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If we stay healthy come playoff time, and with a 1-4 seed, I could see us making it to the finals. It's not gonna be easy, but we are as good as anyone in the West
Original Article
If the East is Miami and Chicago and a bunch of question marks, the West is more like Oklahoma City and a bunch of exclamation points. Even low-seeded teams in this conference represent serious threats come the postseason, as we saw a year ago when No. 8 Memphis nearly made the conference finals while the top two seeds combined to win zero second-round games. The West looks very interesting again this season, especially with the compressed schedule increasing the importance of every game. At the moment, it looks like four teams -- Oklahoma City, San Antonio, the Clippers and Dallas -- are relatively certain to make the postseason, with each sporting chances of at least 92 percent according to today's Playoff Odds.
Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. At the moment, four key questions loom: Which quality teams in the West will miss the playoffs? Can any of the lightly regarded interlopers at the fringe of the race sneak in? Who can get home-court advantage for the first round? And can anybody beat Oklahoma City?
The third question -- first-round home court -- is simply too difficult to tackle here. Obviously the Thunder, Spurs, Clippers and Mavs have the edge given today's standings, but one could pretty easily envision any of the five teams behind them making a run to grab a top-4 seed.
But let's take a look at the other three:
Is it OKC's conference to lose?
It's a little premature to crown Oklahoma City as the Western Conference champion considering directly behind the Thunder in the standings are the three teams that have won the last 13 Western Conference championships. Not since Utah in 1998 has somebody other than the Lakers, Spurs or Mavs represented the West in the NBA Finals.
The Spurs, in particular, would seem to be formidable -- they've won the last 12 games that they've bothered to contest and stand second in the West despite barely getting a speck of contribution from Manu Ginobili.
And remember, the top seed is still not assured for the Thunder. San Antonio is three games behind at 24-10 but has a much easier schedule the rest of the way, having finished its annual rodeo road trip. The Playoff Odds see it as a two-horse race, giving the field only a 6.6 percent chance of snagging the top spot, but San Antonio remains very much alive at 24.7 percent.
In particular, if the Spurs win in Oklahoma City on March 16, they'll gain a game and own the tiebreaker; if they lose that game, on the other hand, that probably ends the race.
As for the Thunder, keep in mind that they've faced virtually no setbacks on the health front. Losing Eric Maynor was a blow, yes, but he won't be playing in May either. Compare them with other teams that have missed players to injury who will be back come playoff time and their advantage doesn't seem quite as imposing.
The one advantage that will be there, however, is their crowd. OKC is arguably the league's best game environment and the Thunder will have home-court advantage for at least the first two rounds of the playoffs. That may be particularly important if the Thunder play Memphis again -- the Griz match up great against them (Portland lines up pretty well too) and could be a very tough out.
Who misses?
Again, I consider the Mavs, Clippers, Spurs and Thunder relatively safe, so we're essentially looking at five teams (at least) battling for four spots.
Of the top nine teams in the West, Denver is the odd team out right now, but the Nuggets may be much stronger in the second half of the season if they can get their best players on the court. Denver was 14-5 before injuries bushwhacked it but gets the benefit of a cake schedule in March that includes several doormats and one stretch of nine straight home games. I suspect the Nuggets will finish strong and could even push for a top-four seed if everything goes right; suffice it to say I consider their current 40.6 percent Playoff Odds an underestimate.
Their opponent on Wednesday, Portland, is only a half-game ahead, and unlike Denver the Blazers have had virtually no injury issues. What they have had are luck issues, with their point differential indicating that they're a much better team than they've shown thus far, and that's why they're likely to play well enough in the second half of the season to survive.
If they don't, however, they'll rue all the ones they let get away -- Portland had the easiest schedule of any Western contender in the first half of the season and failed to take advantage. From here it gets much, much tougher, including a seven-game road swing that ends with games in Chicago and Oklahoma City. The Blazers, however, have been sniffing around pretty actively for trades and may upgrade the roster for the stretch run.
As I noted last week, I don't think the Lakers are out of the woods yet either, simply because an injury to one of their big three would have such a big impact on their performance. Along those lines the All-Star Game wasn't a great omen, as Andrew Bynum is having trouble with his knee again and Kobe Bryant just broke his nose.
