If you remember two weeks ago, we discussed a model that could provide realistic playoff series predictions. There were a fair amount of predictions that mirrored the real life occurrences, like this:
Now it’s your turn.
With this R Shiny interactive web tool, you can generate playoff series predictions for any competing teams in this upcoming playoff race or hypothetical matchups including past Finals participants, like the ’96 Chicago Bulls or ’01 Los Angeles Lakers (or any other historical team if you’d like). Either check this link for the fullscreen version or continue below.
Additionally, for this prediction set, I ridge-regressed the coefficients to provide a better estimate. It will include offensive ratings, defensive ratings, playoff seed layouts, and other variables from our multinomial model.
There were some probability quirks that an increased sample size (and a full slate of best-of-seven series) would go a long way to refining.
Torn between the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Clippers? Debating if the Chicago Bulls can pull off an upset over the Boston Celtics? Do you think the Milwaukee Bucks can make light work of the Toronto Raptors? Put your theories to the test before the series tips off. Have fun with it, y’all. You can draw information from teams that are not listed in the web application, too.
