After months without basketball, the NBA is set to return to the hardwood July 30 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World near Orlando. However, only 22 teams (nine from the Eastern Conference and 13 from the Western Conference) have a chance of making the playoffs. Each team invited to vie for the postseason will first play eight games to finish the regular season before entering the traditional 16-team playoff format.
It’s a new wrinkle but one that figures to produce the same results we would expect had the season concluded normally.
At the time of the shutdown, the Milwaukee Bucks were 53-12, giving them a seven-win cushion over the Toronto Raptors, who are the No. 2 seed in the East. Using its actual win-loss record; its expected win-loss record based on points scored and allowed, also known as its Pythagorean winning percentage; and its regressed win-loss record to account for a small sample size of games played, we can simulate the restart and pencil Milwaukee in for 59 wins at the end of the next eight games, giving it the same seven-game cushion heading into the postseason. In fact, none of the teams qualifying for the postseason at the time play was suspended are in significant jeopardy of losing their spots. There might be some seed changes — the Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers could switch places, as could the Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder and Dallas Mavericks — but they were all expected to be playoff teams under normal circumstances, leaving little drama.
Not even the teams below the No. 8 seed line (the Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs and Phoenix Suns) will provide much of a spark. If any of those teams gets within four games of the No. 8 seed, they would trigger a play-in tournament, which would decide who will face the top seed in the conference.
For the Wizards, that’s a tough task. Forward Davis Bertans, their best three-point shooter, opted out last month. Two-time all-star guard Bradley Beal announced he will not play because of a shoulder injury. Guards Gary Payton II and Garrison Mathews and center Thomas Bryant did not travel with the team to Orlando after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. And point guard John Wall, a five-time all-star, remains unavailable after suffering an Achilles’ tendon injury in January 2019. The Wizards (24-40) are 5½ games back of the No. 8 seed Orlando Magic (30-35), meaning they need to close the gap by 1½ games for a play-in opportunity. We saw that happen in less than 2 percent of our simulations, giving them odds of roughly 55-1.
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The Trail Blazers, Pelicans and Kings are 3½ games behind the No. 8 seed Memphis Grizzlies in the West. The Trail Blazers get center Jusuf Nurkic and power forward Zach Collins back in the lineup, and the Pelicans will welcome back Zion Williamson, bolstering each team’s chances to make the postseason cut. Based on our simulations, all three teams currently on the outside looking in should be in position to force their way into the play-in round. In terms of excitement produced by this format, though, that’s about the extent of it.
2020 projection | Proj losses | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Memphis Grizzlies | |||
Portland Trail Blazers | |||
New Orleans Pelicans | |||
Sacramento Kings |
Remember, the prize is a date with the top seed in the first round of the playoffs, so whichever squad makes the cut is likely to make a quick exit. Since 2003, the year the first round was changed from best-of-five to best-of-seven, the No. 1 seed has a 124-35 record (a .780 winning percentage) against the No. 8 seed. Its series record is 31-3 with a dozen sweeps. If the Wizards play the Bucks, they would have less than a 1 percent chance of defeating Milwaukee in a seven-game series, with a sweep occurring 59 percent of the time. The Trail Blazers, Pelicans and Kings would suffer a similar fate against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Each would have less than a 3 percent chance of beating the Lakers in a seven-game series, with a sweep likely in almost half of the outcomes for each team.
The top contenders for the NBA title — the Bucks, Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers — also remain at the top of the list. Milwaukee suffers a slight decrease from 39 to 35 percent in its title odds but remains the front-runner for the 2020 title.
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