Which Team, Best of 7 Series? 18 HOU vs 20 LAL

[rk2023]

Who would win if you had to bet on it and in how many games, explanation(s) would be appreciated

[f4p]

Is Chris Paul playing all 7 games? Then the rockets, even if prime LeBron and never-misses-a-jumper AD would be very tough. Not tougher than the 2018 warriors. The Lakers played a very weak group of teams in their run and 3 of them had significant injury problems (Lillard banged up and missed a game, Westbrook coming off a hamstring injury and playing terribly at replacement level, Miami with their 2nd and 3rd best players injured). I can't see the rockets losing 5 games to those teams. Or the 2020 Lakers beating the warriors or going up 3-2.

[One_and_Done]

Lakers. Rockets strategy was junking the game up to increase the variance. By definition that wouldn't work most times against a superior team.

[OhayoKD]

Is Chris Paul playing all 7 games? Then the rockets, even if prime LeBron and never-misses-a-jumper AD would be very tough. Not tougher than the 2018 warriors. The Lakers played a very weak group of teams in their run and 3 of them had significant injury problems (Lillard banged up and missed a game, Westbrook coming off a hamstring injury and playing terribly at replacement level, Miami with their 2nd and 3rd best players injured). I can't see the rockets losing 5 games to those teams. Or the 2020 Lakers beating the warriors or going up 3-2.

Well, Houston actually lost a game in each of the previous rounds. Not sure I'd take the Jazz or the wolves over murray-nuggets. Lakers also did not have home-court and look like one of the best playoff teams ever if we filter out garbage time like you did for the Rockets vs the warriors:

Spoiler:

Adding to what HCL said about league stuff

They won the first 3 quarters by, in average 8.3 points. For comparisons sake, the 2017 warriors won by 9.0, 2014 Spurs 7.7, 01 lakers 9.8, 2018 warriors 8.6.

Classifying “garbage” 4th quarters as times when they were winning by 15 or more going in

-58, over 7 games. There’s one game where they were down by 18 vs the nuggets, they won that quarter by 10, and pulled it to 3 midway through so I didn’t count it


-58 over 7 games
+27 over 14 games

So -9.0 in quarters where it didn’t matter, +1.9 in ones that did

If we assume it’s +1.9 all around, and I didn’t see evidence of this in the other teams when I checked although I did that awhile back, then they have a MOV of 10.2, which would only be behind the 2017 warriors (13.8) and the 2001 lakers (12.8)

On overall 4th quarters

+3.3 2001 lakers 4th quarters
+4.4 2017 warriors 4th quarters
+1.0 2018 warriors 4th quarters
+1.4 2014 Spurs 4th quarters
Vs
-1.5 2020 lakers 4th quarters

I didn’t get gbg time stats for the other teams tho, but idt they have nearly as extreme of a trend

Also worth mentioning SRS for the heat (Spo tactics) nuggets (Murray godmode), Portland (were the best offensive team by far in the RS Bubble), and Houston even (were hot from three for 4-5 games) might understate how well they played in the playoffs or vs the lakers

Weak competition but they were pretty dominant(+11.9 rolling psrs) and I think it's fait to say they had another gear they were never really forced to use

[homecourtloss]

This would be a really good and fun matchup, as it’s a a contrast of styles, but I think the Lakers matchup well, even though they are giving away so many points are the three point line. Going into the playoffs, we heard a lot about how the math doesn’t work for that Lakers team (e.g., super hot Damian Lillard in the bubble, 3-point spamming by the Rockets) and to be honest, it made a lot of sense, but even in an open gym environment, the Lakers were able to dominate even with a three-point volume and efficacy disadvantage.

Regular season: #22 in three point attempt rate, #21 in 3 point %.
Playoffs: #11 out of 16 in three point attempt rate, #12 out of 16 in 3 point %.

One of the things about that Lakers team was how high their peak level was, sneakilyone of the highest there has ever been, because they were not built to hunt three-point shots, nor make them at a highly efficient rate in an era of three-point shooting, but they were able to excel in almost all other aspects of the game other than turnover economy, so when the 2020 Lakers hit a league average amount of three-pointers at the league average three point percentage in a game, they only lost two games all season before the end of the season and game five versus the heat in the NBA finals which they probably should’ve won anyway. When they got hot in the playoffs they were murdering teams.

