2026 championship contention

[Crow]

There is rough agreement on who 3 of the top teams are. I added the Pistons and Nuggets, BRef has Pistons but not Nuggets, you have Nuggets not Pistons.

Some difference how much chance other teams have.

Will see which predictions have most share alive in conference finals. Not the same as who wins title but it will be of some interest.

[Crow]

I may re-calibrate my championship chances after 1st round / before any 2nd round games. Others can if they want.

[Mike G]

A playoff prediction Contest could be to submit Win totals for all playoff teams, and add all your errors.
Here's how last year went:

Code: Select all

tm    W      tm   W
OKC  16     LAC   3
Ind  15     Hou   3
.           Det   2
NYK  10     LAL   1
Min   9     Mil   1
.           Orl   1
Den   7     Mem   0
Bos   6     Mia   0
Cle   5
GSW   5

Note the clear distinctions between finalists, conf. finalists, etc.
The 1st-rd outs win 0-3 games, 2nd round 4-7, 3rd 8-11, and finalists 12-16.
This confers a built-in "bonus" for predicting series winners.

Low score wins. If you predicted a switch between the Cavs and the Pacers, you would rack up 20 points right there.
Everyone starts out with a high score -- the sum of all your wins predicted -- and they get whittled down daily. There would still be daily 'leaders'.

At this point, we'd start with the 2nd round onward.

[Crow]

Different ways contests could be done.

[Crow]

At this point, I'd guess something like this:

Thunder 30%
Spurs 24
Lakers 3
TimberWolves 5
Pistons 11
Knicks 15
Cavs 7
Sixers 5

[Mike G]

4 games into the 2nd round, b-r.com sees it like this:

Code: Select all

Conf. Finalists
OKC  1.00    NYK  1.00
SAS  .722    Det  .679
Min  .278    Cle  .321

Finalists
OKC  .740    NYK  .471
SAS  .236    Det  .412
Min  .024    Cle  .117

Win Finals
OKC  .567    Det  .139
SAS  .152    NYK  .116
Min  .007    Cle  .018

Obviously not taking into account this postseason performance -- Det > NY

[Crow]

Fwiw, in terms of team chances at title still alive going into conference finals, Daniel was slightly ahead of my original distribution. But original BRef wins big.

My revised estimates on May 3 were much better than my original and slightly ahead of BRef's original but revised BRef with the very large Thunder % wins there too..

[Crow]

By playoff net margin, Thunder / Spurs looks likely to be close. Knicks should defeat Cavs.

By BRef projections either western team should defeat Knicks pretty clearly. But by playoff net margin, it may be close.

[Mike G]

If the western teams beat one another to a pulp, go 7 games, and the winner is short some players -- while the Knicks have an easy time with the Cavs -- it may not be close.