Nylon Calculus: The Western Conference is getting stronger
By Ian Levy
The news in the Eastern Conference over the past few weeks has been top teams fading. The Cleveland Cavaliers were 7-8 in the month of January, getting outscored by an average of 2.3 points per 100 possessions. Toronto had a positive point differential, barely at 0.1, but couldn’t gain ground on Cleveland in the standings, going 7-9. The Boston Celtics have played well but are still finding their rhythm after an injury-plagued first few weeks of the season. The Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards both had strong months but neither has the profile of a serious championship contender.
As the top of the East has struggled, the top of the Western Conference has continued steam-rolling. The Golden State Warriors are playing perhaps their best basketball yet, going 12-2 in January with a +14.0 point differential. The San Antonio Spurs were the second best team last month, outscoring opponents by 9.5 points per 100 possessions. A gap of 3.2 points per 100 possessions separated the Spurs from the third-place Wizards.
The point being, projection systems are increasingly tilted West. As of today, 538’s NBA predictions give the Warriors and Spurs a combined 73 percent chance of winning the title (Warriors: 62 percent, Spurs: 11 percent). Throw in the Houston Rockets at three percent and the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder at two percent a piece, and the Western Conference has a predicted 80 percent chance of winning the title.
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The inverse of that is striking as well, after this difficult month for the Raptors and Cavaliers, the Eastern Conference now has a lower predicted probability of winning the title than at any point since the season began.
Obviously these projections are based on team performance to this point and they don’t account for things like the return of injured players or the intricacies of how each team matches up with certain opponents. Also, 538 displays some team’s title odds as less than one percent without specifying the decimal, so the numbers here are only for teams with at least a one percent chance of winning the championship, which is why they don’t always sum to 100 percent.
The good news for the Cavaliers and the rest of the Eastern Conference is that they aren’t exactly in unexplored territory. When the playoffs began last season, 538’s system gave the Warriors and Spurs a combined 71 percent chance of winning the title, and 80 percent for the Western Conference overall. The Cavaliers were at just eight percent when the playoffs began.
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The Cavaliers really found their rhythm in the early rounds of the playoffs, burying the Detroit Pistons and the Atlanta Hawks in an avalanche of 3-pointers. The title hopes for the Cavaliers and the rest of the Eastern Conference aren’t dead, but for any of these teams to challenge the Warriors or Spurs they’ll need a significant turn-around.