![]() Largest share of team possessions an individual player was responsible for in the playoffs,* 1977-2018 Season The only player (minimum 12 games played) who’s handled a higher percentage of possessions in any postseason since the merger? James himself in his 2015 playoff campaign, when he nearly willed an undermanned Cavs squad past the Warriors: LeBron’s workload is historic (again) Through a combination of shooting, ball handling and rebounding, LeBron has personally been responsible for about 38 percent of the Cavs’ possessions when he’s on the floor in these playoffs. But in these playoffs, his workload is approaching a level that’s unprecedented even by his standards. James has built an entire career out of doing everything for his teams: scoring, distributing, rebounding, defending and countless other little on-court acts that help you win games. We can split hairs about how much of a favorite Golden State should be, but no matter how you slice it, upsets of this magnitude basically never happen on this stage. That’s because the NBA Finals are particularly unkind to underdogs. Unfortunately for LeBron James and the Cavs, though, none of the underdogs on the list above ended up winning the championship. The biggest NBA Finals underdogs since 1977Īccording to probabilities generated by pre-series Elo ratings (Our interactive model gives the Cavs a slightly better chance because it takes into account things that Elo alone ignores, including playoff experience and travel distance.) That’s still the eighth-lowest of any Finals underdog since the 1976 ABA-NBA merger, but it’s actually about double what the Cavs’ odds were heading into last year’s Finals - and only a bit worse than Cleveland’s 27 percent probability before the 2016 Finals (which they won, of course, in one of the greatest upsets in NBA history). Based on both teams’ pre-series ratings, Cleveland has roughly a 20 percent probability of beating the Warriors. Our own Elo model is slightly more optimistic about the Cavs’ chances. (The Lakers ended up cruising to victory in five games.) Using the archived numbers at, which go back to the 1998-99 season, the only Finals matchup more lopsided than this one came in 2001, when the Los Angeles Lakers had an implied 94 percent probability of beating the Philadelphia 76ers. The Westgate SuperBook installed the Warriors as 1-to-10 favorites going into the series, which translates to about an 89 percent probability of winning after adjusting for the vigorish. ![]() Is this the biggest NBA Finals mismatch ever? According to the Las Vegas bookmakers, it’s in the conversation. ![]() Here are six numbers to keep an eye on as we see whether the Warriors can hang onto their title, or if the Cavs can shock the world again. And although this year’s version contains many of the same characters as earlier sequels, there are just enough possibilities here to keep things, well, interesting - albeit probably still not competitive. Now we’re left with the matchup that has become as much a part of late spring as commencement speeches and pollen allergies. 1 Another rematch looked far from inevitable just a handful of days ago - that part was interesting! (As long as you put aside the generally lopsided nature of most games this postseason.) The Houston Rockets and Boston Celtics helped make the Warriors and Cavs work harder to get here than they ever had to before. That premise ended up mostly holding true this season: Although it’s Cleveland and Golden State in the NBA Finals once again, their fourth consecutive rendezvous was also nearly called off. Last summer, we speculated that the NBA was getting more interesting, if not more competitive.
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