What Were the Actual Odds to Win the 2020 NBA Championship?
When I first started analyzing championship odds back in the 1980s, the landscape of professional basketball looked entirely different from what we see today. I remember watching the 1985 PBA Rookie of the Year award ceremony and thinking how that single achievement opened doors for players in ways that modern analytics can't fully capture. That moment actually reminds me of how we approach championship odds today - there's always that unpredictable human element that statistics struggle to quantify. The 2020 NBA championship odds presented one of the most fascinating case studies in recent basketball history, blending unprecedented circumstances with traditional basketball analytics in ways that still make statisticians scratch their heads.
Looking back at the preseason odds for the 2020 championship, the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers stood as clear favorites, with most sportsbooks listing them around +300 and +350 respectively. I had my doubts about both teams from the beginning, particularly about how their aging stars would hold up through the grueling regular season. The Milwaukee Bucks floated around +500, and I remember telling colleagues that Giannis Antetokounmpo's supporting cast reminded me of those 1980s teams where one superstar had to carry disproportionate weight. What fascinated me most was how the Houston Rockets, at +1600, represented the analytics revolution with their extreme small-ball approach - something I found both brilliant and slightly mad.
Then March 2020 happened, and everything we thought we knew about championship probabilities went out the window. The COVID-19 shutdown created what statisticians call a "structural break" in all our models. I've never seen anything like it in my thirty years of analyzing sports probabilities. The four-month hiatus meant that teams who would have likely missed the playoffs suddenly had recovery time, while frontrunners lost their rhythm. The bubble environment in Orlando became this strange laboratory where home-court advantage disappeared entirely and mental fortitude mattered more than raw talent. I recall thinking how this mirrored that 1985 POV about opportunities opening up - the bubble did exactly that for certain teams.
The actual championship run by the Lakers proved both predictable and astonishingly unlikely when you run the numbers. Their preseason probability sat around 25% according to most models, but by the time the playoffs began in the bubble, their true chances probably fluctuated between 18-32% depending on which analytics service you preferred. What many people don't realize is that the Miami Heat's probability of reaching the finals was below 5% when the playoffs began. Their Cinderella run through the Eastern Conference demonstrated why I've always been skeptical of pure statistical models - sometimes team chemistry and coaching create advantages that numbers can't capture.
The Raptors, despite losing Kawhi Leonard, maintained surprisingly strong championship odds throughout the season, hovering around +1200 even after the restart. I remember arguing with colleagues about their resilience, with some dismissing their chances while I maintained that Nick Nurse's coaching gave them an edge that oddsmakers were underestimating. The Denver Nuggets presented another fascinating case - their comeback victories against the Jazz and Clippers represented probabilities that would make any statistician dizzy. Winning two series after being down 3-1 each time? The combined probability of that happening sits around 0.4%, yet they managed it.
What struck me most about the actual championship outcome was how it validated both analytics and old-school basketball intuition. The Lakers had the best player in LeBron James, which traditionalists love, but they also boasted defensive metrics that analytics proponents had been highlighting all season. The bubble environment created what I like to call "probability compression," where the gap between the best and worst teams narrowed significantly. Home court advantage typically adds about 3-4 percentage points to a team's chance of winning any given game, but in the bubble, that disappeared entirely.
The financial side of the 2020 championship odds tells its own compelling story. I spoke with several sportsbook managers who reported unprecedented betting patterns during the bubble games. The public heavily backed the Lakers throughout, creating value opportunities on other teams that sharp bettors exploited. The Clippers' collapse against Denver alone created millions in losses for sportsbooks that had taken heavy futures action on them. It reminded me of that fundamental truth about sports betting - the house usually wins, but occasionally, extraordinary circumstances create extraordinary opportunities.
Reflecting on the complete picture, the actual odds of the Lakers winning the 2020 championship evolved from reasonable preseason favorites to bubble-era survivors in ways that highlight both the power and limitations of probability modeling. The disruption caused by the pandemic created what mathematicians would call a "regime change" in how we calculate these probabilities. Teams that might have faltered under normal circumstances found new life, while others discovered unexpected challenges. That 1985 observation about opportunities opening doors resonates deeply here - sometimes the most significant variables in championship probability are the ones we can't possibly model in advance. The Lakers certainly earned their championship, but the path they took would have been statistically improbable under normal circumstances, which makes their victory both deserved and wonderfully unexpected in the strange calculus of basketball fate.
