FiveThirtyEight
This week on Hot Takedown, we’re reacting to a series of upsets in the first round of the NBA playoffs. The Los Angeles Clippers pulled off the biggest comeback in playoff history, but we don’t necessarily think the Warriors should be too worried for the rest of the series. Other upsets included the No. 7 seed Orlando Magic defeating the No. 2 Toronto Raptors; that Game 1 victory had Mike Tuck on “Open Mike” from Orlando’s 96.9 The Game positing that Orlando is underrated in the Eastern Conference. Our basketball guru, Chris Herring, makes a guest appearance to help us break down this claim. Someone who is openly shaking in his boots this week is golfing great Jack Nicklaus. Tiger Woods’s victory at the Masters gave him his 15th major, just three behind Nicklaus’s all-time record. Does Tiger have it in him to catch Jack? Or do we expect this to be his last big victory? Inspired by Tiger’s feat, our Rabbit Hole dives into other statistically improbable comebacks. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:
from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lets-overreact-to-first-round-nba-playoff-games/
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Less than a week ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning were heavy betting favorites to win the Stanley Cup, and for good reason. The Bolts entered the playoffs on the heels of one of the best regular seasons in NHL history. They tied the record for the most regular-season wins1 and finished with the fourth-highest point total in league history. Forward Nikita Kucherov scored 128 points and will almost surely win the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s most valuable player, and Steven Stamkos had the best season of his already illustrious career. As a team, the Bolts were unparalleled — they paced the league in goals scored, power-play goals scored, shooting percentage and penalty kill percentage. If the team that Steve Yzerman built was ever going to acquire some silverware, this would surely be the year. Unfortunately for the Lightning, their astonishing regular-season form hasn’t carried over to the postseason, and now they find themselves on the precipice of an unprecedented failure: If they lose Tuesday night in Columbus, they’ll be the first Presidents’ Trophy winners to be swept out of the first round of the postseason in history. Even if they aren’t swept but merely lose the series, Tampa’s collapse would be monumental — devastating for any team but especially so for a club that’s been knocking on the door of Stanley Cup glory for several years. How have things gone so wrong for the team from the Gulf Coast? For starters, Tampa’s high-scoring superstars seem to have forgotten what the net looks like. Stamkos hasn’t recorded a point, neither has Brayden Point, and the only thing Kucherov has recorded is a one-game suspension for an extraordinarily dirty hit on Blue Jackets defenseman Markus Nutivaara. Meanwhile, the opposite is true for the Jackets: Matt Duchene and Artemi Panarin — subjects of a major trade and a major nontrade, respectively — are scoring at will, while Zach Werenski is providing service from the blue line. Things aren’t much different between the pipes. Tampa goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy has been uncharacteristically abysmal: He has stopped just 86.6 percent of the shots he’s faced so far, which ranks second to last in the postseason among qualifying goalies. This is somewhat stunning, especially given the Russian’s previous postseason form: In 29 postseason appearances between 2014 and 2018, he stopped 91.9 percent of the shots he faced. This spring’s regression couldn’t have come at a worst time. On the other side of the ice, Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky has been nearly unbeatable, stopping 94 percent of the shot’s he’s faced so far — which is good for second-best. None of this bodes well for the Bolts because save percentage is the single most important determinant of a team’s goals-per-game differential in the postseason, and therefore the key to a playoff run. As if circumstances could get any worse, Tampa is unraveling against a team that has never won a playoff series. In fact, Columbus had never won more than two games in a single postseason before this one. It’s one thing to be swept by a franchise that has won four Stanley Cups, as may happen to the Pittsburgh Penguins at the hands of the New York Islanders; it’s an entirely different thing to get bounced by a franchise that’s never advanced to the second round. We wrote last week that anything short of lifting the Stanley Cup in June would feel like a failure for the Bolts and would put them in the same company as the 1995-96 Red Wings, another set of historically great losers. But if the Bolts are dispatched in four games, their failure would have to be considered more embarrassing. After all, that Red Wings team advanced to the conference finals before crashing out of the postseason. This Bolts team might not even win a game. Only four teams have managed to overcome a 3-0 series deficit in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs. If any team is up to the task, it’s this immensely talented Bolts group. But first, they’ll have to remember how to put the puck into the net of their opponent. Otherwise, they will make history for all the wrong reasons. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-lightning-could-make-history-for-all-the-wrong-reasons/ We won’t find out who won until late June, but the 2018-19 NBA season treated basketball fans to one of the great MVP battles in recent memory. Several worthy players hung around the race for large portions of the season, including Paul George and Nikola Jokic. But in the end, there were two: Giannis Antetokounmpo and James Harden — each of whom has several arguments working in his favor. Antetokounmpo is the best player on the best team1 in the league, and he led the 60-win Bucks to the best defense and fourth-best offense in the NBA. He averaged an unheard of 27.7 points, 12.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.5 blocks per game. He is also one of the best defenders in the league — a top-tier candidate for Defensive Player of the Year. Harden, meanwhile, carried an offensive burden unlike any in modern NBA history. His 40.5 percent usage rate is the second-highest of all time. He finished the season averaging 36.1 points per game, eighth-most in league history and the most since Michael Jordan ticked off 37.1 per game in 1987. Harden boosted his deep attempts far beyond what previously seemed either possible or reasonable, taking 13.2 triples per game and connecting on them at a 37 percent rate.2 Really, though, the argument between the two players is less about who had the better season and more about the definition of “valuable.” Is it just the best player in the league? Is it the best player on the best team? Is it the player whose performance was most outstanding, whatever you decide that means? Is it the player whose team needs him the most? Is it some combination of all of those things, as well as a few others? Different players, coaches, executives, fans and media members have different definitions. What if we took the word “valuable” as literally as possible, though, and tried to identify the player who provided his team with the greatest bang for its buck throughout this season? After all, what’s more valuable than performing at a level that far outstrips your salary, allowing your team to spend those surplus dollars on more talent elsewhere? The first step to answering this question is to quantify the dollar value of a win in the NBA. There were 1,230 games played this season, which means there were 1,230 wins up for grabs. According to Basketball-Reference.com, NBA teams handed out more than $3.6 billion in salary this year. Dividing that figure by 1,230 means that a single win was valued at $2,949,908.82. We can then turn to ESPN’s Real-Plus Minus and specifically RPM wins, a stat that uses a player’s RPM and his possessions played to estimate his contribution to the number of his team’s wins. Not all players qualified for the RPM leaderboard, so there was a slight shortfall of wins produced by the 514 players who did qualify. We applied a multiplier to each of those player’s totals in order to account for the shortfall. Then, we multiplied the dollar value of a win by the number of adjusted RPM wins each player produced to pinpoint the dollar value of that player’s production. Subtracting his actual 2018-19 salary from that number yields a surplus, meeting our goal of identifying the best bang-for-buck player in the league this season. Pascal Siakam led the NBA in most bang for the buckNBA players by value provided to their teams above their salaries as measured by Real Plus-Minus (RPM) wins, 2018-19 season
