The 14/16 Hypothesis: Year Two

by David A. Arnott on Sep 18, 2009 8:36 PM EDT

Before last season, the collective wisdom of visitors to Rufus on Fire was able to correctly predict 13 of the 16 NBA playoff teams. I suspect this exercise is much more difficult in the NFL and MLB than it is in the NBA, and I think that's a bad thing. It makes the regular season something of a formality. It's competitive enough that teams can't coast completely and make the postseason, but teams like the Spurs seem to have realized that they have enough talent on hand to chill out after a certain point in the season.

You can't do that in the other sports until you're assured of a spot, which only happens very late in the season. In the NBA, a bunch of teams are reasonably assured of the playoffs by the All Star break.

In any event, I've brought the polls back for another go. With the application I'm using this time around, I believe it will continue accepting votes indefinitely, but I'll count them up on October 20, a little more than a month from now, and post the results. The polls are after the jump.

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playoffs

The reason why it’s easier to predict NBA playoffs teams is because of the nature of the game and because of the fact the NBA, unlike NFL and MLB, has way more teams making the playoffs (just think the NBA has 16 teams and the MLB 8, making it easier to predict NBA playoffs teams). And, despite this, in the past two years the regular season has been far from being a formality. It came to a point almost every game counted since teams were so close in the standings and standings kept changing on a daily basis.

by hoopsfan007 on Sep 21, 2009 6:15 PM EDT reply actions