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Each week, HOOPSWORLD NBA analyst and coach Anthony Macri will open his notebook and offer an assortment of observations on games, players, and teams from throughout the league. Coach Macri serves as a player development consultant for the Pro Training Center and Coach David Thorpe, working with a variety of NBA players on their skills and game understanding. The Coach’s Notebook appears on HOOPSWORLD every Thursday.

Momentum or Matchup

Every year when the postseason rolls around, we are regaled with a variety of analysis and predictions regarding which teams are hot coming in (or which teams are cold).  Like all information, knowing which teams are playing particularly well or poorly is only part of the puzzle, and in the case of the first round of the NBA Playoffs, it may be a smaller piece of the puzzle than people realize.

During the regular season, a team can be playing very well and win five or six games in a row with some regularity.  There can be stretches where a "hot" team can go on stretches of winning thirteen of fifteen games or better.  For the best teams in the league, these kinds of runs are reasonably commonplace, and usually serve as a function of two factors: those teams have more talent / better coaching than their opponents and those teams are playing well throughout the period in question.

The structure of the schedule during the regular season helps allow this to happen.  Let’s take a segment of season where a good team (we’ll use the Orlando Magic) ran "hot."  From March 9 through March 25, the Magic went 7-2, with an impressive five of those wins on the road.  However, a deeper look reveals that only two of the wins during that period came against a postseason team (against the Denver Nuggets at home and at the New York Knicks).  In addition, during this period, the Magic were playing an average of one game every 1.5 days.  This kind of schedule encourages the ability to make runs, as teams don’t have down time, and the constant nature of different opponents on successive days focuses good teams on doing what they do best (especially when most of their schedule is against mediocre or poor teams).

The NBA postseason is a different story, however.  The format change (playing against one team in a series of games) combined with the structure change (playing one game every 3 days or so on average) makes it exceedingly difficult to remain "hot."  Momentum is not as much of a factor, and so when all other things are equal, teams with more talent / better coaching tend to win series.  This is why the NBA uses the series format: it really does give the better teams an advantage.  While there might be more short-term excitement in a one-and-done format like the NCAA Tournament or the NFL Playoffs, there is also much larger element of luck than in the NBA Playoffs.

With that said, all things are not necessarily equal.  In a series format, momentum may not have as much of an influence, but the matchup is huge.  Playing a single adversary in a best of seven format means that a team can be at an advantage in pure talent, but really struggle because their inferior opponent matches up particularly well (whether that is in style, personnel, or both).  The change in structure (time between games) can also be helpful to the underdog (though the effect is much less profound).  Not only does it lessen the impact of momentum, but it allows the less talented team more time to prepare and exploit advantages it has in the matchup itself.

{AUTHOR_BOX}Let us return to the case of the Orlando Magic.  In the first round, the Magic will take on the Atlanta Hawks.  The Hawks have been maddeningly inconsistent this year, and in the final few months of the season, they were just plain bad.  They went 14-20 during the months of February, March, and April, and finished the season on a six game losing streak.

Despite the negativity surrounding their recent, results, however, Atlanta fans should not throw in the towel.  After all, they defeated the Orlando Magic in three of four matchups this season.  In fact, their only loss to the Magic came in the season’s first two weeks.  While last year’s playoff result (Orlando swept Atlanta in the conference semifinals) seems daunting, a few roster changes on both teams and more confidence from Hawks forward/center Al Horford have the Hawks in position as a much more challenging matchup this season.  In their four regular season matchups, Atlanta was successful in outrebounding Orlando, and they also held the Magic to 7% below their shooting percentage on the season.

Of course, predicting a playoff series is more complicated than looking at either momentum or matchup (or any other single factor, really).  How a team will respond with time to prepare is a major factor: in the case of the Orlando Magic, Stan Van Gundy does as good a job as any coach in the league in preparing for a single game, let alone a single opponent.  In addition, an unexpected individual performance can affect the outcome of a series – for example, would anyone be surprised if Josh Smith had a breakout series for Atlanta?  What about Jason Richardson or Ryan Andersen in Orlando?  Being able to breakdown a series involves considering these variables as well as any that deal specifically with momentum or matchups coming in.

Have questions for Coach Macri? Be sure and drop by HOOPSWORLD on Mondays at 2PM Eastern for the Coach’s weekly basketball chat!  You can also follow Coach Macri on Twitter @CoachMacri.