How I Am Using My NBA Model To Forecast My Birthday Plans
What are the odds I can travel to California for a Nuggets Playoff game?
I don’t usually make big plans for my birthday. But this year, I’m thinking about doing things a little differently.
My birthday is April 27, which conveniently falls during the first round of the NBA Playoffs. I’m a big Denver Nuggets fan, so… why not celebrate by catching a playoff game in person?
But there’s a catch: I’ll have to travel. I don’t live in Denver. I’ve never even been there. (More on why I root for the Nuggets in the footnotes.1) Well, I was at the Denver airport once—but I immediately boarded a shuttle to Colorado Springs to do comedy shows.
I live in New York City, and since the Knicks2 and Nuggets are in different conferences, there’s no chance of this being a local game for me.
That leaves me with two options: I can fly to Denver for a Nuggets home game, or I can travel to the city where their first-round opponent plays.
The former is a solid option—I’d like to go to Denver and see more than just the airport. (No disrespect to the airport. It seemed like a solid airport.)
But depending on the opponent, the latter could be even better!
Ideally, I’d like the Nuggets to face the Clippers, Lakers, or Warriors. That way, I can travel to either Los Angeles or San Francisco—two cities of personal significance to me. I grew up in Southern California, and I lived in the Bay Area for 11 years after moving there for college in 2007. If the game is in LA, I can visit family; if it’s in SF, I can meet up with old coworkers and college friends. And in both cases, I’d have a free place to stay. Win-win.
But… how likely is it that one of these three scenarios actually happens?
The answer isn’t entirely obvious right now. The Western Conference has been extremely competitive this season, and with fewer than 10 games left, almost none of the playoff seeding is set. The Thunder have locked up the top seed, but after that, it’s pretty wide open.
See the latest Western Conference standings below:
As you can see, nearly everything is still up for grabs. The No. 2 and No. 8 seeds are separated by just 5.5 games. Denver is only 2 games behind Houston for the No. 2 seed, but just 3.5 games ahead of the Clippers for the No. 8 seed. With six games remaining, the Nuggets could finish as high as the No. 2 seed or miss the playoffs entirely. (The latter would happen if they fall to No. 7 or lower and lose in the SoFi3 NBA Play-In Tournament.)
A lot can shift between now and the end of the regular season—especially for the No. 2 through No. 6 seeds. And because the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds are decided by the Play-In Tournament (a mini tournament featuring the No. 7 through No. 10 teams), those spots are just as unpredictable.
All of which is to say: It’s hard to know whether I’ll have the option of traveling to California for a Nuggets playoff game.
Fortunately, this is exactly the kind of question I can answer probabilistically with my NBA forecasting model. For those unfamiliar, the model generates ratings for all 30 NBA teams and uses those ratings to run 20,000 simulations of the remaining schedule. I then use the results to estimate the probability of various outcomes—like who will win the NBA Championship. Or, you know… who the Nuggets might play in the first round of the playoffs.
This morning, when I refreshed the model, I tweaked the code to log which team the Nuggets face in the first round of the playoffs in each simulation. (Assuming they make the playoffs. There’s about a 1-in-1,000 chance that they don’t.) This gives me the probability of the Nuggets facing each potential opponent—and how likely it is that the opponent is from California.
Here are the results:
These are some promising results. The top two most likely opponents are the Warriors and Clippers—both California teams. The three matchups I’m rooting for—Clippers, Lakers, and Warriors—have a combined probability of 60 percent. So the odds are in my favor: there’s a better-than-even chance I’ll have the opportunity to see the Nuggets in California on my birthday.
Whether I actually go is another question. Might be time to run some simulations involving flight prices, general life obligations, and whether I can really justify this as a “necessary birthday expense.”
My grandpa was from Serbia, just like Nikola Jokić. As a result, I like Jokić and root for the Nuggets. Rooting for Jokić and the Nuggets is basically my version of going to the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
I did not mention the Nets because they are already out of playoff contention.
That’s the actual name. The NBA has way too many corporate sponsors. Check the standings on their website and you’ll see: “PLAYOFF PICTURE: Presented by Google.” Lame!