Which NBA Pundits Made The Worst Regular Season Predictions?

Republished with permission from PunditTracker

With the playoffs tipping off tomorrow, let’s revisit how the pundits did with their regular season predictions. We are tracking the predictions of 35 ESPN pundits across 11 categories: 6 division winners, 2 conference winners, overall champion, MVP, and Rookie of the Year. In this post, we will analyze the 6 division winners and MVP/ROY, assuming that LeBron James and Damian Lillard win the player awards, respectively.

The table is ranked by Yield. As a reminder, the Yield metric calibrates predictions for boldness by measuring the average payout (using Vegas odds) had you placed $1 bets on each of the pundit’s selections.

Here is a breakdown of the percentage of pundits that got each category correct, alongside the Vegas implied odds for each winner before the season began. For instance, not one of the pundits picked the Knicks to win the Atlantic while only two picked the Clippers to win the Pacific, even though Vegas gave each of them 24% odds.

Finally, let’s look at the Finals and Championship predictions for the group.

Can you do better than these so-called experts? There are still a few hours left to make your predictions for the Round 1 of the NBA Playoffs. Will the Knicks beat the Celtics and the Clippers defeat the Grizzlies, as Kevin Arnovitz is predicting? Make your predictions by visiting our Sports page and using the “Vote Now” buttons.

PunditTracker's mission is to bring accountability to the prediction industry by cataloging and scoring the predictions of pundits. This post has been corrected to reflect that Pete Thamel works for Sports Illustrated.