Monday, June 3, 2013

2013 NBA Playoffs predictions: Grade after the Heat-Pacers series

All the basketball experts from ESPN who have an opinion  predicted the Heat would win the conference final against the Indiana Pacers, so all of them get some improvement in their overall records. Here are the percentages for the people who have put forward an opinion on all fourteen contests so far.

Abbott 65.0%
Adande 70.0%
Arnovitz 70.0%
Elhassan 72.9%
Gutierrez 66.4%
Haberstroh 74.7%
Pelton 70.7%
Stein 62.1%
Wallace 72.1%
Windhorst 67.1%

If this were a math class I was teaching, I would not be happy. The median score is 70%, which is to say that nearly half the class is failing. The last question - Spurs or Heat - should be the toughest question of all.

To be fair, if we look at people who have had predictions in more than ten of fourteen series, we have some better students.

Barry (13 of 14 series) 64.6%
Ford (13 of 14 series) 84.6%
Legler (12 of 14 series) 88.3%
Palmer (12 of 14 series) 67.5%
Thorpe (11 of 14 series) 76.4%

I don't publish this stuff to mock the participants. When there is as much randomness as we have in sporting events, prediction gets much harder than it is in American elections that drag on for months and months.

I will return to this topic at the end of the final series, which should be over in a week or two at the most.

No comments:

Post a Comment