The CP3 Thread 18-19 Part 1

[Lost92Bricks]

2014: The Clippers lose a late season game against OKC basically stopping them from taking the 2nd seed.

Then end up facing them without homecourt in the 2nd round and we have to hear about the team "underachieving" because they lost to a 59 win, MVP-led Thunder team on the road.

Don't tell me these games are not crucial.

[sp6r=underrated]

2014: The Clippers lose a late season game against OKC basically stopping them from taking the 2nd seed from them.

Then end up losing in the 2nd round to them and we have to hear about them "underachieving" because they lost to a 59 win, MVP-led Thunder team on the road.

Don't tell me these games are not crucial.

Another great example. A lot of people have a tendency to look at the post season and say Team A is way better than Team B, Team C and D so it doesn't matter who they face. That doesn't make sense. You have to look at the probabilities.

Team A has a 90 chance of beating Team B. Team A has 60 chance of beating Team C and D.

If they face Team b and either C or D they have a 54% chance of making the CF
If they face C and D they have a 36% chance of making the CF.

[Dr Spaceman]

Seeding doesn’t really matter to Houston.

This is one of the great myths commonly held. Playoff seeding matters for every team in history. Harder competition means a lower probability of winning. Playing a 5 SRS club in the 1st round gives you a lower probability of advancing than facing a 1 SRS club. Putting yourself in the same side of the bracket with the Warriors increases your chance that you'll meet.

The 2015 Spurs are a great recent example. Going into the last game of the season, they would have clinched dthe 2nd seed with a win over the Pelicans. Instead they loss and set themselves up for 4 road series. Their 1st round loss to LAC occurred in a series in which they outscored the Clippers. They wouldn't have been the favorites if they had won that game but their probability of making post-season noise would have gone up considerably;

^ Thank you.

These guys don't understand as a fan when you have seen Chris Paul win 56 games get rewarded with a 56 win Grizzlies team in the first round and lose. Just because you lost a couple crucial (yes, crucial) games down the stretch.

yup. I'm a huge Duncan fan. I really felt in 15 SAS really hurt their title odds on the last season. Winning 4 series alone is very hard but doing against considerably harder competition reduces the probability of success.

Seeding matters for sure, I don’t dispute that. I just don’t think the Jazz are a good matchup for Houston. They were similarly good last year and HOU dispatched them in 5 games, it just wasn’t a close series.

So ultimately the difference to me is you play GSW 1 round earlier and Denver without HCA. I suppose there is a chance GSW would lose before the conference finals, but what is that chance realistically? No one besides Houston has a shot at beating them.

It’s a harder road, but it’s not anything like drawing the Clippers in round 1. There just aren’t this many great teams in the West this year.

[ardee]

Yikes. I was really confused by the outcomes today: the Denver-Utah and Houston-OKC games led to a million implications for seeding depending on results.

My ideal scenario was Houston gets the 2nd seed so Harden has a legit MVP shot, and I wanted OKC in 6 so they don't have to play Houston first round.

Now Houston is locked into 53-29. They have the tiebreaker over Denver but not over the Blazers. To get the 2nd seed they need both teams to lose.

If both teams win, Houston goes 4th.

If Denver wins and Portland loses, Houston stays third.

If Portland wins and Denver loses, all three teams are 53-29 and Portland gets the 2nd seed (which would be a major shocker) and Houston stays in third.

OKC is put in an interesting situation with the early tip-off. Essentially they want to avoid Houston. The likelihood of Houston getting the 2nd seed is low as it would require both Denver and Portland to lose. They might be better off taking the L in the Milwaukee game and slipping to 7th. There's only a 25% chance they end up with Houston, a 50% chance they get Denver, and a 25% chance they get Portland where they have to be the favorites.

If OKC wins stays 6th, it's 50/50 on whether they get Houston. 50% Houston stays third, i.e., one of Denver/Portland wins and the other loses, 25 they get Portland, if both win (a good scenario for them) and 25 they get Denver, if both lose.

Idk, I think OKC would be better off losing tomorrow. 25% less chance they get Houston as the 7th seed than as the 6th.

[Bergmaniac]

OKC is put in an interesting situation with the early tip-off. Essentially they want to avoid Houston. The likelihood of Houston getting the 2nd seed is low as it would require both Denver and Portland to lose. They might be better off taking the L in the Milwaukee game and slipping to 7th.

If OKC loses to the Bucks, they will probably end up as 8th seed since the Spurs have an easy home game against the Mavs and the Clippers play Utah who have nothing to play for. OKC are last in the three team tiebreaker with the Spurs and the Clippers.

