Blazer Banter

Dean Oliver: Blazers-Rockets Series Rates Highest With “Excitement Factor” Metric

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The NBA playoffs in 2014 have been amazing.

Road teams are 21-15 so far in the playoffs and it seems like almost every game is coming down to the wire.

However, according to Dean Oliver of ESPN’s Stats And Info department and basketball stats pioneer (author of Basketball On Paper), the series between Portland and Houston has been the most exciting in terms of how often the win probability changes for both teams during the game.

What is the Excitement Factor? 

Excitement: Amount of change in win probability during the game. 

Winner Chance: Average in-game win probability that the eventual winner had during the game.

The Portland Trail Blazers–Houston Rockets series

Game Series Score Excitement Winner Chance
1 POR-HOU 122-120* 1228% 32%
2 POR-HOU 112-105 671% 56%
3 HOU-POR 121-105* 945% 58%
4 HOU-POR 120-123* 1081% 47%

…

Overall, the average game in the Portland-Houston series has had a total change of in-game win probability of 981 percent. This is higher than the 804 percent in the Memphis-OKC series.

It’s a pretty interesting look at how crazy this series has been. Read the rest here.

I would have guessed the same thing just based on the ups and downs of my twitter feed during games.

Can’t wait to do it again tonight.

Erik Gundersen

Erik Gundersen

Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.

Scroll to top