If you thought the Oklahoma City Thunder would be sitting comfortably in seventh place in the Western Conference more than halfway through the season, raise your hand.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
The idea that the Thunder was a playoff team at the start of the season seemed farfetched at best. The team had traded away their two top players in the offseason and looked like they were headed straight for a rebuild.
But a funny thing happened on the way to rebuilding.
Billy Donovan embraced a three point-guard rotation around the time that Terrance Ferguson started experiencing hip soreness midway through December. Since then, Oklahoma City has gone 20-8, including Wednesday night’s win over the Sacramento Kings.
They’ve been playing so well, in fact, that they’ve essentially guaranteed themselves a spot in the postseason.
According to Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman, “both ESPN and basketball-reference.com estimate the Thunder’s playoff chances at virtually certain – ESPN at 99.8 percent and basketball-reference at 99.9 percent.”
But how accurate are they? Pretty darn accurate, apparently.
“The playoff probability reports will be generated on a daily basis until the end of the regular season. The probabilities are empirical estimates based on simulating the remainder of the season 7,500 times. The method has been tried and tested: it was used to win the TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown in both 2007 and 2008.”
As it stands right now, basketball-reference.com projects the Thunder as a seven-seed but allows for the probability that OKC could climb to No. 6 (26.4%) or No. 5 (14.6%) seed.
The likelihood of Oklahoma City winning the Western Conference finals is pretty slim, basketball-reference.com only gives it about a 3.6% chance of happening, and an NBA title just a mere .7%.
ESPN is a bit lower, and, as noted by Tramel, the outlet gives OKC a .1% shot at winning the NBA Championship.
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