One of the reasons they were such a great road team was because their core game of rim pressure, shots at the rim, defense, rebounding, generating turnovers, etc., was highly, highly replicable, and when they DID get hot from outside, they were pretty much invincible. In the playoffs, they exerted all of this, and were incredibly dominant outside of garbage time minutes though they were not to go three-point shooting team, which of course raises concerns against a team like the 2018 Houston Rockets.

2020 Lakers’ Playoffs leads

Game 2 vs. Blazers: +33, 7:58 left
Game 4 vs. Blazers, +38, 8:38 left in 3rd quarter
Game 4 vs. Rockets, +23, 7:21 left
Game 5 vs. Rockets, +29, 4:33 left
Game 1 vs. Nuggets, +27, 5:03 left
Game 1 vs. Heat, +30, 4:25 left in 3rd; +24, 6:08 left in the game
Game 6 vs. Heat, +36, 3:29 left in 3rd; +22, 2:05 left in the game

[lessthanjake]

I think there’s a lot of uncertainty here, because it’s really hard to know exactly how good the 2020 Lakers were. None of the teams that they beat in the playoffs played them very close, but then again none of those teams were particularly great teams (though the difficulty of that run has aged better in retrospect than the very-fortunate cakewalk it seemed at the time). So that leaves a lot of uncertainty. The regular season performance for the 2020 Lakers can be a good guide to help us figure out how good they were, and it was very good but it wasn’t as good as the 2018 Rockets’ regular season. Overall, I’d say the evidence we have suggests to me that the 2018 Rockets were better than the 2020 Lakers, but I don’t have a super high degree of confidence in that assessment since I am really not quite sure how good the 2020 Lakers were. And of course there’s always the variable of Chris Paul’s health, and I think the 2020 Lakers were definitely better than the 2018 Rockets without Chris Paul.

[f4p]

Is Chris Paul playing all 7 games? Then the rockets, even if prime LeBron and never-misses-a-jumper AD would be very tough. Not tougher than the 2018 warriors. The Lakers played a very weak group of teams in their run and 3 of them had significant injury problems (Lillard banged up and missed a game, Westbrook coming off a hamstring injury and playing terribly at replacement level, Miami with their 2nd and 3rd best players injured). I can't see the rockets losing 5 games to those teams. Or the 2020 Lakers beating the warriors or going up 3-2.

Well, Houston actually lost a game in each of the previous rounds.

yes, but the rockets first 2 opponents had almost the same combined SRS (6.8) as the lakers entire run (7.5). the timberwolves actually had an identical SRS to the nuggets team the lakers faced in the WCF (2.35), and that's probably their best opponent. and in terms of injuries, the heat were crippled by theirs, westbrook was a shell of himself after the hamstring injury and even dame missed a game, while the jazz not having rubio against the rockets seems to be the only injury. so at best, the rockets are playing similar but likely tougher opponents with fewer major injuries.

since you seem to think highly of harden and highly of the rockets almost beating the warriors and the lakers didn't play a team within 2 levels of the 2018 warriors, i'm assuming i can just compare the rockets 1st 2 rounds to the lakers opponents, since they are all at a similar-ish level.

Not sure I'd take the Jazz or the wolves over murray-nuggets.

it's not a slam dunk either direction but the nuggets were a lower SRS team (2.35 vs 4.47), needed two 3-1 comebacks just to get to the WCF even with "playoff murray" and they had a -3.7 net rating in the 1st round against a +2.5 utah team (so -1.2) and +0.5 net rating against a +6.7 clippers team (+7.2). so +3.0 average through the first 2 rounds, basically the same as their regular season SRS. and the negative rating even came in the series where murray was most on fire before regressing back against the clippers (and he only shot 3's at 31% against the lakers so it's not like he just got randomly hot against the lakers). even if we gave them the high end +7.2 from the clippers series, the 2018 jazz had a +4.4 net rating in the 1st round against a +3.4 okc team so it would be +7.8.

and then the rockets were +10.2 vs the jazz and the lakers were only +4.6 against the nuggets.

Lakers also did not have home-court and look like one of the best playoff teams ever if we filter out garbage time like you did for the Rockets vs the warriors:

Adding to what HCL said about league stuff

They won the first 3 quarters by, in average 8.3 points. For comparisons sake, the 2017 warriors won by 9.0, 2014 Spurs 7.7, 01 lakers 9.8, 2018 warriors 8.6.

