[Quick Hit] NBA Championship Probabilities

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In honor of the NBA officially returning to play this week, I wanted to make my predictions about the NBA finals. There is one glaring difference between this year’s playoffs and any other season in NBA history: there is no home court advantage.

While it is possible the NBA may try to ‘pull a baseball’ and give a fake home-court advantage with artificial crowd noise, it won’t be the same. Personally, I think the home team should start the game up by a score of 2-0. This matches what I computed in my previous article showing that home court advantage is worth about 2.6 points. Without any discernable benefit for the home team, this year’s playoffs should yield more upsets and longer series because the playing field is levelled.

Who are this year’s favorites? The following probabilities are computed from simulating the entire playoff bracket complete with seven game series without any home court advantage using our ensemble ratings. Here is what we found for the top 16 teams:

Team

Championship Probability

Milwaukee Bucks

43%

Los Angeles Lakers

21%

Los Angeles Clippers

8.6%

Toronto Raptors

8.1%

Dallas Mavericks

6.1%

Boston Celtics

4.4%

Utah Jazz

2.9%

Philadelphia 76ers

1.2%

Oklahoma City Thunder

1.1%

Miami Heat

1%

Houston Rockets

1%

Denver Nuggets

0.9%

Indiana Pacers

0.7%

Orlando Magic

0.1%

Memphis Grizzlies

<0.1%

Brooklyn Nets

<0.1%

Milwaukee and the Lakers are very heavy favorites. I would like to point out two things, though:

  • Ensemble Ratings are very high on the Mavericks. Because the Mavericks are currently slated to play the Clippers round 1, the Clippers title chances are dramatically lower than they would otherwise be. So, if you are not a Luka believe and want to fade the Mavericks, the Clippers have about a 14.5% title chance.
  • Ensemble Ratings only take into account game scores and locations, not who played. There is a very reasonable line of thought that gives the Clippers a huge boost because Paul George and Kawhi Leonard have not played as much as they will in the playoffs. I am not arguing for or against this, but it is something to be aware of.

Every week-or-so from here on out I will be updating this page to give my updated probabilities to win the NBA title.

Published by jdashbrock