One consequence of the calendar length of the NBA Playoffs is that by the time the Finals roll around, we’ve mostly forgotten about seeds. This doesn’t happen in college basketball. In the NBA, it does. From what I’m reading elsewhere, it sounds like I’m not alone in needing to remind myself that this Miami Heat team is the same one we saw trail the Bulls late in the fourth quarter of the Play-In Tournament’s concluding game nearly two whole months ago. Yes, it’s getting its airtime, yes, it’s being mentioned, but compared to, say, Florida Atlantic in the NCAA Tournament this year? It’s a quiet piece of the narrative. Especially when considering that the NBA isn’t exactly known for having a whole lot of chaos. This is unusual. This is a Cinderella run. This is the biggest Cinderella run the NBA has ever seen.
It’s possible any forgetfulness happening is also a product of us all collectively not taking NBA seedings too seriously. The Warriors and Lakers were seeded 6th and 7th in the West. The Nets were seeded 7th last year in the East. All three of those teams enjoyed love in the betting markets. It’s also worth remembering that without the Play-In Tournament existing, the Heat would have been the 7-seed, and they were only one game back from taking the 6-seed after a season featuring a lot of injuries. The Heat are better than a conventional 8-seed.
Maybe, then, it’s this status, and the parallels it creates between this Heat team and the 1999 Knicks (the only other 8-seed to ever make the Finals across 40 years of NBA 8-seeds) that keeps us from bellowing as loudly about the Cinderella Heat as we would if it were, say, the Hawks. If it is, it shouldn’t be. Because even if the Heat were a 6-seed, if you think that was their natural seed, this would be historic.
Since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984, only two teams have made the NBA Finals while seeded 6th or worse. Only three have made it while seeded 5th or worse. Those ’99 Knicks are the famous ones, the 8-seed who could, the 8-seed partially an 8-seed because there was a lockout that year and the season was only 50 games. They’re lonelier than they look, though. No 7-seed has ever made the Finals. Only the 1995 Rockets made it as a 6-seed, and both they and those Knicks played in an era in which the first round was only five games, again introducing more uncertainty by shrinking the sample. Even the 5-seed who made it, the 2020 Heat, played in a bizarre environment, finishing the season and playing out the postseason in the infamous Bubble. The Heat aren’t a normal 8-seed, but they’re the most normal 5, 6, 7, or 8-seed to make the NBA Finals. After last night, they have a chance to win it all, something only two teams in the whole history of the NBA have done when seeded 4th or worse (the 1969 Celtics are the other one). Yes, Giannis was hurt in the first round. The Heat still took that series in five games.
It’s probably good that we’re focusing so much more energy on how exactly the Heat are doing this rather than at the reasonable amazement that the Heat are doing this. It’s gotten Jimmy Butler his due. It’s given Caleb Martin and Gabe Vincent moments in the sun. It’s altered forever the reputation of Erik Spoelstra, prompting a lot of, “Oh yeah, that guy can coach,” from those of us prone to thinking of him as merely the guy who had LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in the same huddle. It’s glorified Pat Riley anew as a leader, pushing him further in the race to be considered the greatest leader in NBA history. It’s been a testament to the often-eyeroll-inducing “Heat Culture.” It’s been wild, but it’s also fit the reputation this franchise has sought for itself, because every time the Heat look like they’re done—in the Play-In Tournament, after Game 2 against the Bucks, after Game 6 against the Celtics, at halftime last night—they rise again. It’s hard to stop Nikola Jokić, but it’s also hard to stop an entire team operating as well as this one is operating. The whole really has been greater than the sum of the parts. That’s what, for the Heat, it’s supposed to be about.
At the same time, though, at some level this is still chaos, and the Heat still shouldn’t be here. The Heat still finished the regular season seven games behind the Cavaliers. The Heat still let the Bulls nearly end their playoffs before they’d officially started. The Heat are now three wins away from a title, with home-court advantage heading into Game 3. This is nuts. This is absolutely nuts.
The Knights Are Good
The Vegas Knights finished the regular season tied for fourth in the NHL in points, only two back of Carolina for second in the league. They opened the playoffs with the eighth-longest odds to win the Stanley Cup, their probability implied to be less than half that of the Avalanche, who finished the season two points behind them.
It’s hard to believe, given how much of a sensation this franchise was five years ago in their expansion season run to the Stanley Cup Finals, but the hockey world has been quiet about the Knights. They’re a little like the Nuggets if you were to take away the Nuggets’ involvement in the MVP conversation and tone down the pleasure of watching them play offense. The Knights aren’t exceptional scorers. They aren’t the best defending team in the league. They’re just a good hockey team. So far these playoffs, that’s been more than enough.
