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 Steve Nash?

In a previous post we analyzed the trend and seasonality in Google searches for Kobe Bryant. We looked at another famously injured NBA star, Derrick Rose, as well as Lebron James. Let's turn our attention to another star who made lots of headlines for switching teams: Steve Nash.

Here's the raw data from Google Trends:



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

We're starting to become experts analyzing these decompositions now.
One interesting insight is that, similarly to Derrick Rose and unlike Kobe and Lebron, Steve's peaks are indeed during the Playoffs, but in May as opposed to June, indicating that while he often makes the Playoffs he's never played a game in the Finals...

Of course we see a giant spike in the 2012 offseason, right after the 2012 Playoffs. Well Steve decided to take his talent from Phoenix to LA. We all know since then that the Lakers have not really impressed us this last season, but at the time the Steve-Kobe sent shockwaves worldwide!

Who's searching for Kobe Bryant?

Unless you live on another planet without any WiFi connection to Facebook or Twitter, it was pretty hard to miss out on Kobe Bryant's injury in a crucial game against the Golden State Warriors last week. A torn Achilles has just ended his season (although to be fair I am not sure he will be missing that many games, even if Lakers do make the Playoffs...).

But this got me thinking: how many people searched for "Kobe Bryant" on the day and next of his injury? Could a huge spike be seen in Google Trends?




The above chart is at the monthly level so we only have partial April data. Nonetheless, Google Trends predicts that April 2013 will be Kobe's all star spike in searches, his MVP (most valuable peak) if you will.

But we also seem to notice some older spikes in the data, and a closer look reveals that these tend to regularly occur in June. What type of seasonal pattern lurks in the data?

In order to investigate seasonality, and also to tease out the underlying trend in searches for Kobe, I processed the data using R's stl() function (seasonal decomposition of a time series with loess) to split a time series into its trend, seasonal component and residuals.

Here's what I obtained:

We can't see the April spike yet because the downloaded data doesn't have Google Trends' estimates for the month, but we can predict a big spike given that halfway through April we already have almost as many queries as in a full month.

Going back to the figure, the top panel has the raw monthly data since 2004.

The next panel displays the smoothed loess trend. After a dip throughout 2004, Kobe has slowly but surely gained momentum since.

The next panel shows the seasonal component. We easily identify a strong pattern with a low volume in the off-season, an uplift when the season starts which remains quite constant during the regular season, another uplift during the playoffs with the maximum attained in June as we had observed previously.
It's also interesting to see how the seasonality's amplitude has steadily increased over the years.

Finally, the last panel shows the residuals, what cannot be explained by the trend and the seasonality. The cluster of yellow bars in the summer of 2004 could be due to the fact that Shaquille O'Neal was traded away from Los Angeles and there were many rumors around Kobe's future with the Lakers.

But how big the spike will be in April 2013 is anybody's guess!

Drama in Lakerland continues

Edit as of 4/10/2013 2:40pm

The drama continues, my model had the tiebreaker backwards, giving LA the advantage of the tie. Corrected values are at the bottom of the post.

The Lakers making the Playoffs or not has without a doubt been the most talked about conversation of the 2012-2013 season. And you would think that with just a handful of games to be played in the regular season we would finally have at definite answer or at least a pretty good idea.

But we would be forgetting this is LA/Hollywood we're talking about (I just know a movie is going to be made one day around this whole story).

So the Lakers currently have the 8th and final spot in the West (with a Laker win/Utah loss combination yesterday), half a game in front of Utah, but Utah has the tie-breaker in case the two teams end the season with same number of wins.

So what does the rest of the season look like? The experts have weighed in on NBA.com's blog but what do the stats say?

Running some new simulations based on the latest results, factoring the strength of the opponents and home game advantage for the last games, we have the following results:

Position	Lakers Probability	Mavericks Probability	Jazz Probability
7	0.4	NA	NA
8	73.7	6.5	19.4
9	20.3	17	62.7
10	5.6	76.5	17.9

Because I am more of a data-driven guy, I hereby declare the Lakers IN THE PLAYOFFS!!

4/10/2013 2:40pm
The drama continues, my model had the tiebreaker backwards, giving LA the advantage of the tie. When corrected, the Lakers playoffs drop to 50.1% !!
As a statistician I cannot pronounce myself with this value....

