Rob Mahoney has a great breakdown on the New York Times’ Off The Dribble blog laying out the case for the Chicago Bulls as the current favorites to win the 2011 NBA Championship.
Chicago Bulls Are Indeed New NBA Title Favorites ... If They Have Home Court
Since publication, Mahoney's stance has become even stronger; the Bulls' 33-point win over the Hawks Tuesday pushed Chicago into the No. 1 spot in the league's margin of victory rankings. Chicago has now a per-game points margin of +7.44, ahead of the Miami Heat's +7.11, per Basketball-Reference.
But as things currently stand, Chicago needs home court advantage to truly be considered the favorites in June.
As it stands, the Bulls are just a half-game ahead of the Boston Celtics for No. 1 in the East, and Boston has an edge in the tiebreaker department. The Heat are 2.5 games back, but have a soft schedule going forward. Based on a margin-based log5 analysis of the team's in question, the Bulls would currently only be favored against the Heat if Chicago has home court advantage. If the Heat manage to wrest home court advantage from Chicago while the Bulls maintain their current margin edge, Miami would be slight favorites.
The Bulls would be slightly favored over the Celtics regardless of which team had home court. But to be considered favorites over the San Antonio Spurs, Chicago would need home court advantage. (That'd mean the Bulls ought to be rooting for the Lakers or Mavericks to unseat San Antonio in the playoffs.)
There's still plenty of season left to sort it all out, and as we've seen this week -- where Chicago's season-long per-game points margin jumped more than a full point based on massive wins over the Kings and Hawks -- the numbers will fluctuate. But Mahoney's absolutely right, with a qualifier: Chicago's the favorite, unless they find themselves without home court advantage.
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