It should come as no surprise that both Antetokounmpo and Harden ranked among the league leaders in both the value of their production and the surplus value they provided their teams. The Rockets received more than $27 million in surplus value on Harden; the Bucks got nearly $23 million in surplus on Antetokounmpo. Neither player, though, led the league in surplus value. Harden ranked sixth, while Antetokounmpo ranked ninth (and second on his own team).3 Fellow MVP candidates George ($30.22 million) and Jokic ($19.49 million) also ranked highly in surplus value, but again, neither of them led the league.4 Instead, the league leader was do-it-all Raptors forward Pascal Siakam, with a surplus value of nearly $36 million. Siakam is quite good, obviously, but he’s not nearly as good as the MVP types just yet. By any traditional MVP definition, he doesn’t really fit. But we’re not looking for a traditionally defined MVP here — just the player whose value most exceeded his salary. And that’s why Siakam makes perfect sense. Siakam broke out in a huge way this season, emerging as both the favorite for Most Improved Player and a candidate for one of the All-NBA teams. He averaged 16.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.6 combined steals and blocks per game while getting to the line 3.8 times a night and canning 36.9 percent of his shots from beyond the arc. He is a wonderful defender, capable of handling himself both in space and on the block, wreaking havoc in passing lanes and containing ball-handlers off the dribble. He also served as the point man in the Raptors’ league-best zone defense and the one of the primary drivers of their defense-to-offense transition attack. Toronto outscored its opponents by 10.7 points per 100 possessions with Siakam on the floor, per NBA.com, the eighth-best figure among the 353 players who appeared in at least 40 games. He carried the Raptors in several games when Kyle Lowry and/or Kawhi Leonard sat out because of injuries or load management; he was also a rotation mainstay, playing in 80 of 82 games, all but one of which he started. And Siakam did all of this while drawing a salary of just $1,544,951, as a former No. 27 overall pick playing in the third year of his rookie-scale contract. He produced like a star — Siakam ranked 11th in production value per RPM wins — while being paid less than 391 other players in the league. Add it all up, and he produced by far the most surplus value of any player this season, with the difference between him and No. 2 Nikola Vucevic slightly exceeding the difference between Vucevic and No. 7 Danny Green, Siakam’s teammate in Toronto. Considering that neither Siakam nor Green is even Toronto’s best player, it’s no wonder the Raptors are among the favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in this year’s NBA Finals.5 If that is indeed how these playoffs play out, Siakam will almost surely have played a valuable role — maybe not the “most valuable” by popular definitions, but one that far exceeds the value of his paycheck. Check out our latest NBA predictions. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/forget-giannis-pascal-siakam-is-our-mvp/ We could talk all day long about the everlasting debate over competitive balance in the NBA, but perhaps the biggest challenge the Golden State Warriors pose for many die-hard NBA fans is the issue of sleep. Because they play on the West Coast, the two-time defending champions are often playing late at night, leaving East Coasters and even Midwesterners with a choice of whether to stay up and watch the action or to get some shut eye before work the next morning. Some play it by ear and call it a night only if and when Golden State builds a commanding, early second-half lead. This was basically the scenario on Monday night: The Warriors went up by 31, 94-63, at home on the No. 8 seed Los Angeles Clippers, the biggest first-round underdogs in 30 years, midway through the third quarter.1 Yet those who cut off their TV at that point, or before, missed out on the biggest comeback — or collapse, depending on how you view it — in NBA playoff history. The Clippers poured in 85 second-half points en route to an improbable 135-131 win, knotting the best-of-seven at one game apiece as the series heads to Los Angeles later this week. There’s no need to concoct an over-complicated explanation for the comeback. While there wasn’t an immediate effect, Stephen Curry’s fourth foul prompted coach Steve Kerr to sit the scorching sharpshooter (who had 22 points and was 6-of-9 from the field) for an eight-and-a-half-minute stretch during the third quarter, until there were 13 seconds left in the period. By that point, the Warriors’ lead (still 17 points) had already been cut by almost half. And Curry’s magic had largely faded once he was subbed back in: Upon returning, he shot just 2-of-9 the rest of the way. Fellow star Kevin Durant was efficient as a scorer but turned the ball over four separate times during that third quarter alone. He would finish with a team-high nine giveaways, and the club — whose problematic turnovers we’ve detailed here before — had 22 turnovers on the night. (It marked the second game in a row that Golden State has had more than 20.) Durant again got frustrated with Clippers irritant Patrick Beverley, who stands about 10 inches shorter, never stops giving everything he has and seems to effectively get into the All-Star’s head. Lastly, the Warrior defense allowed Lou Williams, the Clippers’ top scorer, to get rolling and simply couldn’t find a way to stop him late. From the point that L.A.’s deficit peaked at 31 points, Williams, the likely Sixth Man of the Year, shot 11-of-17 for 26 points while also dishing out seven assists over the final 19 minutes of the game. He even grabbed a pair of his own misses and put them each back for valuable buckets.2 “We stopped playing, and got kind of disconnected, in that mid-third quarter,” Kerr told reporters of the turnaround. “We lost our defensive edge.” It’s been tempting not to even bother writing about the key factors in this series, largely because of how enormous an underdog the Clippers are. But one thing the Warriors would have wanted to avoid going in was this: Don’t allow Los Angeles to stay in the game late. The win marked the third time this season alone that the Clippers had come back from 25 or more down on the road to win,3 and they were the NBA’s most efficient team in late-game, clutch scenarios during the regular season. With the score separated by 5 points or fewer in the final five minutes of play, L.A. outscored opponents by a league-high 17.7 points per 100 possessions. The clutch shooting of Williams will stand out, but he was far from alone. The Clippers shot 8-of-14 from deep as a team in the second half. Montrezl Harrell, Williams’s high-flying pick-and-roll partner, shot 5-of-5 for 17 points after L.A. fell behind by 31. Beverley made a key play, picking Curry’s pocket as he brought the ball up the court early in the fourth, as if to say that the Clippers weren’t simply going to lie down, despite the Warriors still holding a double-digit lead. And in what’s marked a sea change under coach Doc Rivers, a couple of the team’s youngsters — a contingent that just a few years ago never would have gotten an opportunity to show what they can do — pulled off arguably the biggest play of the game. Williams got a screen at the top of the key from rookie Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who then short-rolled before hitting fellow rookie Landry Shamet on the wing for the go-ahead triple. Still, the stunning comeback likely doesn’t figure to change all that much concerning this series, given the massive gap in talent. Yes, the Warriors lost center DeMarcus Cousins to what may be another significant injury, something that could throw them out of rhythm now that the playoffs are underway. Their chances of winning the NBA title — while still better than anyone else’s — are down significantly as a result.4 But the reality is that the Warriors still have a number of other All-Stars to lean on, while the Clippers have none. It may end up being nothing more than a single, historic comeback in what amounts to a five-game series victory for Golden State. But even if that’s all, the outcome may have been enough to prompt some sleepy fans to catch the final quarter the next time they’re weighing whether to get that extra half-hour of rest. Check out our latest NBA predictions. