2016 NBA Playoff Simulation

 in Pro Basketball / Sports Predictions by (updated 1315 days ago)

The 2016 NBA regular season has ended and the playoffs get started on Saturday, April 16th. We have our final NBA regular season computer ratings posted here. Also, individual game predictions will be posted through out the playoffs and can be found on our game prediction page here. The simulations that we have run are largely determined on the performance of the teams in the regular season. This incorporates how teams fared in each game and Vegas’s perception of each team.

NBA Playoff Simulation – NBA Finals

With the NBA Finals here, we ran our a simulation 10,000 times to see who would come out as champions of the NBA. The results of the simulation are below:
NBA Finals 2016 Simulation

Before the series starts, we have the Cavs as a 38.2% chance to win the series and give the Warriors a 61.8% chance.

NBA Playoff Simulation – Pre-Playoffs

We ran 2,500 simulations to find out how far each of the sixteen teams would go in the NBA playoffs. The results of these simulations can be found below. We have listed the odds to determine the outcome of every round in the playoffs.

Odds to win 2016 NBA Championship

Last year right before playoff time, we gave the Golden State Warriors a 39.3% to win it all and they didn’t disappoint. Last year, we had the Cleveland Cavaliers winning it all 20.0% of the time, but this year those numbers drop down to only 9.3%.

In the East, the Cavs are still the team to beat, however, Toronto, Atlanta and Miami all have over a 10% chance to make the NBA Finals.

The West, while not very interesting in the First Round looks to get a lot more competitive in the Second Round and beyond. Golden State, San Antonio and Oklahoma City combine to have a 77% chance of winning the NBA Championship. And even the Clippers have a little shot of making a run if they can get a little surge here at the end of the season.

In all, the West’s dominance still shows as the simulation shows that all eight teams in the East combine to only have a 21.6% chance of winning the entire champion. That means Golden State is almost twice as likely to win it all then a team from the East.

Team Prob of Making 2nd Round Prob of Making Conf Finals Prob of Winning Conference Prob of Winning NBA Championship
Golden State
90.9%
77%
47.4%
39.2%
San Antonio
97.2%
59.9%
30%
24.8%
Oklahoma City
91.5%
38.9%
18.4%
13%
Cleveland
82.2%
53.5%
36.5%
9.3%
Toronto
72.8%
45.2%
21.1%
4.4%
Atlanta
63.6%
29%
16.3%
3.9%
Miami
54.8%
25.7%
10.3%
1.7%
LA Clippers
67.5%
15.2%
3.5%
1.4%
Boston
36.4%
13.3%
6.4%
1.2%
Charlotte
45.2%
19.6%
5.6%
0.6%
Indiana
27.2%
9.5%
2.3%
0.3%
Detroit
17.8%
4.2%
1.5%
0.2%
Portland
32.5%
4.6%
0.4%
0%
Dallas
8.5%
0.8%
0.1%
0%
Houston
9.1%
3.2%
0.2%
0%
Memphis
2.8%
0.4%
0%
0%