ESPN Hollinger: 2013-14 NBA Playoff Odds. Rockets 3rd seed.

last year the Rockets went from like something like 90% to 55% in the last two weeks of the season. NOTHING is every locked up until its officially locked up in the West with the playoff seeding.

 

According to his formula, we have slightly better chances of winning the championship than not making the playoffs. Interestingly, it appears that if we do make the finals, we have better than 50-50 odds of winning. That shows how much stronger the West is so far this season. But I doubt Vegas would favor us over Miami in a finals series, so take it with some large grains of sea salt.

 

From my understanding of how seeding works, the first four seeds are reserved for division winners, so unless we beat out San Antonio, the highest seed we can grab is 5, right?

 

only 3 divisions so we can be 2nd-4th as long as we have the best record out of the non division winners

 

They changed the rule a while ago.

First, there are only three divisions, but the top four seeds are reserved for the division winners and the highest runner-up. So if the Spurs have the best record and the Rockets have the second best record in the West, we will get the second seed since we are the best runner-up.

Also, seeding does not matter in terms of home court advantage. If the fifth seed has a better record than the fourth seed, than the fifth seed will have home court advantage. I believe this happened to the Rockets when the Spurs and the Mavs were in the top four, and Utah was a division winner. We were the fifth seed but still had home court advantage.

 

...given that McHale drives his main two or three players into the ground, not trusting any of the other players on the team and having no real strategy or coaching skills...

...resulting in losing, what?, the last 3 games of last season (we need one game to get 7th seed at worst and after each of the first two losses it was, "well, it's okay, we still have [two more chances][one more chance]"), locking us into #8 spot against Oklahoma City.

 

The % numbers are the chances that a team will make the playoffs assuming that each team performs at the same level that they have played at so far for the remainder of the season. Teams can always get better or worse as the season goes on for a variety of reasons (trades and injuries being the two main items) so these odds are subject to change. Also, as the teams put more games in the W column or the L column, especially if they win more or less frequently than projected, their projected win total can change.

 

His formula is usually a decent-to-solid indicator of predicted record, but I don't pay any attention to the Finals/Championship odds

 

How is every team other than the buck's above 500?

 

lol we lost to a team that has 0% odds to playoffs.

 

Rockets will be in 6th place. BOOK IT

 

Appreciate the clarification.

 

And we've given the 99.7% & 94.9% teams their only home losses of the season.

The Heat have lost to teams with 8% $ 15% odds in a conference where a sub .500 record will garner a 4-5 seed. The 72 win Chicago Bulls were swept by a 30 win Nuggets team during the regular season. A Syracuse team that ended up #1 in the country lost to the division-2 Le Moyne College Dolphins just 2-3 years ago. A single game example of poor play against an inferior opponent is anecdotal at best.

Like Charlie P always says, if everything in sports unfolded the way it's expected to, they wouldn't be compelling to any of us. Upsets happen. Good teams have bad games. Move on.

 

i think you were looking at the best case scenario category

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/bball_ref">@bball_ref</a> projections - based on 1000 sims of remainder of year - have <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rockets&amp;src=hash">#Rockets</a> at 48.8-33.2, No. 5 seed in West. <a href="http://t.co/Nz8GMhPrNr">http://t.co/Nz8GMhPrNr</a></p>&mdash; Nick Mathews (@Nick_Mathews) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nick_Mathews/statuses/408621201955635200">December 5, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rockets&amp;src=hash">#Rockets</a> have 85.6% chance of making playoffs, 2.3% winning top seed, 7.4% winning West, 3.2% winning NBA title, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/bball_ref">@bball_ref</a>.</p>&mdash; Nick Mathews (@Nick_Mathews) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nick_Mathews/statuses/408621694647930880">December 5, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>