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-warriors-blew-a-31-point-lead/ The first weekend of the NBA playoffs had a bit of something for everyone. Yes, there was a snoozefest or two. But between eight basketball games, Tiger Woods winning the Masters and “Game of Thrones” coming back, maybe a nap was necessary anyway. (Even a couple of the blowouts featured some extracurriculars.) A few games came down to the final seconds, with three lower seeds stepping up and landing statement victories in their series openers. All in all, not a bad start. Let’s take a deeper look at the six playoff series that we expect to be the most interesting going forward. (Sorry to the Clippers-Warriors and Pistons-Bucks.) The young Nets looked sure of themselves. The Sixers looked confused.There were, and maybe are, fair questions to be raised about the Brooklyn Nets. They have very little depth on the inside, which could spell trouble against a dominant big like Joel Embiid. And their offense can be too heavily reliant on All-Star guard D’Angelo Russell. But at least Brooklyn knows what it is, which was more than you could say for the Sixers at times this weekend. For starters, Embiid’s status was known only minutes before the game began Saturday because of his bothersome knee — an availability question that would have required a number of changes to the game plan had he not been able to go. But beyond that, there’s also the issue of cohesion, which the Nets have and the Sixers simply do not. Before Saturday, Philly’s starting five — talented as it might be — had logged just 10 games together since acquiring Tobias Harris in a trade with the Clippers. And honestly, it looked that way for most of Game 1. Embiid, who missed five of the last seven regular-season games, started launching jumpers (which Brooklyn gladly gave him) after drawing a number of fouls on the Nets inside. Ben Simmons and J.J. Redick struggled badly on offense. Jimmy Butler opted to take matters into his own hands (Sixers coach Brett Brown called him “the adult in the room”) and scored a game-high 36 points. All this while Harris looked invisible and uninvolved, scoring just 4 points in 40 minutes of work. Meanwhile, the Nets’ guards had no such questions about their place in the pecking order. Russell struggled early but kept shooting and caught fire in the third period. Spencer Dinwiddie had a very quick first step and repeatedly found his way into the lane — again doing some of his best work this season against Philadelphia. And Caris LeVert continues to look more and more like his old self after returning from his injury in February. Both Dinwiddie and LeVert were integral to a franchise-record 59-point effort from the bench, which the Sixers had no answer for. Keep an eye on this series. The Sixers went all in with a pair of huge trades earlier this season. But that may be the reason that, as we’re midway through April, their opponent has a clearer sense of identity and the upper hand one game into their playoff matchup. Utah’s defense of Harden won’t work — at least not like thisIt was just one game, but very early on — before halftime, even — it seemed clear that Utah was going to have to rethink its defensive strategy for reigning MVP James Harden. The Jazz used a scheme that gave the left-handed Harden an open driving path on the right. The idea here: to take away the dominant hand of perhaps the NBA’s best offensive player, but also to take away his stepback 3-point jumper, maybe his greatest offensive weapon. They weren’t the first team to try this. The top-ranked Milwaukee Bucks’ defense found a ton of success with the idea late last month, by standing far to Harden’s left and slightly behind him. It was a different story for the second-ranked Utah defense, though, which Houston diced to pieces. Why did it work for the Bucks and not the Jazz? One reason was that Milwaukee’s rim protector, Brook Lopez, generally had the discipline to stay tethered to the baseline so that Clint Capela wouldn’t get an easy lob, like he often did on Sunday night, when Jazz center Rudy Gobert stepped up too far. But the other key to Milwaukee’s success was the athleticism and length of the Bucks’ primary and help defenders. Eric Bledsoe and Giannis Antetokounmpo are simply more imposing than Ricky Rubio and Donovan Mitchell or Joe Ingles, giving Harden less confidence that he can either get back to his left hand at the rim or sneak a pass to a teammate standing in the corner. Frankly, Utah wasn’t taking anything away early. By leaving Harden far too much space to navigate, the Jazz had no way of positioning their help defenders in the right spots, allowing The Beard to carve them up by finding both Capela for dunks and P.J. Tucker in the corner. (Tucker shoots almost 40 percent from there.) Rubio told reporters after the game that the Jazz are committed to playing Harden the same way throughout the series. But regardless of how much they improve on that front, they’ll need to be far better — and faster — on offense to have a chance in this series. Excluding a half-court attempt at the end of the third period, Utah scored on seven of its nine transition plays. Getting earlier looks would make life easier, especially for Mitchell, who shot 36 percent against Houston in last year’s series before shooting just 39 percent Sunday, with five turnovers and no assists. In Game 1, the Jazz logged a dismal 25 percent effective field-goal rate when they got inside the last 5 seconds of the clock. Can the poor-shooting Thunder find their range?The post-game excuse “We just missed shots” is usually annoying. It can be read as not giving credit to the opponent for earning a hard-fought victory, and it can also serve as a way to avoid addressing what adjustments might need to be made in the next contest. But in Oklahoma City’s case, there would have been some truth to that claim. The Thunder missed 10 of their 13 wide-open attempts from the arc during their Game 1 loss in Portland. Yet while a lot of teams could use a stat like that to express confidence in simply performing better the next time, it’s worth noting that Oklahoma City … isn’t exactly a team of marksmen. When the Thunder shoot poorly, it’s hard to know whether that’s a sign that things will get better for them or if it’s just Oklahoma City struggling with what it’s seemingly always struggled with. Making matters worse, Paul George — their best shooter and co-star alongside Russell Westbrook — is playing with a troublesome left shoulder, meaning his shot could be affected for the remainder of the playoffs. If there was a bright side offensively, it was that the Thunder eventually found daylight by attacking Portland’s Enes Kanter with a steady diet of pick and rolls — something they can likely go back to in Game 2. But OKC would also be wise to occasionally locate Kanter as he’s going for offensive boards. He killed his former team for 20 points and 18 rebounds, which more than made up for his defensive struggles in the narrow victory. Were the Nuggets simply nervous?Similar to Oklahoma City are the Denver Nuggets, who many — our FiveThirtyEight projection model included — remain skeptical of. A lot of that is rooted in Denver’s inexperience: This is the team’s first trip to the playoffs with this core, which is suddenly facing high expectations as the No. 2 seed in the West. Saturday’s loss, like OKC’s on Sunday, saw Denver miss several open looks when the Nuggets were in striking distance of the Spurs. The teams were neck-and-neck down the stretch, yet Denver somehow missed all eight of its attempts in the second half when taking a shot that would have either tied the game or given the Nuggets the lead. And Jamal Murray, the team’s 22-year-old starting point guard, had an incredibly rough final minute or so in the Game 1 loss. All of that could have been mere coincidence or simply the result of missing shots the team normally makes. But because of noise about the team’s inexperience — especially as Denver is playing perennial playoff club San Antonio — it’s only natural that the questions about nerves will be there. Whatever the case may be, one thing clearly needs to change going forward: Denver star Nikola Jokic cannot finish playoff games with just nine shot attempts. Yes, he managed a triple-double anyway. But when the team’s jumpshots simply aren’t falling, he’s too efficient a scorer not to take matters into his own hands. The Pacers need offensive counters — but even that may not be enoughOutside of the Pistons and Clippers, I feel most pessimistic about the Pacers after Game 1 of their series with Boston. I went in thinking it would be really tough for them to find enough scoring to win a series, and Saturday’s 74-point showing gave me even more doubts. My real concern now, after watching leading scorer Bojan Bogdanovic struggle against the Celtics again — when he did this all regular season, too — is the lack of counters the Pacers seem to have in their arsenal once Boston has snuffed out the initial action. Indiana got next to nothing out of its handoffs to Bogdanovic, which produced just 0.14 points per time they utilized the play, according to Second Spectrum. Jaylen Brown was generally quick enough to recover and get by the screener, and in the instances when he wasn’t, Al Horford was swarming Bogdanovic, often forcing him to give up the ball to a teammate who wasn’t necessarily in a great position to score, either. Similarly, the team — which scored just 8 points in the third quarter — found itself at a disadvantage when it sought to make hay with Wes Matthews post-ups, something we knew would likely be a losing strategy from what we’d seen prior to Saturday (particularly if there’s no secondary action that comes of it). Statistically, Matthews has been one of the NBA’s five least efficient post-up options since he joined the team in February.1 The Celtics deserve credit for playing as well as they did at that end of the floor, particularly without defensive stud Marcus Smart. But if the Pacers can’t develop better