The story of the game
Win probability after every play. Hover or drag to relive any moment.
Decided by 13 points with 0 lead changes and 15 ties. The game saw 3 major win probability swings, and the losing team's chances peaked at 59%.
Q3, 4:35, Anunoby (NYK): Anunoby 1' Driving Dunk (18 PTS) (Brunson 3 AST). It swung the win probability by +14.5 points.
Q3, 11:46, Anunoby (NYK): Anunoby 27' 3PT Jump Shot (16 PTS) (Towns 4 AST). It swung the win probability by -13.5 points.
Brunson (NYK) 7 pts
Turning points
The plays that moved winning odds the most.
Anunoby 28' 3PT Jump Shot (9 PTS) (Hart 3 AST)
Harden 26' 3PT Pullup Jump Shot (9 PTS)
Hart 1' Running Layup (7 PTS) (Anunoby 1 AST)
Bridges 1' Layup (14 PTS) (Towns 5 AST)
Mitchell 3PT Jump Shot (17 PTS) (Harden 2 AST)
Brunson 1' Running Layup (7 PTS)
Who actually swung it
Players ranked by how much they moved the win probability, not by points scored.
Postgame read
NYK beat CLE 121-108 by 13 points.
The game turned at Q2, 6:16: Anunoby 28' 3PT Jump Shot (9 PTS) (Hart 3 AST). That single play moved CLE's chance of winning from 49% to 34%. No other moment shifted the game more, and it went NYK's way.
No one influenced the outcome more than Harden of CLE. Across 34 plays, his actions moved the win probability by a combined 72 percentage points, the most of any player on the floor.
The tensest moment for a comeback came at Q1, 10:54, with CLE down 5 points. The model put their chance of pulling it off at 43%. In other words: very realistic, but not nothing.
The strongest run that didn't fully show on the scoreboard came at Q3, 8:34, with the game tilting CLE's way. The play in the middle of it: Mobley Free Throw 2 of 2 (12 PTS).
These numbers come from ClutchCast's champion model, the winner of a competition between six models. The winner is judged on how honest its probabilities are on games it never trained on, not just how often it picks the right winner.