The NBA Finals are here! It comes as no surprise to us that this year’s NBA Finals are between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. In our NBA Playoff Simulation that we did back on April 16th, we predicted that the Warriors had a 51.6% chance of winning their conference and the Cavs had a 47.4% chance. Both were the conference favorites and both have now made it to this final stage.
Back in April, we gave Golden State a 39.3% chance of lifting the trophy and the Cavs a 20.0% chance. Proportionally, these odds haven’t changed very much, even with the injury to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving being day-to-day with various injuries.
Our NBA finals simulation was done based on 10,000 trials. Each trial was independent of the other trails. Our results are listed in the graph below.
NBA FInals Simulation
The results certainly don’t bode well for the Cavs. Of the 10,000 trials, Golden State won the series in 7,169 of them, while the Cavs won the series in 2,831. Another interesting note is that our simulation is showing that Golden State winning in 4 games is more popular than the most probable course of a Cleveland victory.
The sportsbooks are mostly in agreement with these assessments. At Bovada, the shortest odds are with Golden State winning in 7 at 13:5 odds. The second shortest odds are Golden State in 5 (7:2 odds), then Golden State in 6 (4:1 odds), but then have the Cavs winning in 6 at 5:1 odds.
Regardless of what the odds show, it is safe to say that anything could happen. With a star-studded cast of characters, this is going to be a fun NBA Finals to watch.