second and third options on these plays when they try them, it could be an ugly series for Indiana, which has been putting too much pressure on its defense for a while now. Lowry struggled again, but Orlando’s win was anything but magicThe most surprising win of the weekend to many was the Magic’s road triumph over Toronto, which Orlando sealed with a game-winning triple from D.J. Augustin. In that sequence — before which coach Steve Clifford elected not to call timeout — Augustin called for a screen and roll, knowing he’d get Marc Gasol on a switch. Though Augustin had hit 3 of 4 from the arc for 22 points, Gasol didn’t come out far enough. The shot left the Toronto crowd stunned, which takes a lot at this point, given what they’ve been through for years now. Aside from nailing that play, the Magic did a ton of things right to put themselves in good position beforehand. They bottled up Pascal Siakam in the first half, and while Kawhi Leonard2 was efficient, Aaron Gordon played pretty solid defense on him, making him work for contested shots. Orlando was nearly perfect from the line and drilled almost half of its triples on the day. This was a young Magic club that had the same 15-8 second-half record that Toronto did, while ranking inside the Top 10 on both sides of the floor over that span of time. If you hadn’t watched Orlando play, you might not have seen this coming — but it wasn’t a fluke. And neither was Kyle Lowry’s scoreless, 0-for-7 showing. Aside from the fact that Lowry had several low-scoring games this season — including a four-game streak of single-digit performances — Lowry has also struggled in the first games of playoff series. He’s scored just 33 points combined in playoff-opening Game 1s the past five years. There’s not necessarily anything for the Raptors to panic about yet. They’ve seen this before, even if they had hoped they were past having to witness the early round struggles cropping up again. Check out our latest NBA predictions. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-sixers-might-be-in-trouble/ The first time Tiger Woods won the Masters, becoming the youngest to ever do it, he decimated the field and crumbled in his father’s arms. “We made it,” Earl Woods told his then-21-year-old son. Woods is now 43-going-on-60, still donning his trademark Sunday red. He scaled Augusta National this weekend for the fifth time,1 holding off a number of contenders, some of whom grew up watching him transcend the sport, on the back nine. What once seemed inevitable was anything but just a few years ago, as Woods battled surgeries and off-the-course maladies. “Maybe the son of golf has returned,” broadcaster and former Masters champion Nick Faldo said as Woods left the 17th green. It had been 3,954 days since Woods last won a major. Somehow, it felt even longer. Winning a major is an accomplishment reserved for a select few, but for a 10-year span beginning in the late 1990s, it was as synonymous with Woods as audacious drives and timely putts. This didn’t come out of nowhere. Bettors knew there were signs that he was putting it all back together. But it was also known that this might have been the best remaining shot he had at summiting Augusta. Suddenly a man who went five years without a win on tour has two in the past seven months. His turn-back-the-clock performance materialized when it mattered most. He now has three top-10s in his past four majors. He did it by playing Amen Corner at one-under on the final day, while the other two members of the final pairing played it one–over. Just as he has previously, Woods bashed the par-5s (-8), going three-under on them over the final round. He approached the 15th hole in a three-way tie with Xander Schauffele and Francesco Molinari, detonated his tee shot and immediately began walking toward the hole as it soared through the sky. He two-putted his way to a birdie and an outright lead and never looked back. The last time Woods won the Masters, his chip-in on the No. 16 green provided the signature highlight of his career. Playing the same hole 14 years later, Woods added to his legend. He struck an 8-iron to the center of the green, spinning it back down the hill where it stopped 4 feet from the pin. As pandemonium played around Woods at the tee box, a replay showed him at-ease cooing “come on” to his ball at it inched closer to history.
That wasn’t the only time precision paid off for Woods on par-3s, which he played four-under for the tournament, the best four-round score among his five wins. When Molinari and Tony Finau found the water on No. 12, it was Woods who found the green and two-putted his way to par. Nine players entered the weekend within a shot of the lead, the most in Masters history. That historically congested scoreboard continued Sunday, as each hole seemed to carry implications for the top 15 in the standings. The win marked the first time Woods came from behind in the final round to win a major. Most unbelievable was the winding path Woods had to take just to get back to Butler Cabin. His career first began to go off the rails with a knee injury that cost him half of the 2008 season, and although he played well in 2009 (leading the PGA Tour in money won), he also blew a Sunday major lead for the first time ever when Y.E. Yang overtook him at the PGA Championship. Then came The Accident, which brought to light an ongoing pattern of behavior that tore apart Woods’s personal life. Even that may not have been the low point, however. Woods only dropped to 52nd in the World during his post-scandal struggles — and eventually fought back to reclaim the No. 1 ranking in 2013, winning five events and once again taking the money title. But in the years that followed, Woods would play so poorly and infrequently that he dropped to 674th in the world in early 2017. Such a pronounced valley in performance (particularly relative to the rest of his career) led plenty of pundits to write off Woods’s chances of ever winning another major. Those takes look scorching hot in retrospect, but it’s difficult to find an established veteran player whose ranking dropped outside the top 600 and who managed to claw back to win a major. Then again, Woods is one of the greatest pure talents in golf history — if anyone was going to rewrite that record book and make such an astonishing comeback, it would be him. Age comes for everyone, of course. And the aging curve for golfers heads south well before 45, which will be here for Woods in no time. But even as younger players increasingly dominate the sport, there’s still room for perhaps the greatest golfer of all time to enhance his legacy. It was Woods’s first Masters victory in 14 years, snapping Gary Player’s all-time record of 13 years between wins, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The win is Woods’s 81st on the PGA Tour, one shy of Sam Snead’s all-time record. It’s also his 15th major championship, three shy of Jack Nicklaus’s record. When asked about Woods’s rekindled pursuit of history on Sunday, Nicklaus said, “he’s got me shaking in my boots.” Golf’s prodigal son has officially returned, and what happens next is not known. But no one will again underestimate what Tiger Woods is capable of on a golf course. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tiger-woods-completes-his-staggering-career-comeback/ On Feb. 13, 25-year-old ace Aaron Nola agreed to a four-year contract extension with the Phillies. A day later, 26-year-old Max Kepler and 25-year-old Jorge Polanco agreed to five-year extensions with the Twins. The following day, Yankees ace Luis Severino, who turned 25 a few days later, signed a pact with the Yankees. The deals marked the beginning of a historic spree of extensions. From mid-February through Thursday, 27 players had agreed to extensions worth a total of 132 years and $2.045 billion, according to data from the MLBTradeRumors.com extension database analyzed by FiveThirtyEight. There has never been a flurry of activity like this: March represented the most dollars ($1.126 billion) and years (58) awarded in contract extensions in a one-month period that we’ve seen. While veteran stars including Nolan Arenado, Chris Sale and Mike Trout all signed massive extensions this spring, players with little major league experience made up the majority of the deals. Fourteen of the players — including reigning NL Rookie of the Year Ronald Acuna, who signed a $100 million extension last week, and fellow Brave Ozzie Albies, who signed a much-discussed extension Thursday — were so early in their careers that they were not yet eligible for salary arbitration, which generally requires a player to accrue three years of major league experience before becoming eligible to negotiate for significant raises. Eight others were at least a year shy of six years of service time, the amount required to become a free agent. In 2019 to date, players signing extensions have forfeited 51 combined arbitration-eligible seasons and 69 future free-agent years. The deals also include club options covering 25 seasons. Buying out the arbitration and free agency years of younger stars for the purpose of