Earlier this month, the NBA’s ESPN panel of experts made its choice for the NBA Finals, and 50% of them predicted that the Los Angeles Lakers would be the last team standing. Before the season was suspended, the same group gave the Lakers a 28.9% probability of winning it all, which was the second highest percentage behind the Milwaukee Bucks (60.5%).
The drastic percentage change was indicative of how much the tone around the Lakers changed before the season’s abrupt suspension, which was likely the result of beating the Milwaukee Bucks and LA Clippers in consecutive games. However, ESPN’s actual plus-minus projections (RPM) still don’t favor the Lakers in a series of Finals.
While current projections give the Lakers 64.2% to win the Western Conference Finals, they only have 19.9% to win the Finals, according to the projection. The Milwaukee Bucks have the highest percentage at 42.5%.
Here are the top five, according to ESPN:
Milwaukee Bucks: 42.5%
Los Angeles Lakers: 19.9%
Toronto Raptors: 12.2%
LA Clippers: 9.3%
Boston Celts: 7.8%
Projections like this should always be taken with a grain of salt, but are now especially suspicious. Take the Lakers for example.
Of the 16 players the Lakers will bring to Orlando, four of them have played 52 combined minutes this season. That’s true even if you factor JR Smith into the equation. While Talen Horton-Tucker, Kostas Antetokounmpo, and Devontae Cacok might not have a playoff series, Dion Waiters and Smith might, making it difficult to predict how they could impact a game using RPM given the minutes they’ve played this season.
So you can take these projections seriously and react accordingly, or you can just wait until the games come back next month. For your well-being, I strongly suggest the latter.
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