I've been curious to see what they say, but they hadn't been released until today: http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds Interesting points: 1. Even after winning 7 straight, Houston's projected to barely miss the playoffs. In the 8th seed, surprisingly, is San Antonio. In the 3 seed surprisingly is Memphis. 2. Unsurprisingly, 5 games separate seeds 2-10 indicating that due to the parity of the West a lot of this may come down to luck and single-game buzzer-beaters. 3. Although I and others have been looking at teams like Utah and Memphis as the ones we are most likely to knock out to get in, it may in fact come down to some of these veteran teams that are on the decline (San Antonio, LAL, Portland, Dallas). Remember that year Phoenix missed the playoffs with a still-prime Nash and about 47-48 wins? That was the beginning of the end for them too. 4. Clippers still projected to miss the playoffs. Lotto city. 5. Knicks projected to miss the playoffs woohoo! Under the current scenario we'd have two lotto picks. Not bad for a consolation prize if we do happen to miss the playoffs.
Record-wise, I don't think we are in the top 8 in our conference still. In fact, aren't we like 4th in the division?
Utah will fall back down to Earth. I just can't see the Clippers missing the playoffs unless their entire team gets injured. They're better than the Lakers.
Not surprised to see the Rockets just missing out on Hollinger's model. He values point differential quite a bit, and we have the lowest figure of the teams bunched together. We finally moved up with a win on his rankings. Normally we drop a spot, but with the big win against the Wolves we actually pushed our point differential into positive territory.
At the end of the season, PT differential is quite accurate. During the season, not so much because of schedule skewing. The most accurate single measure throughout the season is Away Wins versus Home Losses. And at the end of the season, Away Wins vs Home Losses is the same as W/Ls. It is identical -- 100% the same as W/Ls regarding standings. Using only away wins and home losses during the season flattens schedule skewing. Right now, the Rockets are 3-1, away wins vs home losses, which ranks them tied for 3rd in the West, with 3 other teams.
Can't imagine anyone can take his predictions seriously. Especially after saying the Clippers won't make the playoffs this year. Hollinger does not know what he is talking about.
He can and probably does measure his accuracy from past seasons. I wonder what his accuracy was last year ~ 18 games into the season.
Except they're the Clippers, and the Lakers aren't. Don't underestimate the power of the Clipper curse; it is stronger than CP3 and Blake and the rest combined. Their current record is deceiving -- they've played 10 games at home and only 4 on the road. They have a mediocre season this year and the players will start moving elsewhere quickly afterward. In two years, this team will once again be contending for nothing more than top 3 draft picks. I've seen this several times before with that franchise under its current owner.
It's all based off his power rankings which are themselves based almost entirely on points differential and strength of schedule. In the playoff odds system, however, you can't take away wins and losses a team has already garnered. So effectively it pits teams against each other in a computer simulation to complete the remainder of the schedule, accounting for home court advantage but not for injuries. In the end of ~1000 simulations it crunches all the numbers together to give a mean expected wins and losses and a range of highest possible to lowest possible wins and losses. It's not that complicated. When I read the system, I'm not looking seriously at the odds and everything. I just want to see, kind of like Las Vegas lines, what the projected status of the Rockets will be if "everything goes according to plan". I.e. according to Hollinger's system we would miss the playoffs, but if we win one game we're not expected to in addition to all the ones we ARE expected to win, then we will make the playoffs. A lot can and will change between now and then, but it's a good reality check to let you know how you're doing relative to your schedule. If he says the Clippers aren't making it, it's probably because their schedule has been much lighter than other teams' thus far.
We are in the same class with Phoenix, Golden State, and Minnesota, just above Sacramento and New Orleans and a notch below the other 9 teams. Dallas is the #9 team in my opinion.
Talent is talent no matter how you slice it. They are one of the most deepest teams this year. The logo, city, or owner do not make the player. Stars win in the NBA period.
Please don't throw a b**** fit about this. It is a simulator (aka no one is pretending it is extremely accurate). Go run this season on NBA 2k12 and you will probably have as much chance of accurately predicting the western conference playoffs. Everyone (including Hollinger) knows it's too early for any kind of accuracy, especially with so much parity in the conference this year. It doesn't take long to deduce that it doesn't make much sense for 10 teams to have a better than 50% chance of making the playoffs. Come back to this at the end of March. Until then, don't waste your breath.
This is a fair point. The condensed schedule favors deep teams, and the Rockets are deep. I doubt it takes that depth and the condensed schedule (more back-to-back) into account; if so, hats off to Hollinger.