Classifying “garbage” 4th quarters as times when they were winning by 15 or more going in

-58, over 7 games. There’s one game where they were down by 18 vs the nuggets, they won that quarter by 10, and pulled it to 3 midway through so I didn’t count it


-58 over 7 games
+27 over 14 games

So -9.0 in quarters where it didn’t matter, +1.9 in ones that did

Spoiler:

If we assume it’s +1.9 all around, and I didn’t see evidence of this in the other teams when I checked although I did that awhile back, then they have a MOV of 10.2, which would only be behind the 2017 warriors (13.8) and the 2001 lakers (12.8)

On overall 4th quarters

+3.3 2001 lakers 4th quarters
+4.4 2017 warriors 4th quarters
+1.0 2018 warriors 4th quarters
+1.4 2014 Spurs 4th quarters
Vs
-1.5 2020 lakers 4th quarters

I didn’t get gbg time stats for the other teams tho, but idt they have nearly as extreme of a trend

Also worth mentioning SRS for the heat (Spo tactics) nuggets (Murray godmode), Portland (were the best offensive team by far in the RS Bubble), and Houston even (were hot from three for 4-5 games) might understate how well they played in the playoffs or vs the lakers

true, and worth noting, but this applies to the rockets as well. the lakers "lost" 58 points in garbage time over 21 games for 2.8 points per game to their MOV. but using the same cut-offs (15+ point lead after 3), the rockets had 4 such games and "lost" 25 points over the 10 games of the first 2 rounds, for 2.5 points per game. the rockets were actually +11.2 through 3 quarters in the first 2 rounds, handily ahead of the lakers and even ahead of all the teams MyUniBroDavis mentioned, though it would presumably even out to closer to some of the non-lakers teams if the rockets had faced better (but not 2018 warriors level) teams in the WCF and Finals (though the 2017 warriors didn't face very good teams either before the finals).

to go back to the jazz and nuggets, it's +11 points for the jazz in garbage time 4th quarters and +12 points for the nuggets (all from game 1 4th quarter). so the series net ratings basically wouldn't change.

Weak competition but they were pretty dominant(+11.9 rolling psrs) and I think it's fait to say they had another gear they were never really forced to use

this sort of shows the problematic compounding nature of rolling PSRS (and calculating PSRS unidirectionally instead of bidirectionally):

the regular season lakers were a +6.3 SRS team, had a +9.8 first round (+10.4 against -0.6 team), +10.7 second round (+7.6 vs +3.1 team), +7.0 WCF (+4.6 vs +2.4), and +8.5 finals (+5.9 vs +2.6) and somehow end up at +11.9, despite never breaching it at any point. because the heat beat the bucks and it's treated like the heat were a +16.3 team (+6.9 vs +9.4) and not like the bucks possibly played way worse than normal, then the lakers beat an injured heat team and PSRS thinks they're beating a team that at least played part of its playoffs at a +16.3 level when that heat team was probably +0 or +1 at best with the injuries.

you tend to use "at full strength" numbers a lot, so it's fair to point out the baseline for the two teams:

2020 lakers with both lebron and AD were 45-14 with a +6.3 SRS (+6.3 SRS for the whole season and +6.2 MOV in the 12 games one of them missed so seems like +6.3 with both of them, i didn't do the exact SRS calculation)

2018 rockets with both harden and cp3 were 44-5 with a +11.0 SRS. the rockets are just starting from a whole other level. and then had a +11.7 first round and +14.7 second round, both beating out any lakers series (and i certainly wouldn't say we were in full gear against the timberwolves).

the lakers were good, it just seems like the rockets were better.

[iggymcfrack]

Assuming CP3’s not any more likely to miss games than Bron or AD, Rockets in 5 or 6. They were an injury away from beating the best team of all-time.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Lmfao not a single human being except HCA has actually talked about the matchup

[OhayoKD]

Not sure I'd take the Jazz or the wolves over murray-nuggets.

it's not a slam dunk either direction but the nuggets were a lower SRS team (2.35 vs 4.47), needed two 3-1 comebacks just to get to the WCF even with "playoff murray" and they had a -3.7 net rating in the 1st round against a +2.5 utah team (so -1.2) and +0.5 net rating against a +6.7 clippers team (+7.2). so +3.0 average through the first 2 rounds, basically the same as their regular season SRS. and the negative rating even came in the series where murray was most on fire before regressing back against the clippers (and he only shot 3's at 31% against the lakers so it's not like he just got randomly hot against the lakers). even if we gave them the high end +7.2 from the clippers series, the 2018 jazz had a +4.4 net rating in the 1st round against a +3.4 okc team so it would be +7.8.

