Home court also matters! Note I have Philly rated higher than New York, but the Knicks are still a slight favorite in the first round.

The above reflects a lot less parity than last year, with only 4 teams with > 5% chance of winning the Finals (Boston, Denver, OKC, and Minnesota). Last year I had 8 teams meet this threshold - the lowest of which was Denver, who looked pretty unbeatable on the way to the championship.

Any other result other than these 4 teams would be surprising - combined, they raise the banner 88% of the time.

NBA Play-In 2024 Bracket Math

As always, winning 2 games in a row is really hard - just like it was last year, when both the 7 and 8 seeds ultimately made the playoffs. No 7 seed has ever ultimately missed the playoffs since the play-in began in 2021.

This year is no different - while the 7 and 8 in the East are clearly superior teams, the second best play-in team in the West is the 10 seed Golden State Warriors.

But they have to win twice in a row, on the road - and thus have the worst odds of making the playoffs out of the West.

This also speaks to how perilous a strategy it would be for the Lakers to intentionally lose the first play-in game to avoid Denver in the first round (something that has been suggested).

Even setting aside that I have the Nuggets rated lower than the Thunder, the Lakers would only have about a 55% chance to beat either the Kings or Warriors in a single game. That leaves 45% where they completely miss the playoffs - so the difference in beating OKC over Denver would have to be massive to maximize "likelihood to win the title".