[eminence]

Yikes. I was really confused by the outcomes today: the Denver-Utah and Houston-OKC games led to a million implications for seeding depending on results.

My ideal scenario was Houston gets the 2nd seed so Harden has a legit MVP shot, and I wanted OKC in 6 so they don't have to play Houston first round.

Now Houston is locked into 53-29. They have the tiebreaker over Denver but not over the Blazers. To get the 2nd seed they need both teams to lose.

If both teams win, Houston goes 4th.

If Denver wins and Portland loses, Houston stays third.

If Portland wins and Denver loses, all three teams are 53-29 and Portland gets the 2nd seed (which would be a major shocker) and Houston stays in third.

OKC is put in an interesting situation with the early tip-off. Essentially they want to avoid Houston. The likelihood of Houston getting the 2nd seed is low as it would require both Denver and Portland to lose. They might be better off taking the L in the Milwaukee game and slipping to 7th. There's only a 25% chance they end up with Houston, a 50% chance they get Denver, and a 25% chance they get Portland where they have to be the favorites.

If OKC wins stays 6th, it's 50/50 on whether they get Houston. 50% Houston stays third, i.e., one of Denver/Portland wins and the other loses, 25 they get Portland, if both win (a good scenario for them) and 25 they get Denver, if both lose.

Idk, I think OKC would be better off losing tomorrow. 25% less chance they get Houston as the 7th seed than as the 6th.

I'm pretty sure with how the tiebreakers work it'd be 2) Houston 3) Denver 4) Portland

I'm also not sure how much OKC really wants to avoid Houston. They've played them well.

[eminence]

Yeah, I have to imagine Houston is hoping for a loss from Denver or Portland. The path is tough anyways, but it's just absolutely brutal with them from the 4 seed.

[sp6r=underrated]

Rockets title chances saved, IMO, by decision of Portland that they're better off with Utah. Fascinating decision by me from Portland which I think will blow up in their face. As I said in previous page. Only 1 time in last 39 years has a team won 3 road series to a title. If I were the Rockets I would be very grateful for what Portland did. Now they are in the weaker side of the bracket facing a far worse opponent.

In the case of Portland they're non-contenders but you should always try to maximize your title odds. I can't conceive of how they think getting in the 1-8-4-5 side of the bracket does that. I'm actually very interested in that Portland series. Stotts is a smart coach so maybe I'm missing something but I think their odds of making the CF, admittedly very low, have been crushed by this decision.

Edit: just to give you the numbers on this because I really think this is a fasicnating choice. Portland vs OKC since George arrived

OKC: 4-4 -0.25 MOV (George/Russell played all games)
UTA: 4-4 -2.37 MOV .

Regardless of whether Portland is right, it is unquestionably true that Houston is far better off in this side of the bracket. So they're title odds went up. This is a good reminder of why post-season play shouldn't be the sole source of your analysis. Brackets are highly different and teams clearly think they can maximize their title odds of winning facing certain opponents which means that a small sample size with an unbalanced schedule will lead to faulty analysis if you read too much into it.

[sp6r=underrated]

God Paul is snake bitten. Portland tries to lose and can't pull it off. Now they have to win 3 series on the road. Egregious non-call in the Denver game. Blatant foul ignored by the refs.

[Lost92Bricks]

Another 2nd round exit coming up for Chris!

[GSP]

Facing Warriors 2nd round just means a less likely chance of an injury for Cp3 against them now.

Theyd destroy the Nuggets in the Wcf if they get there. I still like their chances TBH. Utah doesnt have anything for Houston

[tone wone]

Hard to imagine Harden doing all this, Houston playing this well since getting healthy and only being a 4 seed on the same bracket as GSW.

Disappointing 24hrs.

[Lost92Bricks]

Facing Warriors 2nd round just means a less likely chance of an injury for Cp3 against them now.

Theyd destroy the Nuggets in the Wcf if they get there. I still like their chances TBH. Utah doesnt have anything for Houston

lol there is more of a chance of an injury, not less.

He didn't just get injured out of nowhere last year. He got injured because of his minutes in game 4 and 5 against the Warriors. He played like 42 minutes in game 4. They had to overwork him for them to have a chance.

Now, they have even less of a chance. It's looking ugly right now for Houston.

[ShotCreator]

Hard to overstate how much the Rockets need either a Blazer or Nuggets loss.

Spoiler:

Since 1980, out of 39 champions only 5 times has a team seeded 3rd or lower won a title. Post-Season seeding matters a lot for winning a title.

