An Analysis of The 2015 NBA Finals Matchup

The NBA finals are exactly five days away, and I wanted to present an analysis breaking down the matchup between The Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers.

I used machine and statistical learning techniques to generate the most probable scenarios for the outcome of each game, and this is what I found.

Note that the probabilities listed above are not the probabilities for a team to win a specific game, they are the probabilities of a specific scenario occurring. Also, multiple scenarios can occur in a single game, so the probability of multiple scenarios occurring would be the sum of the individual ones. 

The Model Results So Far (Updated: June 11, 2015)

Game 1: Scenario Outcomes: 1 and 2 – GSW win

Game 2: Scenario Outcome: 9 – CLE win

Game 3: Scenario Outcomes: 5, 8 – CLE win

Thoughts so far: Despite GSW being down right now 2-1, I still believe that Cleveland’s wins were statistical anomalies. Cleveland’s Game 2 and Game 3 wins according to our model only had 1.07%, 9.34%, and 1.765% chances of occurring in this series. Whereas, the GSW Game 1 win had a 44% chance of occurring in this series.

Game 4: Scenario Outcome: 2 – GSW win

Updated: June 14, 2015

Game 5: Scenario Outcomes: 1,2 – GSW win

Thoughts: All of GSW wins have been the dominant scenarios in this series, i.e., Outcomes 1 and 2. All of CLE wins in this series have been statistical anomalies/outliers. This pattern continued in Game 5.

Updated: June 17, 2015

Game 6: Scenario Outcomes: 1,2 – GSW win

Another GSW win through the dominant scenarios in the series, as expected.