NBA Playoffs
My local NBA team has left us, so I do not follow basketball as closely as I did in the past, but it is hard not be interested this year. The Heat are a huge news story and the playoffs will generate a buzz not felt in years. Below is the chart of how of the price of $1 contract on the Heat winning the NBA championship and, for comparison, the Lakers are on the chart as well. The first thing to notice is how dramatically high the price was for the Heat in the early part of the season and how far it has fallen. The second thing to notice is that it has actually fallen well below the Lakers as the season nears its end.
Below is a second chart, that shows the next three most probable teams. First, look at the two West teams, notice how they mirror each other (the Mavs, not shown, have held steady at a very consistent $0.04 to $0.05). Second, compare the Celtics and the Heat early in the season and the Bulls and the Heat late in the season and you can see that the two teams mirrored each other for parts of the season, while the third team was relatively stable.Yet, despite the that mirroring, the sum of West teams (Lakers, Spurs, Mavs, and Thunder) has been moving slowly upward and the East teams (Heat, Bulls, Celtics, and Magic) has been moving slowly downward.
What this all means is that the market is now assuming that winning the championship, once your team gets there, is basically a toss-up, while midseason the East champion was much more likely to win the finals. Still, the main driver of the indivdual team prices are a reflection of their relative strength within the conference … right now the Lakers are looking so strong, not because they are necessarily any better than the Heat, but they have a much easier path the NBA finals.
