Welcome to The Lab, FiveThirtyEight’s basketball podcast. On Thursday’s show (May 24, 2018), Neil, Kyle and Chris discuss the conference finals yet again. Just how magical is Boston’s home-court advantage? Just how tired is LeBron James? Is the Rockets’ bench too thin for the starters to stay fresh? And what’s with Kevin Durant’s shot selection? […]
With their 96-83 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, the Boston Celtics just got that much closer to becoming the first Eastern Conference team to eliminate a LeBron James-led squad in eight years. (Incidentally, the last team to do it also wore Celtics green.) And once again, it was all about the Celtics’ […]
Welcome to The Lab, FiveThirtyEight’s basketball podcast. On Tuesday’s show (May 15, 2018), Neil, Chris and Kyle discuss Game 1 of each conference finals series. In the East, the Celtics contained LeBron James and spread the offense around — is that a sign of things to come, or is it a fluke? And in the […]
Welcome to The Lab, FiveThirtyEight’s basketball podcast. On Thursday’s show (May 10, 2018), Neil and Kyle preview both conference finals matchups. They discuss how the Celtics overcame injury after injury to make the Eastern Conference finals, revel in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ remarkable play against the Toronto Raptors, and wonder whether the Western Conference finals are […]
Even with home-court advantage, there was little reason to think the Boston Celtics should be favored in their conference semifinal series against the Philadelphia 76ers. As Boston was struggling to grind out a seven-game first-round victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, Philly was resting up, having dispatched the Miami Heat with relative ease. And while the […]