Chapter 4 Play-In Simulations

Finally, I needed to compare playoff probabilities in a traditional season versus that of play-in style seasons. To do this, I simulated a play-in series for the simulated seasons from above that would have resulted in play-in games (Seasons where the 8 and 9 seeds were separated by 2 GB). With the game level win prob model, I simulated a play in series for each of these seasons and recalculated teams’ playoff probabilities only now with the results of play-ins included. The code process to do this can be seen below.

NOTE: Play in series has 8 seed at home for 1st game. 9 seed at home for 2nd game if necessary.

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4.1 Eastern Conference Results

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4.2 Western Conference Results

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4.3 Takeaways

Upon looking at the simulation results, we can see my main takeaways from the project:

• Teams projected to be in the playoffs (1-8 seeds) increase slightly in playoff probability when a play-in is in place.

• Teams projected to be out of the playoffs (9-15 seeds) decrease slightly in playoff probability when a play-in is in place.

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