The last time we left the 2019-20 NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers were the championship favorites, with rivals LA Clippers and the Milwaukee Bucks not far behind as teams prepared for the last 17 games in the regular season.
Then the coronavirus put everything on hold for four months.
Only now is the sport gearing up for its return, with an ambitious plan to play the rest of the season in a “bubble” at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. While playing sports during a pandemic will be a big challenge, league commissioner Adam Silver recently said he is “pretty confident” in the procedures he and his team have implemented. So, with the restart schedule released late last week, we’ve relaunched our FiveThirtyEight NBA prediction model to forecast the end of the regular mini-season, the game scenarios, and, of course, the postseason.
As a reminder: These predictions are based on 100,000 simulations from the rest of the season and playoffs, using team rankings to generate odds of winning for each game. Those team rankings are determined by the performance of each player in RAPTOR: the RobustAalgorithm (using)Pcap Tracking (and)ORn / off Ratings, which measures their influence on offense and defense, and playing time forecasts (including rotation and expected injuries for each team). There are postseason adjustments for players that generally exceed expectations in the playoffs and plenty of other bells and whistles you can read about here.
Why was only one player with coronavirus needed to shut down sports?
Add it all up, and it gives a picture of where we think each team is headed for the restart, which isn’t exactly what it looked like when the league hit the pause button. Let’s see exactly what changed in the forecast between then and now.
Which teams are looking stronger on paper now?
As a side effect of the long layoff, several players have recovered from injuries that delayed or kept them out in March. Among the teams invited to Orlando, the Milwaukee Bucks (+74 qualification points), Philadelphia 76ers (+66) and Portland Trail Blazers (+55) earned the most points on our talent ratings (which estimate the current status of each team). For the Bucks, the reason is simple: MVP favorite Giannis Antetokounmpo has recovered from a sprained knee that was affecting him when the break occurred. Similarly, Portland will regain a healthier Jusuf Nurkić; Nurkić, whom RAPTOR considered an elite player last season but has not yet played in 2019-20, was slated to return on a limited basis in March, and our depth charts have him ready to play normal minutes now. And for Philly, Ben Simmons should be 100 percent again after a back injury has put him on the disabled list in February.
[Related: How Do You Play Sports In The Middle Of A Pandemic?]
Most teams saw their scores go up for similar reasons, with a few additional months helping battered players recover. Among the teams that have not yet been eliminated, the next highest gains in talent qualification were Celts (+26), Magic (+18) and Grizzlies (+16).
What playoff chances changed?
Although 22 teams will make the trip to Disney World, only 16 will make the playoffs, just like in a normal postseason. The remaining eight-game regular season roster will be used to narrow the field, with a possible finish-off tournament for that job if the 9th seed of a conference ends within four games of the 8th. Most remaining teams already had blocked their playoff status for March, back then, our model gave 15 teams a playoff probability of 98 percent or more, but the final spot in the west was still legitimately at stake, with the Pelicans (60 percent), Grizzlies (15 percent), Blazers (14 percent), Kings (9 percent) and even Spurs (2 percent) in the mix when playback stopped.
[Related: Our NBA Predictions]
The revised schedule changed the odds quite a bit. The biggest winners of the new format are Ja Morant and the Grizzlies, whose playoff chances increased by 22 percentage points and are now 37 percent. the Magicians He also rose 6 percentage points in his Eastern Conference playoff bet, bringing them up to 8 percent.
That means the biggest postseason sales came at Pelicans (up to 15 percentage points), which now only have a 45 percent chance, with the Networks (-5 percentage points), Blazers (-4), Kings (-two), Spurs (-2 and Magic (-1) falling too. The entire New Orleans playoff offer was based on having enough games with Zion Williamson (and an easy schedule) to chase the Grizz. That last part is still true, but with 10 fewer games to play, the Pelicans’ margin for error got much smaller.
What about the NBA Finals and especially? – title odds?
But enough about marginal teams fighting for the right to be outplayed in the first round. Let’s talk about the contenders.
In terms of final fees, the biggest beneficiaries of the new format are those mentioned above. Sixers, which gained 7 percentage points compared to its position in March. That is essentially due to an easy schedule and Simmons’ return to health. The third-year former No. 1 overall pick is one of the league’s most polarizing players, but RAPTOR still considers him extremely valuable (with the 30th best possession rating of anyone who achieves at least 1,500 minutes). In turn, that change helped drop the Dollars‘Chances of winning the East by 8 percentage points, although they remain the conference favorites in our revised model, with a Final probability of 36 percent. When we ran the model again, the CeltsThe probability of reaching the final increased by one percentage point with Kemba Walker and Jaylen Brown.
[Related: The Best NBA Players This Season, According To RAPTOR]
In the west, the improved odds of the Finals belong to the Lakers (up to 3 percentage points) and Mavericks (+1) LA won’t count on Avery Bradley for reboot: He signed JR Smith to pick up the slack, which should be fun, but the model has some Lakers rated higher than Bradley or Smith actually winning the missing minutes . Meanwhile, Dallas is a very interesting team for its own reasons, led by offensive statistics off Luka Dončić’s rosters. Both gains were at the expense of Rockets (down 2 percentage points), Scissors (-1) and Nuggets (-1), although LA’s other main contender remains the second team most likely to win the West, with a 38 percent chance of reaching the Finals.
Finally, we come to the championship odds. They changed similarly to the Finals odds: the Sixers (up to 4 percentage points) and Lakers (+3) won, while the Dollars (-5) and Scissors (-1) lost ground.
What odds did the NBA teams change?
The biggest change in championship odds since the league stopped play in March, according to the FiveThirtyEight model, for NBA teams that had at least a 1 percent chance of reaching the Finals (before or after the pause)
| Final fees | Title odds | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment | Conf. | Previous pause | Current | Change | Previous pause | Current | Change |
| 76ers | This | 26% | 33% | +7 | 10% | 14% | +4 |
| Lakers | West | 41 | 44 | +3 | 27 | 30 | +3 |
| Mavericks | West | <1 | one | +1 | <1 | <1 | 0 0 |
| Celts | This | twenty | twenty-one | +1 | 6 6 | 6 6 | 0 0 |
| Raptors | This | 9 9 | 9 9 | 0 0 | two | two | 0 0 |
| Nuggets | West | 4 4 | 3 | -one | one | one | 0 0 |
| Rockets | West | 14 | 12 | -two | 7 7 | 7 7 | 0 0 |
| Scissors | West | 39 | 38 | -one | 26 | 25 | -one |
| Dollars | This | 44 | 36 | -8 | twenty | fifteen | -5 |
But overall, the NBA championship picture looks a lot like March: The Lakers remain the favorites, with the Clippers and Bucks sitting behind them. The Sixers have gained ground; the small ball Rockets, the Celtics, the defending champion Raptors (remember them?) and the Nuggets are hovering around the periphery of the title race. However, we missed some interesting stories and there is less certainty that we will end up with the true best team as champion.
There’s also no way to predict how the league’s bubble plan will fare when real people step into it and are expected to live their lives and play high-level basketball at the same time. But if the logistics work, the end of this bizarre NBA campaign should be as intriguing as promised at the start of the season, long before we knew what 2020 had in store for the world.
