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SALT LAKE CITY -- Remember, oh, say a week ago, when it looked like Utah's season was basically over? Mehmet Okur had just blown his Achilles and was out for the season, Andrei Kirilenko was declared out for at least the first round, the Jazz had just lost their playoff opener against a seasoned Denver team and they lacked home-court advantage.
Just one week later, the situation couldn't look rosier for the Jazz, considering the cir stances. They've won three straight to take command of their first-round series with the Nuggets and will have three more shots to eliminate Denver and advance to the second round.
If and when they get there, they'll be in better shape, too. No, Okur won't be coming back, but Ukrainian giant Kyrylo Fesenko has proved he can provide some competent minutes in his place. Meanwhile, if he doesn't have another setback, Kirilenko will be back at some point in the next round, which would shore up a defense that has missed his length on the wings.
And here's the really crazy part: The Jazz might be the highest-seeded team left in the Western bracket when the second round begins. If so, they'll take one of the league's best home-court advantages forward for the rest of the Western Conference playoffs, as they try to win the West for the first time since the playoff run that ended with Michael Jordan's famous jumper.
While some balls still need to bounce into place, there's no doubt that Jazz fans woke up this morning pondering the tantalizing prospect of facing the eighth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round rather than their longtime foils from Los Angeles. Jazz fans of a historical bent undoubtedly will note that their last run to the conference finals came in similar cir stances, when they knocked off Houston without home-court advantage in the first round before beating an eighth-seeded Golden State squad in the following series.
That Utah team was humbled by San Antonio in the conference finals, and the bracket makes it possible that we could see a rematch. But this time, the Jazz would have home-court advantage in that round too. In fact, with second-seeded Dallas on the ropes and third-seeded Phoenix struggling to squeeze past Portland, it's possible all four Western Conference underdogs could advance.
How possible? More than you might think.
Let's start with the two upsets that we can throw in the "likely" category. Historically, teams down 3-to-1 in a best-of-seven series have a 95.8 percent failure rate, so it's not looking good for either the Mavericks or the Nuggets. However, teams in their particular position -- owning home-court advantage and thus needing to win only one road game -- have done slightly better. In that situation, they lose 89.7 percent of the time. They usually at least survive Game 5, winning 70.7 percent of those on their home floor.
So while we can't quite write the Jazz in ink in Round 2, if they do advance there's an 89.7 percent chance that San Antonio will be joining them, to judge from history. Were the Spurs and Jazz to win the conference semifinals, too, then Utah would host the conference finals.
(Side note: Interestingly, wins by Utah and San Antonio would fly directly in the face of another trend. In first-round series, teams without home-court advantage that also lost the regular-season series have lost 41 straight times. Charlotte, Milwaukee, Miami and Oklahoma City are the other teams dealing with that historical fact.)
On the other hand, the Lakers and Suns are in much better shape than people realize despite their series being tied 2-2, according to NBA history. The numbers say that a team with home-court advantage tied at 2-2 is in about as good a position as it was when the series was 0-0, winning 77.3 percent of the time in that situation.
We can adjust that number down slightly to reflect a key difference in these particular two series: that they appear to be roughly evenly matches. A lot of the previous series that were tied 2-2 weren't really "even," if you get my drift. For an obvious example, remember when the 66-win Celtics played the 37-win Hawks two years ago.
In the cases of L.A. and Phoenix, however, you can make a compelling case that the underdog is playing at least as well. If you compare the Lakers' performance over the past two and a half months to that of the Thunder, one might be inclined to say Oklahoma City is, in fact, the better team: Since the All-Star break the Thunder are 22-13, while the Lakers are 18-14.
Similarly, the Blazers' 22-10 mark since a Brandon Roy-less win in Phoenix on Feb. 10 isn't altogether different from the Suns' 25-9 in that time frame; in games Roy plays the numbers are 19-7 against 23-7.
In other words, while it's a tortuous process to determine whether these teams are exactly even, it takes relatively little effort to see that they're approximately even.
That fact makes it very easy to model their probabilities of success going forward. Let's start with the one basic fact: Home teams won 60.2 percent of their games this year. If you presume an even matchup between the two teams, let's have that serve as our starting point. (Side note: Historically, playoff home teams have won at a similar clip.)
If that's the case, and we're trying to model a best-of-three scenario, then the Lakers are 55.3 percent likely to advance, as are the Suns, considerably less than the historical odds would indicate for a team with home-court advantage. By the way, those chances are only slightly worse than they were before Game 1, when we'd expect them to prevail 57.8 percent of the time.
While we're on the topic, three of the four teams in the East have virtually no chance of losing. Cleveland and Boston are up 3-1 with home-court advantage, a situation in which teams are 129-2 historically for a 98.5 percent success rate. Orlando, up 3-0, is in a situation in which no team has lost; Boston, which also led 3-0 before losing Sunday, technically still qualifies there as well.
The only Eastern team with any realistic chance at losing is Atlanta. Teams in the Hawks' position -- up 2-1 with home-court advantage -- win the series 89.2 percent of the time. With a win Monday night, they would join the other three high seeds in the East as near-certainties to advance.
So the really interesting stuff is out West. And now that we've talked about the possibility of four upsets there, let's look at the ulative likelihood. What are the odds of the Jazz being the top seed left in the West next week?
If we assign 55.3 percent odds of advancing to the Lakers and Phoenix, respectively, it means 44.7 percent odds that they'll be knocked out. Combine it with the 89.7 percent chance of Dallas and Denver each falling by the wayside, and we're looking at a 16.1 percent chance that the four top seeds in the West will be gone at the end of Round 1.
So it's a small chance, but still, relative to the probability before this all started, it's huge. That's a plausible, 1-in-6 chance of the unprecedented phenomenon of the top four seeds in the West all losing in the first round.
It would take an improbable turn of events, in other words, but not as improbable as the events that led the Jazz to take over this series by winning the past three games. For a Utah team that seemed to have such hard luck just a week ago, suddenly all the stars may be aligning in its favor.
(and indeed, that is true).