The NBA has been operating under their current playoff system since the 2002-03 season, when they decided that the first round matchups should be a 7-game series instead of 5. Going into this year’s playoffs we now have 17 seasons of data to inform us about the 18th. And that is what I’m going to do here. I’m using what we’ve learned from the past seasons under the current format to make predictions about the now. Here we go...
Round 1
Lower seeds generally lose in the first round. In fact, over the last 17 seasons the lower seeds have only won about 20% of all first round matchups.