The NBA Playoffs Are Completely Unpredictable

over the last two NBA Seasons I have made a prediction on who I think will win the NBA title and I use strictly numbers and potentially predictive metrics to narrow down my decisions overall I think my predictions went all right in 2022 I chose the Celtics to win it all and they came within two games of doing just that last season I chose the Celtics again and if it weren't for the heat being the greatest eight seed ever assembled that might have panned out as well so this season I considered predicting the eventual NBA champs once again by the way I think it's going to be the Nuggets but as fun as these experiments are the reality is numbers will never get you all the way to the correct conclusion no matter how many metrics you factor in the game is just too unpredictable and just a week into the NBA Playoffs we all got a jarring reminder of just how unpredictable it can be but game two of the Lakers Nuggets Series in particular really crushed my hopes of ever being able to pin down any sort of coherent prediction after being down 20 points in the third third quarter the Nuggets crawled back and completed one of the largest comebacks in playoff history joic is nearly perfect as usual to close out the game Jamal Murray summoned his inner Prime Michael Jordan for the millionth time to put a dagger in the hearts of Lakers fans and we were all stunned but why did this comeback feel inevitable the Nuggets were dead in the water at one point in this game and yet I never felt like they were completely out of it in no Universe should a Miami Heat team without Jimmy Butler and Terry Rosier beat a 64- win Celtics team by double digits and yet was this game really all that surprising has the NBA and specifically the playoffs become more unpredictable than ever before in the past it always felt like there were teams who skated past the first round teams that seem to be levitating above others on their way to the Conference Finals but in today's NBA all bets are off any team can win at any moment regular season performance becoming more and more irrelevant to postseason success but why is this here's a relatively normal win probability chart the line starts in the Middle where both teams have a 50/50 chance of winning the closer the line gets to the top or the bottom the better one of the teams chances of winning becomes in this game the Bucks took an early lead and held on to it until the end of the game this is normal game two of the Sixers Nick series was not [Music] the NBA is a volatile unpredictable able league and there is a big reason why today's video is sponsored by SeatGeek the NBA season is in full swing the MLB season is just around the corner your favorite artists are on tour and y'all are going to need some tickets now you guys have used my promo code so much that SeatGeek wanted to hook you up with a new promo and a new special offer and it's the best one yet for the rest of the season everyone who uses code Jimmy 10 will get 10% off any tickets on SeatGeek whether you're new to the app or you've been using it for years like me code Jimmy 10 is good for 10% off any order on SeatGeek just get into the app find the best tickets for you by using their color-coded seating map punch in the promo code and you're done take advantage of this deal while it's still around download the SeatGeek app and use code jimmy1 for 10% off any order is lead safe in the NBA today 10 points isn't nearly enough of a cushion a 20-point win is considered a blowout by any metric and yet as long as there's time left on the clock a 20-point lead can be chipped away relatively quickly in the NBA today the Nuggets overcoming a 20o deficit in game two against the Lakers was remarkable but you know what's even crazier with a minute and 15 seconds left in this game the Nuggets had 92 points they ended the game with 101 that's nine points in 76 seconds to close out a playoff game according to ineda win probability model the Nuggets had just an 18% chance of winning this game with a minute and 27 seconds left in the fourth even crazier a more unlikely comeback happened on the same exact night take a look at the clock there's just 30 seconds left in this game the Knicks have 96 points when the clock hit zero they had 104 the Nicks scored eight points in just 28 seconds to clinch a playoff win you cannot predict this there's no metric that will see this coming there's no game plan or scheme to prevent this the Knicks had just a 1.7% chance of winning this game with 47 seconds left on the clock a couple three-pointers and free throws later and those chances were all but irrelevant and even when games don't come down to the wire like this they are still completely unpredictable in game two of the Celtics Heat series Boston was favored by 15 points going into this game they lost by 10 points one of the best regular season teams in NBA history lost to a team missing two of their starters at home by double digits the NBA is as volatile and unpredictable as it's ever been in predictable. comom win probability model not only gives a