Here are the details:

Position	Lakers Probability	Mavericks Probability	Jazz Probability
7	0.6	NA	NA
8	50.1	7.1	42.2
9	39.3	18.1	42.6
10	10	74.8	15.2

Crazy end of season!! (a.k.a. "For the 100th time, will the Lakers make the Playoffs?")

When I posted my predictions for the end of the season, I felt like I had some time before having to update these. However, in light of recent results, namely the Lakers pretty hot streak and a back-from-25-down comeback in New Orleans, the hype is back as to whether or not the Lakers will make it into the finals. Some have even argued that given how tight the last Playoff spots are in the West, the Lakers can even hope to get in the 7th or even 6th spot. But their future is not entirely in their hands, a lot depends on how the Warriors, Jazz and Rockets perform.

Let's see how the odds of each of these teams making it into the Playoffs has evolved and upadte our forecasts based on most recent games:




Only in Hollywood-land could an NBA team's probability of making the Playoffs jump from 10% to 40% in a matter of three weeks with only a quarter of the season remaining. All experts (and stats bloggers like me :-)) agreed that the Lakers' Playoff run would require a big slip by one or more of the team's ahead, and that is exactly what the Jazz is handing the Lakers on a silver.... scratch that, golden platter, with a probability drop from 90% to 55% over the same three weeks! Talk of a big slip! But to make this the perfect Hollywood script, the Lakers should clinch that 8th spot with a win on the final regular season against Houston...

Here's a table summarizing most recent values as of 2013-03-08:

Team	Playoff Probability
SAS	100%
OKC	100%
LAC	100%
MEM	100%
DEN	100%
GSW	98.9%
HOU	90%
UTA	55.2%
LAL	43%
POR	7.3%
DAL	5.6%
MIN	0%
PHO	0%
NOH	0%
SAC	0%

Given the current excitement and hype, I'm guessing I will be posting updates sooner rather than later!

Nice infographics on the Lakers' last road trip

Given I'm in the midst of analyzing the Lakers' performance and chances of making the Playoffs, I thought I'd share this pretty neat infographics tweeted by the Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers), summarizing their last 7-game road trip. Experts on NBA.com said they would reconsider the Lakers for Playoffs if they went 5-2 or better on this road trip, they fell just short with 4-3.

Based on my most recent analysis, their current probability of making the Playoffs is 15.7%.

NBA article: CAN LAKERS OR MAVS TAKE NO. 8 IN WEST?

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago on the Lakers' odds of making it to the playoffs. While currently working on another post on what the final Playoff picture will most likely look like for both conferences and all positions, I wanted to respond to an article on NBA.com on whether the Lakers or the Mavericks have a shot at the #8 spot in the West.

Portland, Houston and Utah have not be doing as well lately as they had been until now, which might give both the Lakers and the Mavericks some hope for some post-season action.

Running some simulations for all five teams' upcoming performance, here's what transpired:

Position	Lakers Probability	Mavericks Probability	Jazz Probability	TrailBlazers Probability	Rockets Probability
3	/	/	/	/	0.4
4	/	0.2	0.8	0.1	0.9
5	0.1	0.2	3	0.3	3
6	1.1	0.3	10.4	1.9	10.2
7	3.9	4.2	26.9	9.3	32.1
8	10.6	8.7	28.8	14.6	29.9
9	20.7	15.3	18.8	27.2	14.2
10	29.7	25.1	8	24.1	6.8
11	26.1	32.9	2.5	16.9	2.2
12	6	8.8	0.8	4.6	0.3
13	1.4	3.1	/	0.7	/
14	0.4	0.9	/	0.3	/
15	/	0.3	/	/	/

The Lakers' probability of making the Playoffs is 15.7% and has significantly increased over the past two weeks since my previous post, thanks to three consecutive wins at home before winning 4 out of 7 during a grueling road trip! This 70% win probability over the last 10 games has boosted home and road winning percentages in the model.

As for the Mavericks, their probability of making the Playoffs is close to the Lakers: 13.6%. The Trailblazers' have almost twice as much of a chance of making with 26.2%. The Jazz (69.9%) and Rockets (76.5%), have less to concern themselves with at this point, but should still remain on their guards, there are no guarantees in the NBA!

