FiveThirtyEight giving the Celtics an 83% chance to win finals

[hoosierdaddy34]

Spot on. Lol The guy you were quoting literally said they gave Trump 30 percent to win on election day. Pretty sure he won. They're awful

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If my statistical model tells me there’s a 67% chance I don’t roll a 5 or 6, and then I roll the dice and a six lands, is the statistical model broken?

538s job is to assess probability and they do an amazing job. They aren’t fortune tellers and they don’t have BIffs sports almanac

But I thought a 30% chance of something happening meant there is a 0% chance of that happening!?

Right? It’s amazing how clueless people are. Probabilities are pretty easy to understand. But of course these are probably the same dudes that think a 87% free throw shooter should make every Ft.

[Pharmcat]

Celtics turn the ball over too much and too hot/cold. Gsw will eat them for breakfast

[SupaManu]

One thing is for sure

These Finals will determine the real champion. No asterisks. The best 2 teams going at it.

I mean let's be honest, the Bucks took them to 7 without their 2nd best player. Injuries happen so I'm not laying down an asterisk but that statement shouldn't be as definitive as you made it sound.

This, Boston is a great team but if Middleton was playing we are highly likely looking at a warriors v bucks finals

[DroseReturnChi]

the model for this series is dumb. big fat 0% maybe heat would have given them trouble.

[homecourtloss]

538 is based on ELO and that's based on beating good teams with good net rating.

So many teams in the RS approached the Celtics post-January like they were facing the November Celtics and got blown out.
Five Thirty Eight reflects that and doesn't take into account things like championship level experience or choke jobs(i.e. Ayton/Ben Simmons).

538 has two models: the ELO model and the RAPTOR model.

Their RAPTOR model gives the Celtics an 83% chance of winning and their ELO model gives the Celtics a 68% chance of winning.

The Celtics have played amazingly well both offensively and defensively overall for a long period of time and 538 RAPTOR weighs that heavily.

Most betting sites are giving the Warriors a 55-59% shot to win the title.

[Swift21]

One thing is for sure

These Finals will determine the real champion. No asterisks. The best 2 teams going at it.

I mean let's be honest, the Bucks took them to 7 without their 2nd best player. Injuries happen so I'm not laying down an asterisk but that statement shouldn't be as definitive as you made it sound.

This, Boston is a great team but if Middleton was playing we are highly likely looking at a warriors v bucks finals

Agreed.

[sp6r=underrated]

When a team is #1 in offensive and defensive rating for the last four months of an NBA season, the models are going to love your chances.

Right? Its not rocket surgery. Personally I lean GSW due to their experience and toughness (something thats hard to quantify). BOS barely scrapped by MIL and MIA despite notably better rosters and I think GSW is the series where it comes back to bite them. That said, in no way should BOS be trivialized as a serious contender in this matchup. I'd also say they shouldn't have an asterisk on their championship should they win but this is the asterisk era and no one has won a legit championship since at least 2014 apparently.

the man in your sig is the one to blame for all this asterisk talk. He was the one who came up with it for 99.

[hugepatsfan]

Perception is clouded by the past. BOS has been historically good since they turned their season around. But they're still looked at us underachievers and chokers because of the past. If we all wiped out our collective memories of everything basketball related before this season, Celtics would probably be the favorites or this series would be seen as a pick 'em. That's what models like this do. But because the Warriors have proven pedigree and we all view BOS as infuriatingly inconsistent, most of us just can't trust that BOS will win the series.

If BOS does win this series everyone will change their tune though. IMO everyone will look back and say "oh wow, we probably should have seen this coming or at least recognized that they're just as good as Golden State". But because they haven't "arrived" yet I think there's still a lot of doubt casted over this season's sample size.

[username_taken]

the model for this series is dumb. big fat 0% maybe heat would have given them trouble.

The Celtics winning makes you so upset. It's great entertainment to watch you cope with their success

[BoatsNZones]

I'm looking at 538's preseason model of how they projected the standings. They had the Warriors in 11th place, and not particularly close to the play-in; with effectively 0% chance of making the Finals . Had the Jazz as the 1 seed.

[pr0wler]

Overrated Kerr barely even a favourite despite coaching an all-star team lol

[SecondTake]

Their political analysis is pretty spot on. Their poll of polls was in like 1% of the final general election numbers both in 2016 and 2020. Im not sure how you can get much more accurate.

Spot on. Lol The guy you were quoting literally said they gave Trump 30 percent to win on election day. Pretty sure he won. They're awful

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Tell me you dont understand probability without telling me you dont understand probability

You could use that excuse even if they predicted 99 to 1 Hillary victory - technically that means Trump could still win one in one hundred elections. Cheap thing to hide behind. Fact is their probability assessment was wrong. Good data would mean they would have predicted the outcome.

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[xdrta+]

Overrated Kerr barely even a favourite despite coaching an all-star team lol

An all-star team.

[FNQ]

538 is based on ELO and that's based on beating good teams with good net rating.

