Chances of beating the Heat in a series

[Crow]

How many teams do you think will eventually have a 40+% chance of beating the Heat in a series? I am going to assume the Heat have homecourt for simplicity's sake.

[Bobbofitos]

Lakers, OKC

[xkonk]

What do you mean by 'eventually'? By the All-Star break? By the trade deadline? If the Heat suffer multiple key injuries? Next year?

[Dr Positivity]

I have the Spurs at maybe 40%. Nobody else above that.

[Crow]

By "eventually" I mainly meant when the playoffs eventually roll around next spring.

But I was allowing for teams to develop from where they are right now and maybe even add other players, as some will probably do.

[Mike G]

In the last 5 years, LeBron has appeared in 95% of his teams' regular season games. Actually, .947
For Bosh, it's been .883, and for Wade it's .842

Assume they've had some games off just to rest up for the playoffs, and sometimes because they aren't at full strength after coming off an injury -- to be safe.
Offsetting that is the fact they're older than they have been, so maybe these are reasonable numbers after all.

Last year, of 61 players who averaged 32+ mpg, the median games was 60 -- just about 90%.
Using .90 as average availability, the likelihood that any 3 players would be ready to go would be .90^3, or .73

Using the 5-year averages for the Heat Big3, it's a .704 likelihood.
So, if there's a .30 likelihood that one of them isn't able to play; and a .27 likelihood that a random opponent is missing one of their top 3 players; that may favor their average playoff opponent.
Especially given that Miami is probably hurt more to be without one of their top 3.

But in the course of up to 4 playoff series, it's increasingly likely that they'd run into a team which is at full strength.

[Crow]

Small response, widely spread distribution. Average right now is a bit over 2 team qualifiers.