Ah, but there's injury context here. An abundance of it actually:

-> Vs the Jazz, 1 starter(harris) missed nearly the entirely series with injury while 2 others weres shifting in and out of the lineup with injuries of their own.

-? this follows a regular-season campaign marred with injury problems:
https://www.deseret.com/sports/2020/8/15/21367888/denver-nuggets-season-injury-and-depth-issues-which-have-cropped-up-once-again-in-the-nba-bubble

Furthermore, that Jazz team were better than advertised thanks in no small part to the elevation of a certain Donovan Mitchell who torched the Nuggets with their best defenders compromised to varying degrees.

The next season, the Nuggets posted an SRS of +4.82 despite Murray being injured for nearly half the season(to go with a massive drop-off from what he was doing in the playoffs and the lakers specifically) not to mention another starter missing almost all of the season and every one of their 8 top rotation members besides Jokic missing at [least 20 games.

If I told you a +5 srs team would get a big health upgrade and their 2nd best player, who missed half the season, would play every game while arguably outplaying their best player(whose production is on par with what it was in the 2023 regular-season), it might not seem like such a fluke when they...beat a +6.6 Clippers side that posted that SRS despite both of their superstars controversially load-managing all season.

I'm not sure how exactly the comparison lines up if you switch from record to point-differential, but I think the lakers look better with the latter than the former. The Rockets probably top that with the garbage time/health adjustment(the warriors series nuked their psrs to +7), but I think the nuggets were a better opponent than the jazz or the timberwolves whose most notable playoff acheivement during that time-span was...beating the grizzlies in the first round and...choking to the kawhi-less clippers and...taking a shorthanded nuggets team the distance in 2020.

true, and worth noting, but this applies to the rockets as well. the lakers "lost" 58 points in garbage time over 21 games for 2.8 points per game to their MOV. but using the same cut-offs (15+ point lead after 3), the rockets had 4 such games and "lost" 25 points over the 10 games of the first 2 rounds, for 2.5 points per game. the rockets were actually +11.2 through 3 quarters in the first 2 rounds, handily ahead of the lakers and even ahead of all the teams MyUniBroDavis mentioned, though it would presumably even out to closer to some of the non-lakers teams if the rockets had faced better (but not 2018 warriors level) teams in the WCF and Finals (though the 2017 warriors didn't face very good teams either before the finals).

to go back to the jazz and nuggets, it's +11 points for the jazz in garbage time 4th quarters and +12 points for the nuggets (all from game 1 4th quarter). so the series net ratings basically wouldn't change.

Yeah, I think honest "cold data analysis" evaluation would favor the Rockets. They also looked good in 2019 wuth diminished support.

Weak competition but they were pretty dominant(+11.9 rolling psrs) and I think it's fait to say they had another gear they were never really forced to use

this sort of shows the problematic compounding nature of rolling PSRS (and calculating PSRS unidirectionally instead of bidirectionally)

Unfortunately i know of no database using a "bidirectional approach". That is probably is ideal though

because the heat beat the bucks and it's treated like the heat were a +16.3 team (+6.9 vs +9.4) and not like the bucks possibly played way worse than normal, then the lakers beat an injured heat team and PSRS thinks they're beating a team that at least played part of its playoffs at a +16.3 level when that heat team was probably +0 or +1 at best with the injuries.

Meh, the main reason the Bucks lost is because their defense collapsed with the heat going red-hot from 3(which they maintained throughout). You can do this "was it x played bad or y played good" with any series. Miami won a conference with 3 legitimate contenders statistically and were the only team to take more than 1 game of the champs(2nd best by mov). You have a prior where giannis and the bucks are chokers(even though the bucks mostly have improved in the playoffs since 2017), but that's not psrs's job to sort through. Frankly I think the sixers are underrated by the srs's for 19 and 20 but its not the stats job to account for my assumptions.