Dallas 3 (11)
SAS 3 (07)
DET 3(04)
LAL 3 (02)
HOU 6 (95)

Shaq played on teams with talent his entire career. Many players would have missed the PS if they played 50 games in their prime or been stuck as an 8th seed to get slaughtered in the 1st round.

Worth noting that a couple of those teams (02 LA and 04 Det I believe) were only kinda 3 seeds, they had home court over the 2 seeds.

Edit: In fact the only team to ever win 3+ postseason series on the road (what you might expect from a 3 seed) is the '95 Rockets.

Teams since '80 to win multiple road series on the way to the title.

'93 Bulls vs Knicks/Suns
'95 Rockets vs Jazz/Suns/Spurs/Magic
'04 Pistons vs Pacers/Lakers
'06 Heat vs Pistons/Mavs
'11 Mavs vs Lakers/Heat
'12 Heat vs Bulls/Thunder

If they had landed the 2 seed they were looking at
1st Round HCA: +1.5 SRS SAS
2nd Round HCA: +4.3 SRS DEN

Now they're looking at
1st Round HCA: + 5.3 SRS Jazz
2nd Round No HCA: GSW + 6.7 SRS


Playoff seeding matters a lot.

Ehhhhh. This is some very rigid logic. It is logical but it’s not practical to think there was a chance in hell GS wasn’t going to the WCF.

GS has won four series Steph didn’t fully play in during the Kerr era. 4-0 against injury to their best player. I really believe they’d easily beat LAC and Utah without him.

The misfortune came in Paul’s injury/suspension, bad FO decisions, and Bzdeliks retirement. That caused them to miss out on the #1 seed they probably would’ve gotten.

If you don’t have HCA against GS it’s best to play them as fresh as possible. Houston is a jump shooting team. They’ll need their legs which gave out on them at the end last year.

I’m feeling pretty good honestly.

[sp6r=underrated]

Hard to overstate how much the Rockets need either a Blazer or Nuggets loss.

Spoiler:

Worth noting that a couple of those teams (02 LA and 04 Det I believe) were only kinda 3 seeds, they had home court over the 2 seeds.

Edit: In fact the only team to ever win 3+ postseason series on the road (what you might expect from a 3 seed) is the '95 Rockets.

Teams since '80 to win multiple road series on the way to the title.

'93 Bulls vs Knicks/Suns
'95 Rockets vs Jazz/Suns/Spurs/Magic
'04 Pistons vs Pacers/Lakers
'06 Heat vs Pistons/Mavs
'11 Mavs vs Lakers/Heat
'12 Heat vs Bulls/Thunder

If they had landed the 2 seed they were looking at
1st Round HCA: +1.5 SRS SAS
2nd Round HCA: +4.3 SRS DEN

Now they're looking at
1st Round HCA: + 5.3 SRS Jazz
2nd Round No HCA: GSW + 6.7 SRS


Playoff seeding matters a lot.

Ehhhhh. This is some very rigid logic. It is logical but it’s not practical to think there was a chance in hell GS wasn’t going to the WCF.

GS has won four series Steph didn’t fully play in during the Kerr era. 4-0 against injury to their best player. I really believe they’d easily beat LAC and Utah without him.

The misfortune came in Paul’s injury/suspension, bad FO decisions, and Bzdeliks retirement. That caused them to miss out on the #1 seed they probably would’ve gotten.

If you don’t have HCA against GS it’s best to play them as fresh as possible. Houston is a jump shooting team. They’ll need their legs which gave out on them at the end last year.

I’m feeling pretty good honestly.

You call it rigid, I call it sound. It is always better to position yourself to face weaker clubs early on and avoid the top contenders until late as you can.

[Bad Gatorade]

God Paul is snake bitten. Portland tries to lose and can't pull it off. Now they have to win 3 series on the road. Egregious non-call in the Denver game. Blatant foul ignored by the refs.

This is CP3's 11th season in the playoffs.

In seven of these seasons, he has been on a team to win 50+, and also faced a team winning 50+. Twice, he has faced a team winning 55+ even though his team won 56 games. And this is in the first round only.

(I prorated the 2012 season to 82 games)

One of the two teams (47 wins - last year's Wolves) were 3rd in the West and would have broken 50 had Butler not missed a heap of time. CP3's path was harder than the Warriors at #2. The other was the 44 win Blazers when both CP3 and Blake got injured. Every other team has been in the 50s.