So many teams in the RS approached the Celtics post-January like they were facing the November Celtics and got blown out.
Five Thirty Eight reflects that and doesn't take into account things like championship level experience or choke jobs(i.e. Ayton/Ben Simmons).

538 has two models: the ELO model and the RAPTOR model.

Their RAPTOR model gives the Celtics an 83% chance of winning and their ELO model gives the Celtics a 68% chance of winning.

The Celtics have played amazingly well both offensively and defensively overall for a long period of time and 538 RAPTOR weighs that heavily.

Most betting sites are giving the Warriors a 55-59% shot to win the title.

When I first started diving into metrics, my friend who was teaching me had me start with baseball (2014). And he clued me in to something called the Mike Trout rule. And the Mike Trout rule was simple: if you are making an overall metric, and Mike Trout isnt at the top of it, you **** up

As the years have gone on, I've done something similar except with Vegas. If your predictive model is in wild conflict with Vegas... you **** up. But as I said on the other thread, predictive models for individual series in continuous clock sports are a trash concept to begin with - unlike oft misused advanced metrics like PER and RPM, I dont think they carry much value at all, other than to generate clicks by giving an (or any) answer)

I would kill to know how Vegas does their oddsmaking so accurately across such a wide scope of sports.. but I kinda get the feeling that you'd actually have to, to find out

[SecondTake]

Their political analysis is pretty spot on. Their poll of polls was in like 1% of the final general election numbers both in 2016 and 2020. Im not sure how you can get much more accurate.

Spot on. Lol The guy you were quoting literally said they gave Trump 30 percent to win on election day. Pretty sure he won. They're awful

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If my statistical model tells me there’s a 67% chance I don’t roll a 5 or 6, and then I roll the dice and a six lands, is the statistical model broken?

538s job is to assess probability and they do an amazing job. They aren’t fortune tellers and they don’t have BIffs sports almanac

In your example the model could be improved. Clearly you could better predict the outcome with more and better quality data.

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[SecondTake]

By those figures you’d expect the Celtics to be a juggernaut but it doesn’t pass the eye test. When I watch the Celtics its clear they have some exploitable flaws

Also 538 had Hillary as like a 90-99% favorite over Trump depending on what point of the race you look at

Their final prediction had Hillary as a 65% favorite over Trump and Nate Silver cautioned about how weak she was amongst independent voters in the Midwest. He also went on to explain that if all the independents voted for Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, he would win by a borderline landslide, which is what happened.

Then he should have put his money where his mouth is and pedicted a Trump victory. Instead he plays both sides so regardless of the outcome he can try and say he was right

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[HotelVitale]

538 gave Dallas a 12% chance of making the Conference Finals before the playoffs began. Then once there, they had them as favorites over Golden State. They gave the Warriors a 10% chance of winning the NBA Finals before the conference Finals (worst of all teams). The Warriors are currently -160 NBA Finals betting favorites (a closer reflection of the actual advanced betting models). 538 needs to restart from the ground up.

You could also just learn how to read those things. It's just a simple rigid statistical model that they're using for entertainment purposes, it's not meant to be anything more than that. Like with any other stat, the jokes on you if you follow it blindly rather than see what it's telling you and work from there.

[sp6r=underrated]

Perception is clouded by the past. BOS has been historically good since they turned their season around. But they're still looked at us underachievers and chokers because of the past. If we all wiped out our collective memories of everything basketball related before this season, Celtics would probably be the favorites or this series would be seen as a pick 'em. That's what models like this do. But because the Warriors have proven pedigree and we all view BOS as infuriatingly inconsistent, most of us just can't trust that BOS will win the series.

If BOS does win this series everyone will change their tune though. IMO everyone will look back and say "oh wow, we probably should have seen this coming or at least recognized that they're just as good as Golden State". But because they haven't "arrived" yet I think there's still a lot of doubt casted over this season's sample size.

great post.

[HotelVitale]

By those figures you’d expect the Celtics to be a juggernaut but it doesn’t pass the eye test. When I watch the Celtics its clear they have some exploitable flaws
Also 538 had Hillary as like a 90-99% favorite over Trump depending on what point of the race you look at

Their final prediction had Hillary as a 65% favorite over Trump and Nate Silver cautioned about how weak she was amongst independent voters in the Midwest. He also went on to explain that if all the independents voted for Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, he would win by a borderline landslide, which is what happened.

Then he should have put his money where his mouth is and pedicted a Trump victory. Instead he plays both sides so regardless of the outcome he can try and say he was right

That's obviously not the point of polling, it's not a gambling contest where you follow your gut and stick with it. The point is to try to guess with as much accuracy as possible the outcomes of things that are fundamentally unknowable; in the case of Trump, the reason why his victory was a big surprise was that old voting patterns didn't hold up at all, and people were left trying to estimate things like 'will an extra 650 voters come out in some small county in northwest Wisconsin?' without anything to go off of except some general sense of vibe.

I'm curious though--how else do you think people should try to estimate or predict those things? What's your actual criticism of the way that estimate was made?

[Capn'O]

I don't think the model realizes Klay is back. These Warriors are deadly. Also they have that huge outlier game against Memphis where they got creamed.