Simple RPM Predictions for the Second Round
By Nick Restifo
Apr 23, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) celebrates a win in overtime with teammates guard Shaun Livingston (34) and forward Harrison Barnes (40) as New Orleans Pelicans forward Anthony Davis (23) walks off the court at the end of game three of the first round of the NBA Playoffs at the Smoothie King Center. The Warriors defeated the Pelicans 123-119 in overtime. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
The prediction percentages listed here are based on 10,000 simulations of the second round, where the home team winning each game is decided by whether or not their predicted chance of winning is over a randomly generated number between 0 and 1.
| Team | 4 Game Series Win% | 5 Game Series Wins% | 6 Game Series Wins% | 7 Game Series Wins% | Win% |
| GS | 27.14% | 36.00% | 17.03% | 12.88% | 93.05% |
| CLE | 13.88% | 31.27% | 16.26% | 21.89% | 83.30% |
| ATL | 11.77% | 31.91% | 16.03% | 22.63% | 82.34% |
| LAC | 10.78% | 15.65% | 25.19% | 13.40% | 65.02% |
| HOU | 2.62% | 9.06% | 7.44% | 15.86% | 34.98% |
| WSH | 1.05% | 2.02% | 9.74% | 4.85% | 17.66% |
| CHI | 0.98% | 2.23% | 8.36% | 5.13% | 16.70% |
| MEM | 0.39% | 0.75% | 3.40% | 2.41% | 6.95% |
The chance of the home team winning is done by three different models, a CRT decision tree, a Bayesian network, and a logistic regression, which are all trained on all playoff games since 2013-2014 (as far back as publicly available RPM goes), and are based on the minute-weighted RPM of each team. The minutes played average of each player during the first round of the 2015 NBA playoffs is used as their minute weighting for each future game, and the RPM used for each player is each player’s regular season RPM.
These predictions only take into account the weighted RPM of each team, and are trained on a very small amount of data, so they should be taken with a significant grain of salt. However, these models do indirectly account for injuries, like the dubious status of Mike Conley on the Grizzlies, for example.
By this and any other methodology, the closest second round series will be Houston/LA. This series should go to 7 games a whopping 29.26% of the time. These predictions really speak to the RPM leviathan that is the Golden State Warriors as well. Expected to best the Conley-less (or at least Conley-lesser) Memphis Grizzlies an incredible 93.05% of the time, the Warriors have, by far and away, the largest minute weighted RPM sum average of 880.62. The Cavaliers, the next highest, have a minute weighted RPM sum average of 648.21.
It should be a fun second round. Warriors in 5, Cavs in 5, Hawks in 5, Clippers in 6.