The same seeding in the East each year would have given him opponents of 40, 62, 58, 48, 45, 44, 40, 48, 43, 43 and 48. That's only 2 teams above 50 wins, and don't forget, the schedules in the west are harder in the east on account of playing western teams more often, so:

a) A 50-32 team in the east is probably worse than a 50-32 team in the west
b) CP3's teams would likely have a higher seeding too, and play a worse seed than if you simply cross his Western seeds over to the east

Let's try and see what the conference imbalance does:

From 2008-2019 (sans 2010, when CP3 didn't make the playoffs), his team SRS was 4.84. His FIRST ROUND opponent SRS was 4.06, and the expectation has been to face a team of 2.27 SRS over these years (expectation being calculated by SRS rankings each year - e.g. if he ranked 3rd in SRS, then it would be the 14th highest SRS). The only two years that his "expected SRS" was higher than his actual SRS was in 2009/2016, i.e. the two years that his injury ruined his teams chances in the first round.

There have been 6 seasons where the expected opponent SRS is > 2 higher than the actual opponent, with the biggest disparity in 2015. His team was expected to play a team with SRS 0.17, but instead, he faced a team with 6.34 SRS.

By my estimate, moving to a"balanced" conference would probably lower CP3's first round opponents by around 5 games (so from 52ish to 47ish wins), meaning that in the East, it's probably a few games lower than that...

Wow, conference imbalance, seeding oddity and getting injured has really made the first round way harder for him than it should be And once you factor in that his second round opponents have had an average SRS of 5.5 (56-57ish games), well... not all of his playoff struggles can be explained by his opponents, but when literally all of his second round opponents have a point differential equivalent of >= 50 games, it's kind of understandable, especially given that two of them (2018 Jazz, 2014 Thunder) had some major injuries during the regular season underestimating them quite a bit.

[Dr Spaceman]

Hard to overstate how much the Rockets need either a Blazer or Nuggets loss.

Spoiler:

Worth noting that a couple of those teams (02 LA and 04 Det I believe) were only kinda 3 seeds, they had home court over the 2 seeds.

Edit: In fact the only team to ever win 3+ postseason series on the road (what you might expect from a 3 seed) is the '95 Rockets.

Teams since '80 to win multiple road series on the way to the title.

'93 Bulls vs Knicks/Suns
'95 Rockets vs Jazz/Suns/Spurs/Magic
'04 Pistons vs Pacers/Lakers
'06 Heat vs Pistons/Mavs
'11 Mavs vs Lakers/Heat
'12 Heat vs Bulls/Thunder

If they had landed the 2 seed they were looking at
1st Round HCA: +1.5 SRS SAS
2nd Round HCA: +4.3 SRS DEN

Now they're looking at
1st Round HCA: + 5.3 SRS Jazz
2nd Round No HCA: GSW + 6.7 SRS


Playoff seeding matters a lot.

Ehhhhh. This is some very rigid logic. It is logical but it’s not practical to think there was a chance in hell GS wasn’t going to the WCF.

GS has won four series Steph didn’t fully play in during the Kerr era. 4-0 against injury to their best player. I really believe they’d easily beat LAC and Utah without him.

The misfortune came in Paul’s injury/suspension, bad FO decisions, and Bzdeliks retirement. That caused them to miss out on the #1 seed they probably would’ve gotten.

If you don’t have HCA against GS it’s best to play them as fresh as possible. Houston is a jump shooting team. They’ll need their legs which gave out on them at the end last year.

I’m feeling pretty good honestly.

Yeah I’m kinda leaning your way. The thing I worry about is the Jazz giving Houston more of a fight than they did last year. Remains to be seen. But I think of healthy Houston as an 8-9 SRS type team healthy and I just don’t think HCA vs Denver is important to them.

I get what people are saying in this thread about how a low-seeded team almost never wins the title, but if there is one team that would do it it would be a team with a proven track record of 9 SRS, 60+ win type of play that dealt with some injuries and bad luck in the early going. If there was a team that could do it, it would look a lot like Houston.

[Jaivl]

Watch on YouTube

[Lost92Bricks]

His defense for his age is phenomenal. One of the GOAT defensive point guards.

[ShotCreator]

His defense for his age is phenomenal. One of the GOAT defensive point guards.

He seems he hadn’t lost a step whatsoever on that end.


I cannot believe I began to buy the notion he regressed to just “good” defensively because he switched onto bigs 90% of the time last season.

He is a MONSTER on defense in a traditional show and recover scheme. Unscreenable, reads all plays, high-level communication, perfect rotations when off the ball. Just superb on and off the ball.

He has 4.1 stocks per game in this series. Slow pace, moderate minutes and his defensive box score looks like prime MU.