If you want to do flat srs you can, but then teams that coast get underrated(90 pistons, 2013 spurs) and teams like the 2018 raptors get overrated. There are trade-offs with either approach, but especially in the modern league where everyone coasts now.

Regardless, Miami are very clearly legit contenders when healthy looking at surrounding years and went through a very tough eastern conference on any emperical basis. I very much doubt they'd be +0 or +1 even if you took bam or dragic out entirely with how they were shooting in the playoffs and butler going bananas twice.

The other thing about sans PSRS is that something like westbrook's injury is being factored in way more than it would be with flat psrs. Westbrook was a "non-factor" in the first round which is the basis for most of their playoff-rating. So the Rockets are not as overrated as they would be if we went with flat psrs.

you tend to use "at full strength" numbers a lot, so it's fair to point out the baseline for the two teams:

2020 lakers with both lebron and AD were 45-14 with a +6.3 SRS (+6.3 SRS for the whole season and +6.2 MOV in the 12 games one of them missed so seems like +6.3 with both of them, i didn't do the exact SRS calculation)

2018 rockets with both harden and cp3 were 44-5 with a +11.0 SRS. the rockets are just starting from a whole other level. and then had a +11.7 first round and +14.7 second round, both beating out any lakers series (and i certainly wouldn't say we were in full gear against the timberwolves).

the lakers were good, it just seems like the rockets were better.

Yeah, I'm leaning the rockets probably. I don't know how much i trust their switch everything defense against dominant bigs though. They contended with the warriors largely on the basis of their defense but i feel their "opponent-adjusted non-garbage time performance" might be alot worse against a giannis or a davis or an embid

[MyUniBroDavis]

A switching defense with an assortment of guys who can’t guard bron or AD is not gonna work lmao, which is why they got close to beating the warriors in the first place.

It does not make sense to evaluate RS to postseason when the two lakers guys, lebron who was an MVP candidate level guy, and AD who was more all nba first team level, became historic level guys immediately when the postseason started. Lebrons two way impact in the bubble probably means he’s comparable to the likes of 21 giannis or 23 Jokic, he was probably the best offensive player and the second best defensive player in the playoff bubble, and then you have AD who was the 2nd best on offense and had a all time level defensive playoff run in terms of how he played

In any case, they were at a slightly below a 64 win pace pre bubble with bron playing at like 70-80% and AD at like 60% of how good he was in the bubble, extrapolating regular season bubble results is a bit useless, especially when bron didn’t kick it into high gear till the finals as well, other than close out games or must wins



A 64 win team had Lebron go from mvp candidate but not winner to probably one of his better postseason runs in his career, and AD went from being a strong offensive player and all defensive level to being basically this ridiculous force on offense and historically good on defense

[homecourtloss]

If you want to do flat srs you can, but then teams that coast get underrated(90 pistons, 2013 spurs) and teams like the 2018 raptors get overrated. There are trade-offs with either approach, but especially in the modern league where everyone coasts now.

This is very good point—overall SRS doesn’t mean as much when you have the least % of minutes played by the teams’ best players ever. We’ve had on court minutes now though, so we should be using these anyway. The 2013 Spurs were a forerunner for this as they were a monster team hiding behind fewer minutes and games played by their best players.



Kind of looks like what the 2023 Nuggets had:



Even when their best players played, they didn’t play heavy minutes per game; their 16 most used three man lineups all had double digit NRtgs, which is crazy.



The 1990 Pistons did ramp up things in a very good playoffs run, but they seemed to at least play their top players and had great health, but unlike most teams of that time (and any time before) relied on their depth so nobody played heavy minutes, which was unusual for their era.



Most teams when having great health luck would have their minutes look like the 1990 Bulls’ minutes



Or the 1987 Lakers who were blowing out teams and resting earlier in games relative to their era



You also had a team like the 2011 Mavs who had some heavy minutes monster pairings but they didn’t play enough games together (e.g., Dirk and Chandler) but in the playoffs they were all available so the +4 to +5 SRS label is pretty much meaningless.

[colts18]

Furthermore, that Jazz team were better than advertised thanks in no small part to the elevation of a certain Donovan Mitchell who torched the Nuggets with their best defenders compromised to varying degrees.

