Stats Favor Heat Championship...For Now
DALLAS (CBSMiami.com) – Miami Heat head coach may not be a big fan of statistics as his team nears an NBA Championship, but some numbers should give Heat fans plenty to look forward to in the next few games of the NBA Finals.
According to basketball-reference.com, after the Heat's Game 3 victory and with the Heat leading 2-1 in the Finals, the Heat currently have a 69 percent chance of winning the NBA Championship.
The Heat have had a better than 50 percent chance of winning the NBA title at the end of each quarter of all three games, with the exception being the fourth quarter of Game 2.
Looking deeper into the numbers, in a seven-game series in a 2-3-2 home/away format, the team that won Game 1 has a 66 percent chance of winning the entire series. And if the home team, this time being the Heat, take a 2-1 lead heading into Game 4, there chance of winning improves to 69.3 percent at the start of the game.
If the Heat manages to pull out to a 3-1 advantage with a Game 4 victory Tuesday night, their likelihood of winning the series jumps to 86 percent. An away team, the Mavericks, only has a 9.6 percent chance of coming back and winning the series.
But, if the Mavericks tie the series up at 2-2 with a victory in Game 4, then all bets are off. Heading into a Game 5 of a series in a 2-3-2 format would leave the away team in the catbird's seat, with a 55 percent chance of winning the series.
And there is precedent for a team choking away a series, coincidentally enough being the 2006 NBA Finals. By the start of the fourth quarter in Game 3 of the 2006 Finals, the Mavs had a 90 percent chance of winning the title. A huge comeback and a Dwyane Wade-filled series later, and the Mavs had the biggest collapse in the NBA Finals dating back to 1992.
So, with the NBA Finals set for Game 4, the Heat need to play like their proverbial backs are against the wall to keep their chances of winning the 2011 NBA Championship in positive numbers.