I’m in a dangerous place, following hockey, which is that it’s the sport of the Big Four I know least about and I’m learning about it largely through the objective but haphazard eyes of Gelo, a model I built myself. I have no pulse on the conventional wisdom within hockey media, and my primary lens is a rather basic set of numbers. I wonder, though, if this has been to our advantage. Watching these playoffs through Gelo, it hasn’t been surprising to see Vegas excel. The only series in which they were an underdog was against the Oilers, and with that one, Gelo agreed Edmonton was the better team but made a lot out of Vegas’s home-ice advantage, an inclination that turned out to be prescient. This is a scattered thought, but the gist of this is that it shouldn’t be so surprising for Vegas to be here, at least relative to what we knew in April. Before the year? Sure. But after the regular season, I don’t really understand why more didn’t recognize what Vegas had.
The State of the Futures
For those of you following the bets, a little look behind the curtain:
I’m concerned about our ability to keep winning MLB moneylines. May was bad, and June hasn’t been great so far, though it’s still of course so young. We’re going to keep wrestling them, and we’ll hopefully be able to stay in the black without switching to totals or run lines, but there’s a chance we’ll shut that effort down. We’ve been trying too long in that market to allow ourselves to keep losing in it, which is what we’ve done over the long term.
In the more immediate term, the thing that matters about MLB moneylines is that they’re dictating where our benchmarks lie for what constitutes different levels of success in our NBA and NHL futures portfolios. Right now, we have one path open for returning to profitability all-time, and that’s the Heat and the Knights each winning a title. If we don’t start winning more baseball bets, that path is going to close because the gap to profitability is going to become too large. If that path closes, we’re then going to have to either accept that it’s closed our stretch ourselves, reversing our hedge and pouring more into the Heat and Knights.
It’s a great set of problems to have—we’re up a lot on 2023, we’re up even more over the last eleven months since last hockey season ended, we’re really up over those eleven months if you take motorsports out of the equation—but it’s all interwoven, and for those who follow us especially closely, we want to show that to you to help explain some of our decision-making process. We still think the value’s on the Knights and the Heat, and we still think the probability’s on the Knights and the Nuggets. With baseball, we’re not quite sure what to think.
Another thing to know? Gelo reacts quickly and it reacts to margin. It thinks the Knights pounded the Panthers in Game 1, and it thinks that matters. This is preferable to a lot of systems (our alternatives were to underreact), and it irons out over time, but Gelo is swinging more than the market is, and some of that is good but a lot of it is that our model is noisy.
Marcus Stroman: Ace?
We’ve talked a lot about the Cubs’ weak pitching these last six or seven months, and to hear the narrative tell it, Marcus Stroman is proving us wrong. Six days after his complete game shutout of the Rays, Stroman went out yesterday and turned in six more innings without allowing an earned run, shutting down the Padres and having a little fun imitating the little foot slide Juan Soto does when he takes a pitch.
Stroman has, to his credit, been achieving great results. He leads all major league pitchers in bWAR, which means: Teams are not scoring against Marcus Stroman. He’s within four outs of the league lead in innings pitched, another hallmark of an ace, he’s got that 2.39 ERA, he’s strong defensively himself which probably helps keep that .227 BABIP so low. But it’s because of that BABIP that fWAR has him only 17th in pitcher WAR, with his FIP—more predictive of future results than ERA—a full run higher per nine innings, and his xERA—also more predictive of future results than ERA—even higher.
I don’t say all of this to put Marcus Stroman down. Rather, as both the trade deadline and Stroman’s player option approach, I say this to say that Cubs fans shouldn’t hope on Stroman to be the guy leading the rotation when the franchise makes its return to October. The FIP is real—he can be a sub-4.00 guy and has consistently been that his entire career—but he hasn’t been sub-3.00 in the metric since his rookie season, now nearly a decade ago. Marcus Stroman is good, and a good part of good teams, but if the choice is between holding on to him to attempt to extend him and trading him for prospect value while opening up capital and appetite to chase a true top-line starter (Aaron Nola this offseason, Shane Bieber or Max Fried next offseason), it’s a clear choice. The choice isn’t actually that binary, but there’s some overlap, and the choice is going to be clear, and so what I’m really trying to do here is lessen the sadness that comes should the Cubs deal the guy over these next two months. It’s going to be ok. Marcus Stroman was never part of the championship plan.
As for tonight: Kyle Hendricks hasn’t pitched to the level of his results so far, but Blake Snell’s really been struggling. Would be a great series to win. Every series is a great one to win, but would be a great series to win.