The next season, the Nuggets posted an SRS of +4.82 despite Murray being injured for nearly half the season(to go with a massive drop-off from what he was doing in the playoffs and the lakers specifically) not to mention another starter missing almost all of the season and every one of their 8 top rotation members besides Jokic missing at [least 20 games.

The Jazz weren't "better" because Mitchell was an "elevation" type of player. He elevated because the Nuggets were a trash defense that was consistently getting ran thru by any athletic perimter players in the playoffs. Those Nuggets teams were flawed.

2021 Blazers vs. Nuggets:
Dame 34 PPG, 66 TS%

2021 Suns:
CP3: 26 PPG, 74 TS%
Booker: 25 PPG, 60 TS%

2022 Warriors:
Steph: 28 PPG, 64 TS%
Klay: 23 PPG, 65 TS%
Poole: 21 PPG, 72 TS%

2023 TWolves:
Edwards: 32 PPG, 60 TS%

2023 Suns:
Booker: 31 PPG, 68 TS%

[parsnips33]

I like PJ Tucker on AD. Ariza isn't doing much against Bron but at least he has size.

[OhayoKD]

Furthermore, that Jazz team were better than advertised thanks in no small part to the elevation of a certain Donovan Mitchell who torched the Nuggets with their best defenders compromised to varying degrees.

The next season, the Nuggets posted an SRS of +4.82 despite Murray being injured for nearly half the season(to go with a massive drop-off from what he was doing in the playoffs and the lakers specifically) not to mention another starter missing almost all of the season and every one of their 8 top rotation members besides Jokic missing at [least 20 games.

The Jazz weren't "better" because Mitchell was an "elevation" type of player

You should tell the Grizzlies and the Clippers that

[TheGOATRises007]

Assuming CP3’s not any more likely to miss games than Bron or AD, Rockets in 5 or 6. They were an injury away from beating the best team of all-time.

You don't know for sure if the Rockets are winning game 6 with CP3.

They were also getting outscored by a good margin while CP3 was healthy.

And the Warriors were missing Iggy too. I'm not equating Iggy to CP3, but it's a loss for them too.

[Djoker]

Assuming both teams healthy I got the Rockets winning it in a close series going either 6 or 7 games. The 2018 Rockets were a 65-win +8.21 SRS team while the 2020 Lakers were a 60-win pace +6.28 SRS team.

[Colbinii]

Assuming both teams healthy I got the Rockets winning it in a close series going either 6 or 7 games. The 2018 Rockets were a 65-win +8.21 SRS team while the 2020 Lakers were a 60-win pace +6.28 SRS team.

Weren't the Lakers much better pre-bubble compared to the 8 bubble games when they weren't trying?

They were 3-5 in the bubble and 49-14 pre-bubble which is a 64-win pace.

If you want to simply reference W-L and SRS, you must agree the 2015 Cavs/Hawks series is a serious upset. Or, perhaps, LeBron James teams tend to play at much higher levels than their RS SRS indicates [2012-2023] and that citing RS SRS/WL isn't a predictive measure for LeBron teams since he is such a massive post-season ceiling raiser.

[OhayoKD]

Assuming CP3’s not any more likely to miss games than Bron or AD, Rockets in 5 or 6. They were an injury away from beating the best team of all-time.

You don't know for sure if the Rockets are winning game 6 with CP3.
They were also getting outscored by a good margin while CP3 was healthy.

And the Warriors were missing Iggy too. I'm not equating Iggy to CP3, but it's a loss for them too.

That is entirely a result of a single game of garbage time. Otherwise the series was a dead-heat by m.o.v

[f4p]

Assuming CP3’s not any more likely to miss games than Bron or AD, Rockets in 5 or 6. They were an injury away from beating the best team of all-time.

You don't know for sure if the Rockets are winning game 6 with CP3.

They were also getting outscored by a good margin while CP3 was healthy.

And the Warriors were missing Iggy too. I'm not equating Iggy to CP3, but it's a loss for them too.

the warriors outscored the rockets by 25 points in the first 5 games. but 18 of those points came in the final 5 minutes of game 2 after the stars went out and the final 5 minutes of game 3 after the stars went out (-6 and -12, good for an 82 points per 48 minutes on/off by the scrubs). it was as close as can be (+/-1.4 ppg, 3-2 series) in actual game time.