The NBA Finals this year has
proved more riveting than other years because of the ‘cruel’ and colorful
history of the protagonists. Golden State Warriors, led by Rick Barry, last won
the championship 40 years ago, in 1975. Cleveland Cavaliers … well, the Cavs
have never won the NBA title. The last time Cleveland won a major championship
was when the Browns, led by running back Jim Brown, who carried the ball 27
times and gained 114 yards, won the NFL title in 1964. That was 51 years ago!
And now the whole country
(and many other countries where basketball is the real ‘beautiful’ game) is
abuzz with the match-up between two of NBA’s biggest stars: Warriors’ Stephen
Curry and Cavaliers’ LeBron James.
Curry burst on the NBA
scene in the 2014-15 season, an intriguing and captivating MVP whose meteoric
rise has fueled the passions of Bay Area fans, even more than the unpredictable
but lovable characters of the San Francisco Giants who won the World Series
three times in the last five years.
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| Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors |
And LeBron James? Only
that the he is the best basketball player in the world, considered by many to
be the best ever, even better than Michael Jordan. When he left Cleveland for
Miami Heat in 2010, he was labeled a Judas who had sold his soul for lucre.
What time has wrought! All has been forgiven. Cleveland has again embraced
James as its redeemer, one who will lead the long-suffering city to the
Promised Land of sports.
Of the first two games
played in Oakland, California, neither team played to its full potential,
although LeBron showed with his statistics why he is the best. In the first
game, the Warriors trailed for most of the game and only pulled out a win in
overtime when the Cavs suddenly went cold. Simply put, the Warriors got lucky.
It is almost a given that
a team can get lucky several times in a 7-game series but rarely consecutively.
That’s what happened when James and company pulled out a win in the second game
that could easily have gone to the Warriors as well. The two games have been
sliced and diced in every conceivable data-driven way but after all the data
have been analyzed, it is still luck- mysterious, unquantifiable luck - that
held sway.
For the Cavs, the goal was
simple: snatch at least one game from the lion’s den. That’s what the team did.
For the Warriors, losing home court advantage would open up Pandora’s Box. That’s
what unfortunately happened.
So what now?
From the perspective of
statistics: If the claim is that the Cavaliers will win, and the significance
level is set at the usual 5 percent (0.05), then there is a 5 percent
probability that a Type I error is made, and the Warriors will triumph.
But as any statistician
will affirm, improbable events happen. And they happen with more regularity
than we think. There may be 1 in a million chance that someone will win the lottery,
but it is still 1 in a million, especially for the person who ends up winning
the lottery!
If the Warriors can win
either the third (6/9/15) or the fourth game (6/11/15) in Cleveland, the team
will win the NBA title in 7 games and send Bay Area fans to frenzy, removing
the lingering heartbreak inflicted annually by the hapless San Jose Sharks on
the loyalists. It will perhaps also mitigate the pain of the physical drought
California is suffering through now, even if for a week or so!
But how probable is that?
All statistics point to the distressing truth for Bay Area fans: The
probability is low. To win in King James’s court will be a monumental challenge
for Curry and his crew, even though statistics show that Curry is at his best
on the road.
If the Cavs take the next
two games, King James will likely deliver the title to Cleveland in six games,
ending a drought for the city that has lasted over half a century.
But what about the
improbable happening? Consider this fact dug up by Mark Purdy, sports columnist
for the San Jose Mercury News (6/9/15
edition): It turns out that Stephen Curry was born in the same maternity ward
of Summa Akron City Hospital in Akron, Ohio, in March 1988, where James LeBron
was born 4 years earlier, in December 1984.
Is that a fluke, a random
quirk, a pure happenstance? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, there are improbables,
and imponderables, that cannot be quantified completely, that lie outside the reach
of super-rigorous data analysis and blazingly efficient algorithms.
Warriors or Cavaliers? The
New Kid on the Block or the King?
As much as it breaks the heart
of a Bay Area fan, here is the prediction: Cavs in 6, with a margin of error of
plus/minus 5 percent.
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