Why NBA play-in odds and playoff odds are two very different numbers

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A developer building an NBA playoff-odds simulator discovered that the NBA's play-in tournament structure makes its probability markets behave differently from those in other major sports. Unlike baseball or hockey, NBA teams finishing 7th through 10th in each conference enter a play-in round, and only two of those four teams advance to the playoffs. Prediction market Kalshi explicitly separates play-in qualification from playoff qualification, meaning the two outcomes can almost act as opposites for certain teams. To model this accurately, the simulator runs full season schedules, seeds conferences, plays out the three play-in games, and then simulates the complete playoff bracket. Key refinements — including sport-specific scoring exponents, per-season team rating variation, and accounting for two unscheduled NBA Cup games — significantly improved the model's accuracy against market prices.

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