play-by-play breakdown of How likely a team is to win or lose it then uses this data to identify the most statistic statistically unlikely comebacks throughout NBA history given a point deficit time remaining and ball possession their comeback metric shows How likely a team was to win or lose based on how other teams have fared in that exact scenario over the past 10 years a comeback score of 50 would be considered highly unlikely this Nick's win over the 76ers in game two had a comeback score of 56.8 now here's a chart of every game that featured one of these highly unlikely comebacks from year to year dating back to the 1997 season for many years these comebacks were limited to 10 maybe 20 a season but year after year the number of crazy comebacks continues to climb with the most in a single season coming this year with 32 as Pace continues to increase in the NBA and teams incorporate more three-pointers into their game plan the outcome of these games has gotten more and more unpredictable the NBA has always been a make or Miss league but as offenses have become more potent so has the potential for comebacks upsets and unforeseen results in any given NBA game there are four statistics known as the four factors that have the highest correlation to winning basketball games how well a team shoots the ball turnovers offensive rebounds and how often a team is getting to the line how well a team does in these four factors will usually determine the outcome of a game but in today's NBA most games boil down to just one factor here's a chart of how often team teams won a playoff game over the years when they made more three-pointers than the opposing team over the last three postseasons when a team makes more threes than their opponents they end up winning the game over 70% of the time peing in this year's playoffs where teams that make more threes than the opposing team have won the game 81% of the time more than rebounding more than getting to the line it's simply making or missing threes that have become the overwhelming factor that is deciding these games when compared to the traditional four factors making more threes than the opposing team is actually a better indicator of which team will win the game than any other metric right now and you might be thinking well of course the team that hits more threes wins the game the majority of the time but this wasn't always the case in fact in the past hitting more 3es had almost no correlation to whether a team was going to win or not from 1990 to 1994 when a team made more threes than their opponent they won about 45% of the time so not only were threes not prioritized teams that relied more on three-pointers actually performed worse than other teams from 2010 to 2014 the win rate for teams that hit more threes than their opponent in the playoffs jumped to about 55% so just a decade ago making more threes gave teams a slight Edge over their opponent but it was still just one of many variables that would determine the outcome of a game in the past three-pointers were viewed as almost a home run a game breaker even if the shot was a good open look teams didn't take a lot and they didn't make a lot but over the last decade the shot has not only become the focal point for many offenses it has become the deciding factor in the majority of these playoff games how many games have you watched where your team gets out to a 10 15 even 20o lead and despite a massive cushion they still can't relax knowing that all it would take is a few long bombs to shift the momentum and turn the game around these long bombs used to be improbable get yourself a double- digigit lead and holding on to it late in a game was relatively manageable but now a 15-point lead in the NBA is nothing teams can close that Gap in the blink of an eye in 2012 just over a decade ago the Miami Heat won a playoff game without making a single three-pointer in those same playoffs the Grizzlies had a game where they didn't make a single three and beat the Lob City Clippers by double digits here's a Series in 2012 where the Jazz hit N9 threes throughout the entire series go back even further and you'll see shooting volatility and the Reliance on three-pointers dip even further in 1994 the Celtics and hornets combined for 13 made three-pointers throughout an entire playoff series the Miami Heat just hit 13 threes in one half of a single game three-pointers are a high variance shot inherently high risk High reward when a team is only shooting 10 of them a game this variance plays a marginal role on the outcome the result of the game is a bit more expected but when teams are shooting 35 403s a game and hitting half of them the game isn't just affected by these shots the entire game hinges on the outcome of these shots a team can miss a handful of shots and find themselves on the bad end of a 15-point run and then flip the script hit a handful of Threes themselves and seemingly out of nowhere they have the lead in their first three games against the nuggets the Lakers have held a double digigit lead at some point in the game and yet when watching these