controlling and reducing payroll costs was a practice pioneered in the early 1990s by John Hart, then general manager of the Cleveland Indians, who watched great Pittsburgh Pirates teams broken up prematurely because of escalating player costs. While extensions had since become common practice, the activity had slowed in recent seasons as young stars like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado seemed intent on hitting the open market as soon as possible. So what’s behind the extension surge this spring? Why are MLB teams intent on avoiding arbitration and locking up young stars? It may be because arbitration wasn’t working to begin with — at least from the perspective of the teams. Under arbitration, a player and a team each puts forth a salary amount to a panel of arbitrators, who then must decide on one of the two figures. In the past two offseasons, players have totaled more wins than losses in arbitration cases against the owners — the first time that’s happened in back-to-back years since 1989-90. Through 2015, owners had won 58 percent of all arbitration cases, according to Forbes. This winter, Gerrit Cole ($13.5 million) and Trevor Bauer ($13 million) were among the six players to win their cases against their clubs. Arenado and the Rockies avoided a hearing, which is common practice, by signing a one-year, $26 million deal — a record for a player eligible for arbitration. “We’re going to be seeing $20 [million] and $30 million salaries regularly in arbitration,” one agent told us. “They [MLB teams] are going to try and push back on that. How do you do it? You pull those guys out of the system. “Every time the teams see a seam in the defense, they exploit the shit out of it and they are really good at it,” the agent said. “They are capitalizing on good players they have been watching through the draft, through the minor leagues, and who are represented largely by unqualified or under-qualified agents. The teams have scouting reports on agents the very same way they have on opposing hitters and pitchers. They have heat maps. They know our tendencies, they know who will go to arbitration, who won’t, whose business is failing and they need to vest their fees.” The agent noted that teams look at arbitration as an important battleground and have scores of analysts that compile data for these cases. By taking players out of the arbitration system, the teams not only cap earning potential for those players, but they also reduce salary comps for other players. Agent Scott Boras described the MLB’s aggressive approach with young players and extensions this spring as “snuff contracts” — or an attempt to snuff out future markets. Greg Dreyfuss, an associate general counsel for the union and the MLBPA’s director of analytics and baseball operations, also sees a link between the wave of extensions and players’ recent arbitration wins. The union and players have closed the data gap between clubs in making their cases. Dreyfuss says agents and players are educated on the market. While MLB payrolls remain stagnant, the records for largest arbitration salaries have been set in the past two years. The average salary of an arbitration-eligible player in 2011 was $2.73 million; that increased to $3.97 million this year, a 45 percent jump, according to analysis of MLBTradeRumors.com data. The total dollars and players in the arbitration system has jumped from $393.6 million and 144 players in 2011 to $789.6 million spread among 199 players this last offseason, growth in part due to the game trending younger — meaning that there will be more 20-somethings entering arbitration. “Nine of the 10 largest one-year contracts in the history of salary arbitration have come in the past two years, and overall, arbitration salaries have kept pace with the rise in industry revenue over a 10-year period,” Dreyfuss told FiveThirtyEight. “Recently a lot of really good players in that process have stood up and said, ‘No, I’m not just going to take what you give me,’ and they’ve fought for what they consider a fair salary. So, I do think there’s some correlation between players succeeding in arbitration and clubs wanting to take players out of that process.” While spending efficiently is always a goal for teams, how these clubs have handled free agency in recent winters may be a motivating factor in some players’ decision-making. Even Trout, the game’s best player, expressed reservations about entering the open market when he signed a record extension (which is also a bargain for the Angels) this spring. “I kind of saw what Bryce and Manny went through and it drew a red flag for me,” Trout said. “I talked to Manny and Bryce. It was a tough couple months in the offseason. They put it perspective in my mind.” Not all extensions are club-friendly. Drefyuss notes that there have also been a number of veteran players who have agreed to extensions that will pay them lucratively into their mid-30s. “Players agree to extensions for a variety of valid reasons, and there are any number of factors involved in their decisions,” he said One key decision a player must make when considering an extension is how much financial upside to concede for the sake of job and financial security. In dealing with future risk, teams face less downside than individual players do. While a team can absorb a poor contract, a player is one injury or decline in performance away from having his career trajectory significantly altered. Acuna and Albies look like future superstars, yet they signed deals that could potentially cost them nine figures in future earnings. White Sox top prospect Eloy Jimenez signed a six-year deal with two club options before he ever took a major league at-bat, limiting his financial upside. Those are the types of club-friendly deals that some on the players’ side have criticized. There is also an argument that individual players ought to consider not just themselves but their peers and future major leaguers when considering a long-term deal — and that they should wait until they are at least arbitration-eligible. “If guys aren’t going through the system, if all the young [stars] are signing before they get there, then we are not going to have those posts to hold on to,” the agent said of salary comps. “I don’t think this is teams trying to screw with the free agent market. They are trying to take the best young players out of the arbitration system.” Toronto outfielder Randal Grichuk, 27, said the Blue Jays began negotiating with him last month during spring training in the midst of the extension spree. He eventually signed a five-year, $52 million extension. “The way I looked at it was taking guaranteed money, setting my family up for life, it’s hard to turn down,” Grichuk said. “If I leave a few dollars on the table now, I’m going to just be finishing my 31 season [after his deal expires] going into free agency. If I produce well, I’m going to be young enough to make some more. And if I’m not able to, whether due to injuries, failures, anything happens, I’m still set for life.” Grichuk was into his arbitration years when he signed his extension, but he didn’t take issue with young stars like Acuna opting for financial security earlier along in the process. “He could have probably waited and got more, but it’s tough to talk negatively about a guy who just got $100 million and is set for life,” Grichuk said. “What’s the difference between $100 [million] and $200 [million]? His kids’ kids’ kids won’t have to work? … I think it’s one of those things where his life changes completely.” Neil Paine contributed research from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whats-behind-mlbs-bizarre-spike-in-contract-extensions/ neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): Now that every NBA team has played Game 82 of the regular season, we can finally get to the real business at hand: The playoffs. Let’s start with the Eastern Conference, where the Milwaukee Bucks earned the franchise’s first top seed since the league adopted the 16-team playoff format in 1984. What do we think about the big picture in the East? The No. 1 Bucks and No. 2 Raptors were the most dominant during the regular season, but seeds 3 and 4 (Philadelphia and Boston) have as much talent as anybody in the conference on paper. Who do you think should have the edge and why? natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I’m going to go ahead and agree with our algorithm that there’s a big gap between the top two (Milwaukee and Toronto) and No. 3 and 4 (Philly and Boston). Milwaukee and Toronto were a LOT better in the regular season. I agree that Philly might have as much talent on paper, but they didn’t really get it together. I’m not sure you can say that about Boston, especially with Marcus Smart out. chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): Yeah. I spent some time around the Sixers over the past week, and Brett Brown admits what Nate just said: That the Sixers have an enormous amount of talent on paper, but he almost would’ve preferred to have less rest if it meant having more cohesion with that group. The Marcus Smart injury could end up