I don't really pay a great deal of attention to the NBA season until the playoffs and we are nearly finished with the first round of it now. As you would expect, in most of the bracket areas the higher seeded team is winning and in the case of the other side in the West, Oklahoma City tore through the Phoenix Suns in 4 straight games whereas the other play-in team, the Orlando Magic, or surprising everyone by actually leading, and in some cases dominating, the number 1 team in the East, the Detroit Pistons.
Detroit was the clear favorite in all of these games, and has an excellent regular season record. Orlando on the other hand barely made the play-in tournament but then just kind of put on a show of brilliance in every game since then.
While I have basically zero love for Orlando and I’ve kind of hated the Pistons since the 80’s due to the “bad boy” years, I do love an underdog story and this is something that is quite rare. Well, maybe not that rare. The Miami heat went from barely making the play-in tournament to making all the way to the Championship final running through a number one seed in the Milwaukee Bucks in the very first round of the tournament. Are we seeing something similar with the Magic right now?
At the moment Orlando is up 3-1 and have shown that they kind of have Detroit’s “number” in these games winning somewhat comfortably in 3 of the 4 games that have already been played. In their one loss Detroit looked like the number 1 seed for most of the game, but neither team made it to 100 points in that game, which was very defense oriented.
I believe that the bookmakers in Vegas must think that the attitude of the players has a lot to do with game results because even though Orlando has won 3 of the 4 games, Detroit is still a 10.5 point favorite to win their next meeting. The actual performance of the two teams doesn't indicate that this would be the case but there are a lot of things that can't be counted in basketball such as the Detroit players now truly feeling that their backs are against the wall and they need to fully give it all lest they get embarrassed and go home a lot earlier than had been hoped.
It is very unlikely that Detroit comes back from this
If stats can be trusted at all the likelihood of the Pistons overcoming a 3-1 situation is 4.4%. In the history of the NBA only 13 teams have EVER come back from being down 3-1. 277 teams on the other hand, have gone on to lose the series.
I guess the bookies think Detroit is going to do something magical tomorrow.