games the score might as well be tied with how explosive the Nuggets offense is and this volatility has seen a spike in the postseason in comparison to the regular season this year usually in the postseason teams score less than they do in the regular season the game slows down teams have an entire series to prep for the opposing team schemes and sets scoring gets more difficult but over the last few seasons this discrepancy from regular season performance to play play off performance has only grown larger between an increase in games missed from key players injuries going into the playoffs in the previous mentioned variance in shooting and scoring a team doing well in the regular season has become more and more nonpredictive of how they will do in the playoffs over the last 20 seasons on average teams are scoring about three to four less points in playoff games than they do in regular season games so far in the 2024 playoffs the league is averaging 10.5 less points scored SC per game than they did in the regular season that is an unprecedented Gap this fallof in playoff scoring shows just how disconnected the regular season has gotten from the playoffs this has always been the case but it is far more prevalent now than ever before here's a moment in game two of the Bucks Pacers series with less than 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter the Pacers had a four-point lead on the Bucks that's a onep possession game 5 minutes and 23 seconds later the Pacers were up by 23 points here's game one of the Suns t-wolf Series where the suns were down 15 points with about 10 minutes left in the fourth within 2 minutes of game time they were down by 25 game one Heat versus Celtics with 332 left in the third quarter the heat were down 17 a lot but still very manageable 3 minutes later the heat were losing by 32 points these kinds of scoring outbursts are happening all the time now and they end up being the exciting factor of these games more and more often Andrew Lopez of ESPN wrote a great article on this in March of this year detailing the change in scoring variance the league has seen over the last few years and how some players and coaches are reacting to these scoring explosions Victor wanyama said during his time in the NBA so far he's learned a 20-point lead is nothing Minnesota head coach Chris VCH was also quoted saying you see a lot of unpredictable results regardless of the point differential and the margins of the score like like wow how that team beat that team and then you look at the column and they made 22 threes there was a time where you weren't taking 23es in a game it's all down to that but the most eye-opening part about this article was this stat when Steve Kerr began his tenure with golden state the Warriors strung together 114 consecutive wins when holding a lead of at least 15 points now the longest active streak when taking a 15-point lead is just 35 No lead is safe and any team can win at any time I heard a really good analogy about how scoring volatility has altered the NBA and it's probably the simplest way to understand exactly what's going on in these games you ever play Mario Kart yeah the racing game for children well in that game whenever you get out to a massive lead the game will artificially speed up the AI Racers so they can catch up to you and make the race more competitive and if you fall behind the AI Racers will slow down so you can catch up this is a mechanism built into the game called rubber banding the mechanism exists so if you're really good at the game it Still Remains challenging and if you're not so good at the game you still have a chance to win no matter the gap between you and the other Racers the game will close it and make the races competitive scoring variance three-point volatility and shot making has triggered this rubber banding in the NBA when a team jumps ahead by too much the other team comes racing back got a team that is the deepest most talented team in the league yeah well we have three-pointers and we know how to use them just went on a hot streak hit a bunch of shots got out to a lead that's all right you'll eventually get cold and we'll hit an improbable amount of three-pointers in a row to close the gap a team can meet all the prerequisites to be a title Contender they could check all the boxes that P Champions checked off they could be the clear favorite in any given series and still the NBA is as unpredictable as ever where no lead is safe and no team is safe [Music]

Channel: JxmyHighroller

Views: 1,099,673

Keywords: LeBron James, House of Highlights, ESPN, NBA highlights, Jimmy Highroller, NBA trash talk, Buzzer Beaters, Ankle Breakers, NBA Championship, Rebound, Stephen Curry, Lakers, nba breaking news, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembenyama, Michael Jordan, kobe bryant, kyrie, nba free agency, Giannis Antetokounmpo, NBA trade, Milwaukee Bucks, NBA Playoffs, Game Winner, Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics, NBA championship, Paul George, Game 7

Id: 4tLzQ1ZC9Ko

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024