Can the 2019-2020 Lakers get 70 wins?

I know I know, it's way too early to have this conversation.
If we're already having it with less than a third of the season under our belts, can you imagine what it will be like for the rest of the way? "70" might be a top Google search in 2020!

That being said, the conversation has already started, here's the record for the '71 Lakers, blablabla, very similar, blablabla... So it's difficult to block it out entirely and as a big fan of visualization, even more difficult not to add a couple of visuals to avoid all the number comparisons we're seeing.

Very quick background: the NBA regular season consists of 82 games. 70 was a mythical number of wins no team seemed able to reach, the Lakers getting the closest with 69 in 1972. That all changed in 1996 when Michael Jordan's Bulls went on to win 72. Twenty years later, the Golden State Warriors were able to inch just a bit further with 73 wins which is the record as of today. (People will routinely point out that while the Bulls won the championship that year, the Warriors lost the Finals in 7 games...). The year after they got 72 wins, the Bulls were close to repeating the 70-win feat but lost their last two games and ended at 69. They did however win the championship again that year.

This year, the Los Angeles Lakers are off to a really hot start, and after the Bucks' loss yesterday, lead the NBA with a 24-3 record. This hot start has naturally fueled the 70-win conversation, so how do all these teams stack up at this point of the regular season?

Here's a game-by-game evolution of those four teams' win percentages:

The gray horizontal line is 83.4% representing the 70 win threshold. What really stands out here is the overall downward trend as the season progresses. It took a while for the '71 to get above the 70-win threshold , but once above it seems a very difficult level to maintain. No team was just under the limit to finally make it above in the final stretch of the season.

While the Lakers are currently tied with the '95 Bulls, '96 Bulls and '71 Lakers, they will need to keep accumulating wins at a higher than 83.4% win rate to provide an acceptable cushion for the downward end of year trend.

As for the rationale behind that downward trend, it could be due to fatigue, although one could argue that all teams should be similarly affected, but more likely it is due to final Playoff standings starting to fit in. The 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th seed are all fighting for the last two Playoff spots and will do whatever it takes to win.

It could very well be that LeBron and company will have to make some late season decisions as to whether they want to pursue the 70-win mark or maximize their chances for title. Officially they'll declare the latter as being their priority, but we all know that if LeBron can add a 70-win season to his resume he wouldn't spit on that. He also knows first-hand the risk associated with chasing the wrong priority, as his team was the one who beat the 73-win Warriors....

Who's searching for Michael Jordan?

In a previous post we analyzed the trend and seasonality in Google searches for Kobe Bryant. We then looked at the evolution of queries for Lebron James, Derrick Rose, Steve Nash. But what about the greatest NBA legend?

Here's the raw data from Google Trends for Michael Jordan, strating in 2004 despite his last game being in 2003:



Using the same decomposition analysis detailed in the Kobe Bryant post, we get the following results:

For a retired NBA player, Michael isn't doing too badly!

From the seasonality it would seem that he continues to have the offseason / regular season / Playoff pattern, but a closer look reveals the spikes are in February! The only explanation I have is that it is his birthday and being Michael Jordan people tend to hear about it and follow-up on a search, perhaps to refresh his memory at how good a player he was.

Since 2009, searches for him have actually steadily increased, which basically correspond to the big spike when he was inducted in the Hall of Fame (August 2009). The second huge recent spike is the renewed interest in him when he celebrated his 50th birthday. It was also rumored that he was still in such good shape that he could return to play a few games in the NBA! The big dip after the spike is probably due to people that would have normally searched for him in March had searched for him already the previous month!

Who's searching for Derrick Rose?

In a previous post we analyzed the trend and seasonality in Google searches for Kobe Bryant. We then looked at the evolution of Lebron James' queries. But what about another famously injured player whose return is eagerly awaited?

Here's the raw data from Google Trends for Derrick Rose, the 2011 MVP:



Using the same decomposition analysis detailed in the Kobe Bryant post, we get the following results:

What can be said from the decomposition?

Although he started playing or the Chicago Bulls in 2008, his popularity only increased (rather significantly) during the 2010 offseason. Since then his popularity has maintained high levels.

The seasonality is harder to rely on given the small number of seasons he has played, but we do again see the offseason/regular season/Playoffs effect, but unlike Kobe and Lebron that usually reach the later stages of the Playoffs, Derrick's peaks are in April/May for the beginning of the Playoffs only. Could Google search peaks be a criteria for distinguishing the future stars from the current stars?

As far as outliers are concerned, the main one is at the end of the regular season in 2011, and guess who won the MVP at that time? Despite his popularity, he was still not in the same league as the Kobes and Lebrons, so this MVP title did have many people searching to learn more about him.

One surprising element is the absence of a big residual peak the following year when he injured himself at the beginning of the Playoffs. I guess a lot of the additional queries were picked up by the Playoff seasonality thus explaining the absence of a bigger outlier in April 2012. We are seeing a big dip in queries right now simply because this is the beginning of the Playoffs and he has yet to return to the Bulls' lineup...

