dude,

three East teams are ranked above all west teams for chance to win a championship. wtf? Granted, those teams are Boston, Orlando and Detroit. But Orlando? Inexperienced as it is, should it be above Phoenix (who've beaten them twice)?  Detroit above San Antonio? Noooo....

I'm going to go ahead an say: "False. Bears eats beets. Bears... beats... BattleStar Galactica", Hollinger ain't making muy sense-o.

They're predicting that the Warriors win 51 games and Dallas wins 48?  I predict that their prediction machine is broken.

Ok.. couple points before I get barraged:

I wasn't comparing just raw numbers, because those numbers are partly a factor of those teams making it out of the East. I also was looking at the percentage differences between Finals Appearance->Championship won.

They're all negative (obviously), but consider the values of (Finals - Champs)/Finals, which gives an indicator of the likelihood of a team to win the championship assuming it wins the finals... we get these values for the teams:

Boston: 52.8
Orlando: 22.36
Detroit:19.54

San Antonio: 27.44
Phoenix:16.62
Utah:21.2
Golden State: 13.15

So, this paint's a slightly more realistic picture (Spurs are top dawgs above the East's least), but Phoenix only having 16% odds of winning means that Boston Orlando and Detroit are more likely to beat the Suns instead of the Suns beating them.

Naaah, son.

Actually, they're not all negative. Sactown's more likely to win the Championship than it is to win the Finals.
Okay...

Dude, so I was just reading his formula for this thing. It's not a formula at all. He just runs a bunch of computer simulations to get average values for where teams placed (so, they got to the Finals in X% of the runs).

That's really stupid. Partly because the simulation is based on his PER and other Hollinger Stats. So, this isn't really an experiment to see who's likely to win the Championship, this is an experiment to see how good his stats are.

What Hollinger should be doing with his "simulation" is running it on previous years data, and see how many times his statistics predict the right champions.

Sorry I'm posting mercilessly... my statement about Sac above is wrong, I was reading the wrong columns.
You know, I should probably just turn this into a post, with a more detailed analysis. Mind if I do this, TZ?

I agree this is a complete waste of time. If the Kings have a 0.2% chance of making the Finals why do they have 0% chance of winning? If they can beat the West elite, why can they not beat whoever comes out of the East? Garbage. I realize that wasn't the point of the the statistics but still... I am not impressed. Look how many times the word Hollinger is mentioned in the text. Ego?

In analyzing the teams in the West, I'd say the Kings need to beat out Denver and Houston as well as the teams they are currently above to make the playoffs. Here's my rankings of the West:

1. San Antonio
   
2. Phoenix
   
3. Dallas
   
4. Utah
   
5. Golden State
   
6. New Orleans
   
7. LA Lakers
   
8. KINGS
   
9. Denver
   
10. Houston
    
11. LA Clippers
    
12. Memphis
    
13. Portland
    
14. Seattle
    
15. Minnesota

I don't know man, Denver isn't playing like Denver can play (wait till they get all their players healthy and steady in rotation, and/or trade J.R.), and you really think Houston (with: Mike James, TMac, Battier,Scola,Yao and a second line-up of Francis,Wells,Luther Head, Dikembe Motumbo, Cuck Hayes) coached by Adleman is going to stay in the shits all the season? C'mon, everyone on their second line has started for portions of their career. When they click, it'll be instant Ka-Boom.

What will be Ka-Boom for Houston is when McGrady gets hurt again.

The Kings are tied for fifth in the West in the last 10 games and have beaten two of the four teams ahead of them in that stretch (San Antonio and Utah).

Catching Denver at Denver Saturday on the back-to-back will be a tough assignment.