Against Lawler’s Law

Lawler’s Law states that the first team to 100 points wins. It’s catchy, simple, and often correct.

I also hate it.

Full disclosure: This was not supposed to be a hit piece on Lawler’s Law. I fully intended to use the law as an entry point into a broader discussion on how to predict wins, with a hopeful eye towards predicting Bucks’ wins in the playoffs. But I was sucked down Lawler’s rabbit hole, and long story short, the entry became the entree.

I’ll provide a brief recap of Lawler’s Law for the uninitiated before diving into my critique. The critique has three parts of increasing importance, each of which I connect to a point with broader relevance than a random law coined by a random…