Predicting the Unpredictable

Let's look back at some recent history to figure out the top four seeds in each conference.

Good morning! Picking up where we left on Monday, today I’m going to examine some recent betting odds and see if they can tell us anything about what to expect this season.

Predicting the Unpredictable

Before we begin to look forward to the 79th NBA season, it’s helpful to look back and see what the recent past tells us about what might happen next.

The NBA, more than any sport, has traditionally been a predictable endeavor. Point me to a team with one of the three or four best players and I’ll point you to the eventual champion.

But some traditions exist to be broken. As I wrote earlier this week, the last decade of NBA history is littered with title teams that weren’t favorites going into the season. That relative unpredictability extends to our preseason predictions for contenders and pretenders as well.

If we go by preseason over/under odds, not since the 2018-19 season have the four predicted top seeds in a conference finished the season with the four best records in that conference. That year, the 2018-19 Celtics had a preseason over/under of 59.0 wins, followed by the Raptors at 55.5, the Sixers at 53.5, and in a distant fourth, the Bucks at 48.0 wins. The final standings saw those same Bucks win 60 games, followed by Toronto with 58, Philly with 51, and Boston barely holding off Indiana with 49 victories.

So even when the oddsmakers got it right, they were pretty off base.

It’s been even longer since the West’s presumed top four finished the season with the top four playoff spots. In the 2015-16 season, the Warriors, Thunder, Spurs and Clippers all made good on lofty preseason expectations, although that year’s Rockets - owners of a preseason over/under of 56.5 wins, the same as San Antonio and Los Angeles - finished just 41-41.

That’s par for the course for the Wild Wild West. Over the last five seasons, 10 of the 20 teams with the four highest preseason wins totals have failed to finish with a top-four playoff spot. The East hasn’t seen quite as much variance, but has still produced one “surprise” top-four seed in each of the last five years.

And in two of the last four seasons, that surprise team was the Knicks:

2023-24

• East: Sixers OUT: Knicks IN

• West: Suns, Warriors, Lakers OUT; Thunder, Wolves, Clippers IN

2022-23

• East: Nets OUT; Cavs IN

• West: Warriors, Clippers OUT; Grizzlies, Kings IN

2021-22

• East: Nets OUT; Celtics IN

• West: Lakers, Jazz OUT; Grizzlies, Mavs¹ IN

2020-21

• East: Celtics OUT; Knicks IN

• West: Lakers, Mavs OUT; Jazz, Suns IN

2019-20

• East: Sixers OUT; Raptors IN

• West: Jazz OUT, Lakers IN

New York’s two instances of crashing the playoff party are tied with Memphis for the most over this stretch, while the Lakers have been the gold standard for disappointments, with three underwhelming seasons in the last five, followed by the Sixers, Nets and Jazz with two each.

If we look at preseason title odds, it becomes even cleared that no one knows what the hell they’re talking about. Last year’s Suns started the season +600 to win it all - tied with the equally disappointing Bucks for the third best odds - and ended up with the 6th seed before bowing out in the first round. One year earlier, the Warriors were +600 while the Nets and Clippers were each +700. They finished 6th, 6th and 5th in their conference, respectively, with only Golden State winning a playoff series. The year before that, the Nets (+240) and Lakers (+400) were far and away the preseason championship favorites. Brooklyn ended up in seventh place, getting swept in the first round, while the LA finished 33-49, a game out of the play-in.

The last time every team with better than +1000 preseason title odds finished with a top-four seed and made it out of the first round was in ‘18-19, when only two teams - the Warriors at -168 and Celtics at +620 - started out with better than 10-to-1 odds.

Which brings us to this season.

Four teams - the Celtics, Thunder, Knicks and Sixers - have better than 10-to-1 odds to win a title, with a fourth team - the Nuggets - getting lower than +1000 in some books. Those five teams plus the Wolves, Bucks and Mavericks are the consensus picks to finish in the top four in their respective conferences.

History tells us that three of the eight - likely two out West and one in the East - will finish 5th or lower, and one of those three will come from the Boston / OKC / New York / Philly / Denver group.

With all that in mind, let’s make some predictions…