being really problematic for the Celtics for a couple reasons, too — we don’t know exactly how much time he’ll miss, but it could even be a bad sign in this series vs. Indiana. Smart would have been the guy guarding Bojan Bogdanovic, who’s essentially taken over as the Pacers’ top gun since Victor Oladipo went down with injury. Bogdanovic struggled against Smart all season, and his worst numbers of the year were against Boston because of it. But now, I assume they’ll go to Jaylen Brown to defend him, and that hasn’t worked well at all in those instances. tchow (Tony Chow, video producer): Our predictions give the Celtics a 79 percent chance to advance. Even with the Oladipo injury for the Pacers, that still seems … high? chris.herring: Probably a little high, yeah. Especially now, without Smart. natesilver: I mean, I think people tend to underestimate how little luck there is in a seven-game series. The better team tends to win out, especially if it has home-court advantage. chris.herring: I tend to think the Pacers are The Little Engine That Could. They play very hard … but that will probably only get them so far. natesilver: For what it’s worth, our algorithm is giving Boston some credit for being more talented “on paper” than they played like during the regular season. Jayson Tatum is probably a better player going forward than what he showed this season, for instance. Gordon Hayward is obviously in a different category, but maybe him, too. Boston also had the point differential that you’d associate with a 52-win team instead of a 49-win team, which is not huge, but it’s something. chris.herring: Yeah. Hayward has come on really nicely as of late, including a 9-of-9 game vs. Indiana last week. If he’s getting back to his old self, it could be tough for Indiana. natesilver: It does seem, though, that it’s a team with only one real star-level talent right now, and Kyrie Irving seems pretty checked out. That’s subjective, I know, but they have a pretty big hill to climb — having to win three road series against three VERY good teams (likely Milwaukee, Toronto and Golden State, in that order) even if they get past Indiana. chris.herring: I’ll be honest: I’m not very amped about the East’s first round at all. But that second round will probably be eons better than the West’s conference final. neil: Yeah, it sounds from this like Boston-Indiana is the first-round series that has caught your attention the most. But that might be by default. chris.herring: I think Philly-Brooklyn could be somewhat interesting. It doesn’t sound like an absolute given that Joel Embiid will play Game 1. The Nets are essentially playing with house money, and though they’ve struggled as of late, they had a harder end-of-season schedule than the other teams fighting their way into the playoffs. natesilver: The Nets are kind of a buzzy team. But Philly, maybe in contrast to a Marcus Smart-less Boston, has enough talent that maybe they can be slightly subpar and still win fairly easily. chris.herring: Yeah. I don’t expect much from Brooklyn, but I could see them making things interesting because of the limited time the Sixers have had together. Other than that — and some slight interest in how Boston looks without Smart/what it means for Indiana — I wish I could just simulate the East’s first round like a video game or something neil: Haha. Let’s just play it out in NBA 2K. chris.herring: Maybe that isn’t fair to Orlando, though. They’ve been good for a decent amount of time now. neil: They’ve been on fire (11-2) since mid-March. chris.herring: I just feel like it ultimately won’t matter against a club like Toronto. natesilver: I also think Philly has more flip-the-switch potential than Boston. Maybe Jimmy Butler accepts his role as what’s essentially a third fiddle on offense and plays dominant defense and starts hitting 3s again. Maybe they treat the playoffs as a fun eight-week road trip instead of worrying too much about how the team is constructed in the future. tchow: Just tell me what needs to happen to get Sixers vs. Bucks in the Eastern Conference finals. neil: Well, the Raptors would have to lose in the second round AGAIN. How soul crushing would that be for that franchise? This was sorta supposed to be their year after LeBron left the East. (Especially after adding Kawhi Leonard.) chris.herring: I don’t know how I feel yet about the Sixers-Raptors series, assuming it happens. But I think the Bucks should be favored against everyone, honestly. I think everybody has downplayed them, even as they’ve had this unbelievable season, with the likely MVP and coach of the year. natesilver: The Raptors somehow won 58 games with Kawhi only playing 60. That’s seriously impressive. chris.herring: I don’t know if it’s a small-market thing. Or if it’s just that people seem to be a year late on everything. It is impressive! At the same time, they won 59 last year without him. So I’m more impressed by the Bucks essentially having the same cast and transforming into what they are now. I don’t know. Maybe it’s simply Milwaukee’s newness that I’m taken by. neil: Are we also maybe holding Toronto’s playoff track record against them? (Even if it’s a relatively new version of that team this season?) chris.herring: Nah. I’m not. Kawhi is such a different player than DeMar DeRozan, who had a game that didn’t translate all that well to postseason. Also, Pascal Siakam has improved by leaps and bounds. You could ignore him before on defense, and now that’s tantamount to having a death wish. natesilver: They also have one of the two real stars in the East that’s won a ring before (Kawhi, with Kyrie being the other). Which I know sounds like boilerplate sports radio talk, but our research has found that playoff experience is actually fairly predictive. chris.herring: I think Toronto fans have wanted to believe their team was different for a couple years now. Almost like that “Shawshank Redemption” scene where Red keeps going to the parole hearing and saying he’s a changed man, ready to rejoin society. But this time, the Raptors are different. Kawhi alone would have made them that way, but Siakam is a different player. As is Lowry, who hasn’t quite looked himself at all times. But has the experience, and has a better roster around him. natesilver: Our algorithm also thinks that all six of their top rotation guys are above-average defensively. So that’s likely to keep them in every game unless they get mentally checked out. Which, I don’t know. I wouldn’t totally rule out the possibility that they take a rough loss in a Game 1 or 2 somewhere and start panicking, and Kawhi starts thinking about how nice the Clippers could look next year with him in L.A. But on balance, I think I’m on the side that says people are reading too much into the Raptors’ past playoff failures. It’s a different team this year, and there’s no LeBron. chris.herring: Like the Munchkins when they realize the Wicked Witch is dead. Why do I keep using these movie references? What is wrong with me? neil: LOL. tchow: As of right now though, our model actually favors Toronto (slightly) over the Bucks to make the Finals (46 percent vs. 42 percent). Toronto fans have to be happy to see that. neil: Do you guys agree? natesilver: Yeah, that surprised me a bit. But Toronto has more playoff experience and Milwaukee has some injury issues. tchow: I guess it’ll go a long way in the “playoff experience” argument to see how far a team like the Bucks go this year after that seven-game series last season against Boston. I have a hard time betting against them in the East though. natesilver: On the flip side, Giannis Antetokounmpo is presumably going to start playing 37-38 minutes a game now after only playing 32.8 minutes in the regular season. That actually makes a pretty big difference. chris.herring: That surprises me, but only a little. Their records aren’t that far off. The Raptors have played Kawhi a lot fewer games than Giannis. What I do think will be key at some point, which we haven’t talked about yet, is the Bucks’ need to get back to full strength. They’ve been without Malcolm Brogdon, and Tony Snell has missed time, too. It doesn’t matter in a round 1 matchup. But it comes into play in a very big way in the following two rounds, should they get that far. natesilver: I do wonder if Milwaukee’s whole floor spacing thing will work slightly less well in the playoffs. If you can contain Giannis — obviously not at all easy — there really isn’t a second iso-ball scorer on the whole roster. Maybe Eric Bledsoe, I guess. chris.herring: I just don’t know how it’s done natesilver: Containing Giannis you mean? chris.herring: Before, there wasn’t much trust or belief. But now, you kind of either have to help in the paint against him, or leave open someone like Brook Lopez, who will gladly shoot a triple. There were screenshots last postseason of four Celtics standing in the paint at one time to stop him, because Milwaukee wasn’t trained to score outside of his drives to the basket. Now, even Giannis will pull 3s every now and then, just to keep defenses honest. Bledsoe’s had a nice year. Lopez is there, but wasn’t before.