2012 NBA Playoffs: Updated forecasts

What a first round this has been!

Things were rather quickly expedited in the East, including the surprising elimination of the #1 team Chicago Bulls, surprising until we saw the following video at least:

Meanwhile, the West was really the wild wild west and gave us some thrilling comebacks and two stressful game sevens.

Chicago was the favorite to win the Championship after the first two games of the playoffs with an estimated probability of victory of 17.9%. Its elimination has freed up some room but for whom?

Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Miami were the runner ups, and while the names of the next three teams hasn't changed, their order has:

NBA team	Champion Probability
MIA	21.5%
OKC	21.2%
SAS	19.3%
BOS	10.2%
LAC	7.9%
IND	7.3%
PHI	6.6%
LAL	6%

However the results are slightly biased as of now in the sense that Miami and Oklahoma won their round 2 opener whereas San Antonio still hasn't played Game 1 against the Clippers. If it were to win, it would jump right back to the first spot with a probability of 24.6% of clinching the Larry O'Brien trophy, more than 3 percentage points ahead of Miami and Oklahoma City.

More updates at the end of round 2!

Who will be the 2012 NBA champs?

As of today, and after a shortened but game-packed season, the 2012 NBA playoffs are finally underway!

Let's take a look at the playoff bracket:

Some very interesting match-ups ahead!

But in addition to trying to catch as many games as possible, I also wanted to take a stab at predicting who would become the 2012 NBA champions of course!

Just as in the previous posts, I will start off with a very simple model and work from there to improve its reliability.

So, what simple model can be establish to predict the outcome of the match-up between two teams? Let's simply consider the number of victories they obtained during the course of the season and derive a probability of winning a game from there.

Let us assume team 1 won 50 games and team 2 won 40 games. I would then grossly estimate that team 1's probability of winning a game against team 2 is 50 / (50 + 44) ~ 56%.

Similarly to many other sports, each match-up is a best-of-seven, meaning that the first team to win 4 games gets to advance to the next round. Therefore, if team 1 has a probability p of winning a game against team 2, team 1's probability of winning the match-up is:

P(win match-up) = p⁴ (1 + 4 * (1 - p) + 10 * (1 - p)² + 20 * (1 - p)³)

Indeed, team 1 needs to win 4 games hence the p^4, and team 2 can win anywhere from 0 to 3 games with probability (1 - p). Depending on the number of games team 2 wins, the number of arrangements varies, yielding the 1, 4, 10 and 20. In the previous example, team 1 has an overall probability of winning the series of 62%, despite having won 25% more games during the season. This very simple framework can help explain the many upsets that are regularly witnessed.

So now that we can figure out the probability of team 1 winning its first match-up, we can go to the next step and figure out the probability that will win the series against the winner of the team 3 - team 4 match-up:

P(team 1 wins second round) = P(team 1 beats team 3) * P(team 3 beats team 4) + P(team 1 beats team 4) * P(team 4 beats team 3)

I started this script this morning when none of the games had been played yet, and obtained the following probabilities for each team of becoming the NBA champions:

NBA team	Champion Probability
CHI	15.0%
SAS	14.4%
OKC	11.3%
MIA	10.5%
IND	6.7%
LAL	5.8%
MEM	5.4%
ATL	5.0%
LAC	4.7%
BOS	4.3%
DEN	3.7%
ORL	3.3%
NYK	2.7%
DAL	2.6%
UTA	2.4%
PHI	2.2%

I re-ran the script after the results of today's first four games (good thing I'm single) and obtained the following similar results:

NBA team	Champion Probability
CHI	17.9%
OKC	14.1%
SAS	13.6%
MIA	13.0%
LAL	5.2%
MEM	5.0%
ORL	4.5%
ATL	4.4%
LAC	4.4%
IND	4.1%
BOS	3.8%
DEN	3.4%
UTA	2.2%
NYK	1.6%
DAL	1.5%
PHI	1.2%

Winning the first game did bump up the teams by a couple of percentage points, Oklahoma City now pulled in front of San Antonio.

But wait! Before you run to the closest sports betting bar to put down all your money on the Bulls, you should be aware that the current model doesn't account for certain external events such as... Derrick Rose tearing his ACL in the Bull's first game. The Bulls played great this year without Derrick in the lineup, but his absence is definitely going to hurt their chances...

Another surprise is the relatively low probabilities for the top teams of the season. Looking at the top 4 contenders, their cumulative probability of wining the title is barely over 50%. Again, this explains some of the regular surprises we see every now and again (every other year theoretically ;-) ).

There are many other caveats with this simple model, homecourt advantage is not taken into into account, nor is the fact that certain teams having already secured their playoff position rested their star players and lost games that were of no importance.

Nevertheless, I will try to continue improving the model and adress the current limitations. Naturally, I will also regularly post updated probabilities as the playoffs progress.

Now back to the replay of Kevin Durant's shot...