NBA

A Look at the Math Behind Julius Randle's Game-Winning Shot Against the Heat

Jacob Kent  —  @Jake3YITC Mar 31st, 2016
Julius Randle made a big game-winner for the Lakers last night. What did it look like mathematically?

If you haven’t started monitoring numberFire Live while tuning into March Madness or the home stretch of the NBA regular season, then you're missing out big time. 

We've got an incredible tool here at numberFire -- again, it's called numberFire Live -- that, in real-time, is calculating the win probability for each team based on what's happened in history and how that team is likely to perform throughout the rest of the game.

In truth, the best way to appreciate the crazy, awesome, and unexpected occurrences we see daily in sports is to understand exactly what we should be expecting in the first place. Otherwise, we have no baseline.

For example, last night at the close of the Lakers-Heat game, Dwyane Wade made a layup with 22 seconds remaining in overtime to tie the score at 100. This bucket improved the Heat's win probability by 18.3% bringing, their chances of winning to 41.30%.

Unfortunately for Wade and the Heat, just 21 seconds later, Julius Randle hit a turnaround jumper with one second remaining, sinking the Heat for good.

Now, this was no doubt a great, clutch shot by Randle. In fact, it added a whopping 37.7% to the Lakers' win probability, which notes a huge contribution. But let’s not forget that, prior to this play, the win probability for the Lakers was already at 58.68%, thanks to the fact that they had that final possession. Had Randle missed, the game would've gone into overtime, and things would've been close to 50-50.

But it was certainly exciting.