We've Made A Slight Correction To Our NBA Model. (Sorry, Luka!)
Going into the playoffs, our NBA model wasn't particularly high on the Dallas Mavericks' chances of making a deep run. We gave Dallas only a 37 percent chance of beating the Utah Jazz in the first round and a 12 percent chance of making the Western Conference finals. But that was before Luka Doncic returned from injury -- and then went nuclear in the playoffs, averaging 31.5 points, 10.1 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 1.9 steals per game with a 58.7 true shooting percentage and an absurd +14.9 RAPTOR plus/minus rating. Now the Mavs are on the cusp of an NBA Finals appearance, and as of this morning our model was very high on Dallas's chances.
A little bit too high, as it turns out.
As a quick refresher, our RAPTOR projections incorporate an adjustment for playoff performance based on a player's career RAPTOR ratings in the playoffs versus the regular season, with an emphasis on more recent seasons. But after digging around earlier today, we found that we had been implementing this in a clumsy way for our real-time projections, such that they were adjusting more than we intended for 2022 playoff performance.
This was most noticeable in the case of Doncic, who is having a historically great postseason. Before fixing the bug in our playoff adjustment, Doncic was appearing as nearly a +13...