Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio Spurs and the Greatest First Round Matchups
By Guest Post
May 2, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Antonio Spurs center Boris Diaw (33) and guard Patty Mills (8) defend Los Angeles Clippers guard Jamal Crawford (11) in the second half of game seven of the first round of the NBA Playoffs at Staples Center. Clippers won 111-109. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
We’re proud to present this guest post from Positive Residual. That moniker (@presidual) is the nom de plume of a Los Angeles sports enthusiast who follows the cutting edge of baseball and basketball. A policy analyst by training, he writes occasionally for The Cauldron and at medium.com/@presidual.
In the aftermath of a thrilling game seven, punctuated by Chris Paul’s “miraculous” shot, many observers proclaimed the Clippers-Spurs series an instant classic. But how does it stack up against other recent first-round matchups?
One way to answer this question is by looking at the Excitement Index (EI). This metric, developed by Inpredictable’s Michael Beuoy, measures the cumulative movement in win probability during a game. The higher the index score, the more twists, turns, and suspense for fans to enjoy.
Although the Excitement Index only goes back to the 2012 NBA Playoffs, it gives us enough data to put the Clippers-Spurs series in context. Here are the top five first-round matchups:
As we can see from the table, the Clippers-Spurs series ranks third over the past four postseasons. It trails two matchups from last year alone: Houston-Portland and Memphis-Oklahoma City. Indeed, the 2014 playoffs boast three of the top five (and half of the top ten). How quickly we forget our immediate past.
One might quibble with the Houston-Portland series because it went just six games, but it has other things working in its favor. First, when we dig deeper into the numbers and examine game-by-game Excitement Indices, we find that it ranged from 6.5 to 14.3. Since a 6.5 score is strong enough for a top-ten ranking, it tells us that every game in the series was high-intensity — a fact that was corroborated by the relatively low average margin of victory (MOV). Other matchups, including the Clippers-Spurs (whose game three was a 27-point drubbing), did not have the same consistency in quality.
Moreover, the Houston-Portland series featured a high “Comeback Factor” (CBF). Measuring the victorious team’s chances of winning at its lowest point, this metric indicates whether a game has the added tension that comes with a rally. The opening and final games between the Rockets and Blazers lived up to the hype. The former was a 122–120 overtime thriller that saw the Blazers overcome an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter. The latter had Damian Lillard’s memorable buzzer-beater to close the series.
This post is not intended to diminish the Clippers’ accomplishment, nor does it claim that the Excitement Index is the definitive method of evaluating games. Rather, it aims to bring everything into perspective. Amid the euphoria of a sensational seven-game series, it’s easy to fall prey to the sports equivalent ofrecency bias and neglect what’s happened in the past. Advanced analytics can help us avoid such a trap.