natesilver: I guess I’m saying a team like Toronto that is quick (at least with certain lineups) and can switch a lot, maybe they can contest that Lopez 3. Or get a few steals when the Bucks telegraph their intentions too much. tchow: Nikola Mirotic also may be back in time for Game 1. So yeah, the Bucks will have shooters. neil: And for what it’s worth (maybe something?), Milwaukee beat Toronto in three of their four regular season matchups. Those games were also before all the little upgrades Milwaukee made around the trade deadline. But we’ll have to see how the Bucks look at full strength and if they and the Raptors can even make it all the way to the Conference Finals to face each other. Let’s move on to the West, where — here’s a surprise — the Golden State Warriors are the No. 1 seed, for the fourth time in five years. Our model currently gives the Warriors a commanding 78 percent chance of winning the conference (and a 60 percent chance of winning the NBA title). On the one hand, that is amazingly high, but does it sound right to you guys? natesilver: The West playoffs feel a lot less climactic to me now that the Rockets wound up on the same side of the bracket as Golden State. chris.herring: It sounds about right to me. The one side of the West bracket is the equivalent of Michigan State and Duke being in the same region. natesilver: Utah is also a pretty rough first-round matchup for Houston. Rudy Gobert is going to make it much harder for James Harden to get to the rim. neil: Well, Chris, we were talking the other day this idea that the Rockets may have actually wanted the No. 4 seed so that they’d face the Warriors sooner. Can you explain a little about what you meant there? chris.herring: I fully believe the Rockets may be happy with this setup. At this point, they’re probably of the opinion that they can beat anyone other than GSW (and maybe them, too). Utah isn’t a pushover at all. It’s kind of an amazing first-round matchup that, in most years would be at least a second-round matchup, and in a post-Warriors universe, maybe even a conference finals. But that said, Houston beat Utah last year. And they did it by neutralizing what the Jazz do best: Take away threes and the rim. They forced the Rockets to take midrange shots, which they basically view as evil. But the Rockets did that — Chris Paul is a midrange specialist and went off for 40 points one game — and were able to win. So if the Rockets can get by Utah again, having the Warriors in round 2 instead of the Western Conference finals might be beneficial. Just so Paul and Harden aren’t exhausted or injured like they were by round 3 last season, when they played the Warriors. natesilver: Yeah, I think Chris Paul is key in that series. Utah’s pretty optimally designed to curb Harden as much as you can curb him, but CP3 is a big problem for them. natesilver: Overall, though, I think if I’m Houston, I’d rather have a hope-and-a-prayer that someone else knocks Golden State out before they reach the finals. Or that someone on the Warriors gets hurt. chris.herring: Yeah. They’d never admit it out loud, but the potential theory that they want GSW early is fascinating to me. If your line of thought is that you’re almost certainly gonna have to go through them anyway, might as well do it before you’re too spent to have a chance. neil: Right, because fatigue seemed like a big issue for them by the Western Conference finals last year. chris.herring: Golden State doesn’t fear anyone, but I think they would privately acknowledge that they see Houston as the only team that, in optimal circumstances, could beat them natesilver: It could make the Western Conference finals pretty boring though. Our model says there’s a 93 percent chance the Warriors win the WCF (!) conditional on reaching them. chris.herring: Yeah. That’s why I keep saying the semifinals are gonna be the best round this year. Especially if Houston-Golden State is the matchup, along with those East series. tchow: Hey kudos to Oklahoma City for avoiding Golden State AND Denver AND Houston. Actually, OKC vs. Portland is the only series in the entire playoffs where the lower seed is favored according to our model. We give the Thunder a 78 percent chance of advancing. natesilver: OKC and Denver saw their championship odds improve when Houston wound up in the No. 4 seed, and it’s mostly because of the parlay that Houston beats Golden State (possible) and then THEY beat Houston (also possible). I’m not sure that Denver would have any chance against Golden State in a seven-game series, however. chris.herring: I feel bad that I don’t believe in Denver, given how well they played all year, with injuries, and with so many young guys on that roster. neil: Is Denver the weirdest No. 2 seed we’ve seen in recent memory? They didn’t even make the playoffs last year, albeit with 46 wins. chris.herring: Also, every single time Denver plays Golden State, it feels very much like GSW goes out of its way to show how easily they can dominate the Nuggets when they want to. Basically to show that a playoff series could get embarrassing if Golden State felt like imposing its will. natesilver: The Nuggets benefited a lot from their depth in the regular season — that’s why they battled so well through injuries — but depth doesn’t mean much in the playoffs. chris.herring: Their relative inexperience in the playoffs concerns me maybe more than it should. natesilver: It’s a pretty weird roster, and I think the Nuggets have some offseason work to do to turn a couple of their many, many league-average players into another really good player, especially someone who can play out on the wing. chris.herring: Part of me feels like they simply may not have another gear. Almost like those Tom Thibodeau teams. Because they’re young, perhaps they don’t know to pace themselves. And how could they? They missed the playoffs in the final game of the season last year. But the fact that Golden State just runs them out of the building whenever they play very much feels like an experienced team versus one that isn’t and needs some playoff seasoning so that they’re ready for the next time. neil: They feel destined to become another poster child for the difference between what wins in the regular season and the playoffs, for all the reasons you guys mentioned. But at least they do have a legit star in Nikola Jokic. natesilver: Denver does have a pretty big home-court advantage because of the altitude. So that they got the No. 2 seed is actually pretty relevant. chris.herring: That’s true. I at least like that they aren’t reliant on the altitude anymore to win games. (Although those teams that played at a breakneck pace under George Karl — and Doug Moe before that — were pretty fun to watch.) neil: Good point. They were an NBA-best 34-7 at home this season, and they are in that relatively lesser bottom section of the bracket. natesilver: I mean, we have the Nuggets with a 53 percent chance of reaching the Western Conference finals … and a 6 percent chance of reaching the NBA Finals. That tells you a lot right there. chris.herring: What else are you all interested to see in the West? Any hope whatsoever for Portland, despite the injury to Jusuf Nurkic? neil: Portland is another team with a lot to prove after that unexpected first-round sweep vs. the Pelicans (remember THEM?) last year. But OKC is a very tough draw. chris.herring: Portland got swept this year by OKC. Our projection model is right to not trust them. And Nurkic not being there is a killer. They had put together a really, really nice run before his injury, and perhaps could have made things interesting. tchow: I really feel for Portland fans. So many “what ifs” due to injury, and they always seem to happen when it looks like they’re on the cusp of putting it all together. natesilver: Pretty unusual to have a No. 6 seed be better than a 3 to 1 favorite (OKC is 78 percent to win the series, according to our model), but I think I agree, too. chris.herring: Yeah. There’s isn’t much to love about Portland’s chances natesilver: The Thunder are also the team that I’d fear the most if I were Golden State after Houston. chris.herring: Damian Lillard went nuts during the regular season against the Thunder. Had a 50-point game and averaged better than 30 a night against them, yet they dropped all four meetings. tchow: Is CJ McCollum going to be back for this first round? chris.herring: Yeah. McCollum is back. But he had a true shooting percentage of 46 against OKC, his worst mark of any opponent out West that he played at least three times. natesilver: Tenacious defense + Paul George (especially if he can get back to his midseason form) is a formula that gives you a puncher’s chance against any opponent. chris.herring: I don’t trust OKC yet. Some of that is Russell Westbrook’s tendencies being all over the place at times. Some of it is George not having played the way he was playing earlier in the year (still not sure his shoulder is completely right at times). Their defense, which is one of the best in the league, has been merely average since the break. They don’t have enough shooting. But their top-level talent is better than anybody else’s, outside of Houston and GSW. And that ultimately matters. And their side of the bracket is amazing. natesilver: Jerami Grant shot 39 percent from three this year, although that’s likely a fluke (he’s 33 percent careerwise). chris.herring: He’s been a big bright spot for them. natesilver: If they had another wing that was a true 39-40 percent 3-point shooter, that would make a ton of difference. neil: OK, so to wrap things up, let’s look at the big picture for the title as it runs through Golden State (like always). If we each had to put together a short list of teams — from either conference — who could beat the Warriors in these playoffs, how many teams would be on it and who are they? Mine might be two: Rockets and Bucks. natesilver: Our algorithm feels strongly that the list is EXACTLY three teams long: Milwaukee, Toronto and Houston. tchow: Bucks natesilver: I guess people — or Neil and Tony, anyway — have trouble envisioning the Raptors doing it. tchow: Sorry, Toronto. natesilver: And to be clear, the Raptors would be big underdogs. Like 3:1 underdogs, per our model, despite having home-court advantage. tchow: Another way to ask that question, Nate, as a fan of gambling, Warriors have a 60 percent chance of winning another title. Would you bet on the field? natesilver: No. I think that’s a pretty fair price. And it’s pretty close to the Vegas odds, I think. chris.herring: Yeah. I feel much better about Milwaukee, just based off their season, analytics and star power than anyone else. But I don’t think Toronto would match up poorly at all with Golden State. They’d have guys who could credibly guard Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and have enough offense of their own to make things interesting. Boston seemed like a good bet to get there in preseason, but I don’t trust them to accomplish that without Smart being healthy., a And without them putting together a solid string of performances, I still ultimately think it’s the Warriors winning it all again. But I hope someone at least gives them a competitive series, be it Houston, Milwaukee (Toronto?) or both. tchow: That’s all folks! from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nba-playoffs-are-here-and-we-have-thoughts/ Graphics by Ella Koeze LeBron James is making a sequel to the beloved 1990s film “Space Jam,” but we heard he’s been having a little trouble finding the right co-stars among his fellow NBA standouts. LeBron, we’re here to help. We used our CARMELO projection system to figure out which modern NBA players are the on-court dopplegangers of the original film’s supporting cast: Charles Barkley, Shawn Bradley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson and Muggsy Bogues. That lineup wasn’t enough to beat the Looney Tunes the first time, but maybe a modern iteration could. The villainous Mr. Swackhammer now has a guide for whose powers to steal in order to run it back against LeBron. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hey-lebron-heres-who-to-cast-in-space-jam-2/ The 2018-19 NBA regular season is finally over, and the playoffs start this weekend. In anticipation — and in honor of our first season tracking the league with our new depth-chart forecasts — we wanted to share visualizations of the most interesting storylines of the regular season. These charts trace our projected seedings as the schedule progressed, giving a sense of the ebb and flow of each team’s place in the conference pecking order. We’ll begin with one of the most shocking outcomes of the regular season: the game’s signature star missing the playoffs. LeBron’s Lakers fall shortThe biggest story of the NBA offseason in 2018 was where future Hall of Fame free-agent LeBron James would take his talents. And when James decided to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Los Angeles Lakers, the expectations were that L.A. would return to the playoffs after a franchise-record five-season absence. James’s new supporting cast looked odd, but it seemed at least good enough to be competitive among the middle of the Western Conference pack. Instead, however, James was injured on Christmas Day and missed 18 games at midseason, while his veteran teammates struggled and the young would-be stars around him never emerged. Add in the drama of failed Anthony Davis trade talks, a brutal March slide (despite LeBron’s vow to activate “playoff mode” early) and Magic Johnson’s abrupt resignation as team president this week, and King James’s first season with the Lakers had anything but a Hollywood ending.
