Extraordinarily ordinary (a.k.a. the "11-year NBA Playoff Upset Cycle")

Every year like clockwork, the NBA playoffs are upon us, historically one of my favorite topics to post about!

As I was comparing my predictions with what has taken place on the courts these past few weeks, I realized two things.

First: had the Spurs won that Game 7 against the Nuggets, I would have had all first round predictions correct.

That in itself isn't really jaw dropping, there are only 8 match-ups in the first round, and mostly of them are highly predictable. NCAA March Madness in comparison has 32 first round match-ups.

It wasn't jaw-dropping for another reason. (Let me give you a hint: my young kid who knows nothing about the NBA got all predictions for the first round correct)

That's right, simply by predicting the higher seed would win the match-up was sufficient to get the entire first round perfectly! Not a single upset so far! We sports-lovers have been derived of that special moment when the young challenger topples the giant. Ah Spurs, you were so close!

And here is where things get interesting: the last time there weren't any upsets in the NBA playoffs was... in 1974!!! The second year the NBA was created.

Now granted we're only halfway through the playoffs and upsets can still happen. But restricting to first round only, the last year we had no upsets was in 2008, over 10 years ago. Historically, upset rate is just above 25%, so we should already have expected about 2 so far in the first round!

We can also notice incredibly high rates in the 70s and early 80s, that's essentially due to the fact that Playoffs were considerably shorter then (less teams so no first rounds, and certain rounds were best-of-3 providing a much better opportunity for challengers).

While we're on the topic, here are some other stats on upsets.

Upsets seem to be more common in the Western conference than in the Eastern conference, but the difference is not significant:

It would also seem upsets are more likely in the later stages, so all hope is not lost! (but also to keep in mind is that there are less match-ups in the later stages so we would still have expected more upsets to have already occurred in the first round).

And while challengers are rarely able to repeat their herculean effort in the next round, we should definitely give yet another shoutout to the 1999 New York Knicks who despite being 8th in the East went all the way to Finals, losing to the Spurs in 5 games.

Before we end, I wanted to point out to a rather bizarre observation. Looking at the fraction of upsets per year, we notice dips every now and again. If we look at the exact years when there were less than 10% of upsets, things get a little freaky: 1974, 1986, 1987, 2008, 2019. Aside from 1974-1986 being a 12-year gap, all others are perfect 11-years gap! Like clockwork, we were doomed to have little-to-no upsets this year! We're still in the middle of the playoffs so things get still change quite considerably....