So while the Rockets', Jazz's and Trailblazers' latest stumbles can give Lakers and Mavericks fans some hope, they should remain realists, the road to climb out of their respectives holes to reach the eight spot is long and difficult one, but there is no doubt that both teams will fight till the final game!

From "Will they be champs?" to "Will they make the playoffs?"

I have not posted any basketball-related articles since sharing my data-driven predictions for the 2012 NBA Finals (unfortunately for me, the data suggested the Oklahoma City Thunder had a slight advantage against the Miami Heat).

But there has been SO much talk recently on the Los Angeles Lakers' performance that I just had to take a stab at predicting their season outcome.


Background

For those of you not too familiar with the situation, it has all the drama of a Hollywood script, and I will briefly summarize the situation.

The Lakers have had great results in the past years, winning the championship in 2009 and 2010, and being tough opponents in the other years. Over the 2012 summer and a disappointing 2012 year, they signed a couple of superstars: Steve Nash from Phoenix, desperate to win a championship and one of the league's top point guards, as well as Dwight Howard from Orlando, who can be quite a beast under the basket. On paper they were an All-Star team, nobody contested that. Almost everyone had them reaching the Finals, the only question was whether they would beat Miami or not.

But their performance so far surprised even the most pessimistic: they started the season by accumulating losses, and have lost more games than they have won since the start of the season. Things get worse as they are in the Western Conference which is much more competitive than the Eastern conference. Add in a fired coach, a surprising replacement coach, and you have all the drama necessary for a lot of ink to be poured!

Total confusion on the court has been a common sight in the Staples Center:

And so the questio has become: will the Lakers even make it to the NBA playoffs? Only the best eight teams of the Western conference make the playoffs. Many analysts have looked at historical data, noticing that the eight team in the West has an average of 48 wins, and if the Lakers want to reach 48 wins this season they need to start winning fast.

I've decided to take a slightly different approach, by tring to forecast what the rest of the season would look like for all teams based on the first half of the season. Also, the previous methodology ignores what the rest of the teams are doing in your conference, as well as the impact of playing another team also fighting for a playoff spot. When you win against one of those teams, it basically counts double!


Methodology

Here's the methodology I've taken:

• extract all of the 2012-2013 season scores and schedule data for all teams, namely home and away winning percentages
• for all upcoming games I compute the home team's probability of victory as follows:
  home team winning percentage / (home team winning percentage + away team winning percentage).
  For example: Let us say that Chicago with a 12-5 road record (70.8% road winning percentage) is visiting Miami with a 16-3 home record (84.2% home winning percentage), I would estimate Miami's probability of winning the game as:
  84.2% / (84.2% + 70.8%) = 54.4%.
• Based on this probability, I simulate the game's outcome and then update Chicago's and Miami's records (if Chicago wins, their road record is now 13-5 and Miami's home record becomes 16-4).
• I continue proceeding that way until all the season's games have been simulated. This then becomes one possible outcome for the season.
• I then repeat the entire process outlined above thousands of time to get an idea of all the scenarios that can play out.

Based on the simulations, I can then determine which teams are most likely to have the best record in the NBA, and, going back to our original question, how likely the Lakers are to make the playoffs.


Results

Here are the results (based on scores up to 21/01/2013):

Top three NBA records:

• First place:
  Oklahoma City Thunder (32.9%), San Antonio Spurs (29.2%), Los Angeles Clippers (28%)
• Second place:
  San Antonio Spurs (26.6%), Oklahoma City Thunder (24%), Los Angeles Clippers (23.4%)
• Third place:
  San Antonio Spurs (18.7%), Oklahoma City Thunder (17.6%), Los Angeles Clippers (17.1%)

Clearly, the odds are that these three teams will enter the playoffs with the best records and so most likely a Western Conference team will have homecourt advantage in the Finals!

As for the Lakers, here are the probabilities of their final standing in the Western conference:

Position	Probability
6	0.4
7	1.4
8	4.1
9	8.9
10	12.6
11	18.1
12	24.2
13	16.9
14	10
15	3.4

Wow! Only a 5.9% probability of the Lakers making the Playoffs!

But let's still monitor them closely, and I'll update these results in the weeks to come.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions/suggestions on the methodology and/or results!