The Pelicans and Wizards take long, sad slidesBoth the Washington Wizards and the New Orleans Pelicans entered the 2019 season with measured postseason optimism. In the West, the Pelicans lost center DeMarcus Cousins to the Warriors over the summer, but they hadn’t seemed to miss him during their run to the second round of last year’s playoffs anyway. And in the East, the Wizards played the top seeded Raptors tough for six first-round games and were looking forward to better health from hobbled stars John Wall and Otto Porter in 2019. But each situation turned extremely sour in a hurry. Washington started the season 2-9 and never recovered, losing Wall to a season-ending injury at midyear, trading Porter to Chicago before the deadline and falling out of the postseason picture for good by the middle of February. As for New Orleans, its disappointing record hovered a few games below .500 around New Year’s. But what truly wrecked its season was a January injury to Davis and, of course, Davis’s public request to be traded. The resulting soap opera — which involved accusations of tampering against the Lakers, counteraccusations that the Pelicans used trade talks to sabotage L.A.’s season and no actual Davis trade — left the Pelicans sitting their disgruntled star on and off down the stretch as the team went 10-20 from February onward. Now the Wizards and Pelicans must both piece themselves back together and figure out where to go from here.
The Kings go on a valiant runOne of the best stories of the season was the unexpected rise of the Sacramento Kings, to whom we assigned an NBA co-worst 23 wins in preseason. Sacramento defied that prediction by spending most of the year either above or around .500; they finished the season with 39 wins, easily making them this season’s most impressive overachiever. The breakout was fueled by huge improvements from most of the team’s starters, including second-year guard De’Aaron Fox’s ascent from one of the NBA’s worst players last season to one of its most promising youngsters this year. A 9-16 skid after the All-Star break left the Kings shy of the postseason in the end, but they have something encouraging to build off of for the first time in a very long while.
The Clippers ride out a bumpy playoff pathProjected in the preseason for 33 wins after losing free-agent center DeAndre Jordan (on top of trading away Blake Griffin late last season), the Los Angeles Clippers were not supposed to be major players in the Western Conference playoff chase this year. Instead, the team has come together around an unsung cast of veterans (Pat Beverley, Danilo Gallinari, Lou Williams) and young players (Montrezl Harrell, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) alike. It wasn’t always smooth sailing — we projected the Clippers out of the postseason until late November, after which point they rose into (and dipped out of) the playoff picture a few times. But even after trading away its best player, Tobias Harris, at the deadline, L.A. maintained its grip on the West’s final playoff slot, finishing the regular season with 14 wins in its final 19 games.
The Magic, Heat and Hornets clash in the EastRaise your hand if you thought that the Orlando Magic would be in the thick of a late-season playoff race — much less that they’d actually come out on top. Orlando hadn’t visited the postseason since 2012, and our preliminary forecast gave the Magic just a 19 percent chance of snapping that streak this year. But after a mediocre 20-31 start to the season, Aaron Gordon, Nikola Vucevic and Co. saw their playoff bid pick up serious steam with a 22-9 finish that locked them in a stretch-run Southeast Division battle with the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat. Although our model liked the Heat best out of that trio around midseason, an up-and-down second half — punctuated by losses in six of its final nine games — left Miami outside the playoffs. And while the Hornets looked like the best bet in early February, a 5-13 stretch leading into late March also sent their odds tumbling. That was all the opening the suddenly red-hot Magic needed to swoop in and usurp both rivals — even leapfrogging the Pistons to grab the No. 7 seed in the East.
The Nuggets rise in the WestThe 2017-18 Denver Nuggets were one of the hardest-luck nonplayoff teams ever, finishing one game out of the postseason despite a 46-36 record. Our projections thought the team would have a better go of things this year, but even they couldn’t foresee Denver’s rise to the No. 2 seed in the West. The Rockets stumbled out of the gate (before James Harden’s incredible 30-point streak), leaving an opening for another team. So Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets seized that opportunity: They tangled with the Jazz and then the Thunder for second billing behind Golden State, eventually holding off all challengers with a 15-10 record after the All-Star break. The upside for Denver? It can now avoid the Warriors (or Rockets) until a potential Western Conference finals showdown.
The Bucks and Raptors jockey for No. 1After finally earning the No. 1 seed in the East, last year was supposed to be the Toronto Raptors’ year. Then they were promptly humiliated (again) by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. So when LeBron left the East, this would surely be Toronto’s time. Right? It looked that way early, with Kawhi Leonard leading the new-look Raps to the East’s best record by Christmas. But the Milwaukee Bucks went 37-12 from that point on, spurred by Giannis Antetokounmpo’s MVP-caliber performance. Milwaukee overtook Toronto as our projected Eastern Conference top seed in early February and hasn’t looked back — though the teams could still be on a playoff collision course, provided that Philly and Boston (or maybe Indiana) don’t have ideas of their own.
The Warriors are who we thought they wereMost of the other charts here have a lot of fun ups and downs … but not this one. The Warriors started as the Western Conference favorite and never deviated from it, creating the only perfectly flat line in our playoff-seed charts this season. Golden State wasn’t quite as dominant in terms of winning percentage as it was in other recent seasons, but we can chalk that up to the Warriors pacing themselves as much as anything else. Our CARMELO ratings continue to think Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and friends are far and away the best team in the league at full strength (even though our classic Elo model only ranks them fourth) and give them a staggering 78 percent chance of making the Finals, with a 60 percent chance of winning their fourth championship in five years. And maybe that’s a fitting way to end our regular-season roundup. Although there were a lot of fun storylines and battles deeper in the standings — and although the playoffs should contain some exciting subplots of their own — it’s pretty likely that the end result of this season will be basically the same as it’s been most recent seasons: another Golden State title. Love them or hate them, the Warriors are already one of the top dynasties in basketball history, so good that all of the jockeying for seeds and playoff positioning might give way to a single flat line of dominance engulfing another NBA season. Jay Boice contributed research. Check out our latest NBA predictions. from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-story-of-the-nba-regular-season-in-9-charts/ |
Jody Edgar
Hi I am Jody Edgar,33 years old from Alabama state,USA.working as female run sports blog and girl’s guide to game day. ArchivesNo Archives Categories |