With eight games to go in the regular season, the Cavs are on the verge of locking up the #1 seed in the league for the second straight season. This, of course, means that playoff predictions are beginning to start up in earnest.
I’m not going to start looking at first round opponents just yet because the playoff seeding is still liable to shift too much her in the final two weeks. (I’d prefer not to waste a bunch of time talking about a first round match-up that never happens.) Instead, I want to begin to mentally prep myself (and everyone else, if they care) for the likely Eastern Conference Finals that we’ve been waiting for since last June: Cavs V. Magic, part 2.
Obviously, there are no guarantees that this series is going to happen, either. But practically every statistical measure I can find suggests that it should. Not only that, but the numbers also that if/when the match-up itself does happen, it’s likely to be excruciatingly close.
Here’s what the advanced team stats say right now.
Offensive Efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions):
Cavs = 109.2 (2nd); Magic = 108.5 (5th)
Defensive Efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions):
Cavs = 100.9 (8th) ; Magic = 99.7 (1st)
Efficiency Differential (Off Efficiency - Def Efficiency):
Cavs = +8.25 (2nd); Magic = +8.72 (1st)
Cleveland and Orlando are the only two teams in the East that rank in the top 10 in both Off Eff and Def Eff. Atlanta is the only other East team to rank in the top 10 in Efficiency Differential, but their 8th-place number (+4.62) pales in comparison to the Cavs and Magic. It’s better than half, but not by much.
In fact, even the third place team in Efficiency Differential—the mighty Los Angeles Lakers—takes a noticeable step down from the top two. After tonight’s loss to the Hornets, LAL’s differential drops to +5.97, or less than two-thirds of the Cavs’ and Magic’s.
In a nut shell, what does all this mean? Basically, that if you give every team in the league an equal number of possessions, the Cavs and Magic are going to be the best overall at both scoring and defending. They’re also going to be noticeably in a different class than the third place team (LAL) from an overall standpoint.
In addition, John Hollinger’s power rankings rate Orlando and Cleveland as #1 and #2, respectively, in the league as of tonight. While Hollinger doesn’t explain the exact formula for his rankings, he does explain that it weighs a number of factors that the efficiency metrics I mentioned above do not. For instance, Hollinger’s system tries to control for strength of schedule. It also lends more statistical value to a team’s recent performance than to their early performance. While the exact metrics vary depending on the point in the season that the rankings are done, at this point, the system values the most recent 25% of games more heavily than the previous 75%.
If we look at Hollinger’s actual ratings (i.e. the numbers themselves), we see a repeat of the general conclusions of the efficiency differential rankings. Orlando currently ranks first with a score of 107.683; Cleveland ranks second with a score of 107.325; and Atlanta is the only other East team to rank in the top 10. (Their 104.003 ranking sits them in the #9 spot.)
In short, Hollinger’s system suggests that not only have the Cavs and Magic been the two best teams in the league over the entire season, they’ve also been the two best teams over the past few weeks. If it’s not immediately clear why this matters, consider the Celtics. They began the season looking like the true title contenders most of the old school experts predicted them to be. Right now, though, the Cs rank 11th in Hollinger’s system, due largely to their post All-Star break performance, which can hardly be labeled much better than “decent”—especially if you value things like scoring margin over wins and losses (which Hollinger’s system does).
Simply put, the Celtics are still winning a fair amount of games, but the wins aren’t by as much and the losses are by much more than they were early in the season. And if Hollinger is to be believed, this matters more than their final record. Exhibit A in this category is the 2007 Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs. The Mavs finished the season with 9 more wins than the Spurs, but the Spurs killed the Mavs in scoring margin. The 67-win Mavs were then bounced in the opening round by Golden State, while the Spurs went on to win the title.
Conversely, the Cavs and Magic are both still balling at a high level.
Oh, and just to round out the list of team stats, the Cavs are 2nd in the league in True Shooting Percentage at 57.3%; the Magic are 3rd at 56.8%; and the Cavs are also 2nd in the league in Total Rebounding Rate (% of available rebounds grabbed) at 52.45, while the Magic are 4th at 51.87. In case you’re wondering, the teams separating Cleveland and Orlando from the top of the list AND from each other in both of these last two categories are all Western teams.
In fact, what becomes really remarkable as you go down the lists is how close the Cavs and Magic are even in some of the categories where neither performs particularly well. For instance, Orlando is tied for 19th in the league in Turnover Rate (% of possessions ending in a TO) with a 13.69 rating; Cleveland is 17th with a 13.58 rating. Orlando is 25th in Offensive Rebounding Rate at 24.49; Cleveland is 21st at 25.18. So neither team is particularly great on the defensive glass, and neither is particularly good at holding onto the ball. Yet in both of these cases where they suck (relatively speaking), the Cavs and Magic still suck about equally as bad as one another.
Simply put, both teams meet strength with strength and weakness with weakness. They also even play the game at an almost identical pace. Orlando averages 93.7 possessions per 48 minutes (24th overall); Cleveland averages 93.0 (26th). As Mike pointed out recently, the pace similarity also suggests that the two teams are governed by very similar coaching philosophies: execute in the half-court unless a blatant opportunity to run presents itself, because this approach will best allow you to get back on defense effectively.
Again, there’s no way for us to know how any of this is going to play out. Injuries or statistical anomalies could prevent the match-up from either happening at all, or from playing out in an unexpected way. But one thing is for certain: if the statistics are accurate, there is no feasible way that I’m going to be able to watch the Eastern Conference Finals sober, because the victor is going to be determined by the thinnest of margins.
-T.
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