Why I think a 3-1 Comeback is Possible
The San Antonio Spurs are down 3-1. They are coming off the largest blown lead in NBA Finals history. Teams down 3-1 are 1-37 in the history of the NBA Finals, and the only player to successfully lead a 3-1 comeback happens to be the greatest player to ever play the sport. All of this would make anyone believe that this series is over, and the New York Knicks will be NBA Champions. But I’m here to tell you why a 3-1 comeback is more plausible than many would think.
Typically, when a team holds a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals, it is because they are a vastly superior team. Most teams that go up 3-1 are going up 3-1 on their own accord, and for good reason. This year however, the Knicks are up 3-1 because of blunders and meltdowns from the Spurs. This series could very easily be 3-1 in favor of San Antonio. These teams are about as evenly matched as they could possibly be, and every game truly does seem to be decided by a coin-flip.
If we want to dip our toes in the realm of some extremely advanced analytics, we could even say that each team has a 50% chance of winning any of the remaining games. Following this logic, the Spurs have a 12.5% chance to win the next 3 games in a row, much higher odds than 1/38 (about a 2.6% chance). The biggest challenge is of course going to be a potential Game Six in Madison Square Garden. So if we want to account for home court advantage (which really hasn’t proved that useful in this series), we could say that the Spurs have a 60% chance to win at home, and a 40% chance to win on the road. When we (roughly) account for homecourt advantage, we find that the overall probability of the Spurs winning increases to 14.4%. That makes a 3-1 comeback about 5 times more likely than history would suggest. Of course there are other factors that we aren’t accounting for, like the mental toll on the Spurs from blowing a 29 point lead, but the 2 days of rest between each of the remaining games also plays in the Spurs favor.
So, do I think the Spurs are going to come back and win the series? No, probably not. But do I think a lot of people are counting them out too early? Absolutely.