If they're healthy they'll be fine, obviously, but they're one twisted ankle away from a 3-8 stretch. Also, the Lakers have a very difficult schedule the rest of the way, seemingly playing Oklahoma City or San Antonio on national TV every day in April. They have only five games left against the East, and one of those is against Miami.
Memphis isn't in the clear either at 19-15, although one likes the Grizzlies' chances better given that Zach Randolph is likely to return in March and should be a major upgrade on the Marreese Speights-Dante Cunningham tandem that's been plugging the hole. Additionally, the Griz have faced the league's most difficult schedule thus far; it's still challenging in the second half, but it lightens up a bit. On the other hand, Memphis is the most injury-vulnerable squad this side of L.A., because the bench just isn't very good.
The reason we're mentioning these teams, of course, is that Houston unexpectedly stands at 20-14. The Rockets probably need to go only 17-15 the rest of the way to make the playoffs, and they still have 16 games left against sub-.500 teams. Additionally, they've been aggressively pursuing trades for a long time -- witness the near-miss on Pau Gasol before the season -- and are likely to be better after March 15 than before it.
All five of these clubs are playoff-caliber. One of them isn't going to make it. If I had to bet I'd say the Blazers are the ones who miss, but you can make a case for any one of these five. Or rather, at least one ...
Can an interloper get in the mix?
In 10th through 13th place, Minnesota, Golden State, Utah and Phoenix all sit on the fringes of the playoff race hoping for a pathway in. The Playoff Odds give the combined probability of one breaking through at 57.1, indicating that there's a decent chance that one of them might do it.
Of the group, Minnesota has by far the best odds, nearly matching Denver's at 33.2 percent. While the Playoff Odds don't know Denver was working with a skeleton crew for the past three weeks, it's still impressive that the Wolves are only a game out of a playoff spot given how horribly awful they were the past two seasons.
As with Portland, however, Minnesota may rue the money it left on the table in the first half. The Wolves are 5-9 in games decided by five points or less and are just 10-10 at home. That's troubling because they play 19 of their final 32 games on the road, and 18 of them are against .500 or better opposition. They've been gaining steam as the season has gone on, with Nikola Pekovic's recent emergence solidifying a shaky center spot, but they need to beat out two of the five teams ahead of them; for them to pass even one would be a mild surprise.
The other three fall firmly in the "crazier things have happened" category; Golden State fans who remember 2007 will note one such example. The trade deadline would seem to be key for those teams, as well as heavy dollops of health and luck. Subjectively, I find it hard to imagine any of those three playing well enough to get in; but from an odds perspective, the numbers say we shouldn't bury them yet.
If we stay healthy come playoff time, and with a 1-4 seed, I could see us making it to the finals. It's not gonna be easy, but we are as good as anyone in the West
As long as we get the 2nd seed, healthy, and avoid the Thunder until the WCF, I like our chances.
can the human mind imagine the lols if the Lakers didn't make the playoffs
(...never gonna happen, sadly)
Statistically speaking, this is probably an incorrect statement. Unless the Hollinger Playoff Odds implicitly state that odds of a particular team making the playoffs also include the odds of the rest of the 10-13 ranked teams not making the playoffs (which would have to be a separate column as the overall playoff odds would be another number), he cannot add all true playoff percentage chances together and come to the conclusion that only one one of the 10-13 ranked playoff odds teams have a 57.1% chance of making it. Because what are the chances that two or more make it, or none? If you take 57.1/4 and weigh the teams equally, there are many situations where no teams make the playoffs or more than one team makes the playoffs (multiplication rule).
If those 10th-13th teams making the playoffs were independent events, the real way to do it is subtract each of those team's playoff chances from 1 (giving the probability of each team not making it), multiply those together (giving the probability that none of them make it), and then subtract from 1 again (giving the probability that at least one makes it).
That method gives a 48% chance right now that one of the teams from 10th-13th makes the playoffs, which is probably closer to the real probability than Hollinger's 57% guesstimate.
However, the events are not independent, so the math is quite a bit more complicated. It's easy to show that Hollinger's math is wrong, but not easy to show what is right.
What chance did Hollinger give the Mavs to win the whole thing at the beginning of the playoffs before a game had been played...?
Remember all the Lakers had to do was flip the switch last year. Unfortunately the room was too dark to find it. 4-0...
What's the percentage if the Spurs play without shoes?
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