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What began as the conclusion to the endless Carmelo Anthony rumors and the surprising Deron Williams trade quickly escalated into a full-blown NBA swap meet. The 2010-11 season clearly has shifted the landscape in professional basketball, and brought about perhaps the busiest trade deadline ever.

Boston and Oklahoma City pulled off the most shocking move of the day. The Thunder acquired Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson for Jeff Green and Nenad Kristic. OKC also got Nazr Mohammed from the Bobcats in a separate trade for D.J. White and Mo Peterson. The Celtics weren’t done with this move either. They sent away Luke Harangody and Semih Erden to Cleveland for draft picks, presumably to open up roster space for buyout candidates. Marquis Daniels was also traded to Sacramento for cash considerations.

The rumored trade involving Gerald Wallace from Wednesday came to fruition on deadline day. Wallace joins Portland in exchange for Joel Pryzbilla, Dante Cunningham, and draft picks. Phoenix picked up Aaron Brooks from Houston for Goran Dragic and a 1st round pick. Houston also dealt Shane Battier back to Memphis for Hasheem Thabeet and another 1st round pick. Late Wednesday night also brought about Baron Davis being sent to Cleveland in exchange for Mo Williams.

AccuScore re-simulated the rest of the regular season after the flurry of trades had passed.

BT = before trade deadline
AT = after trade deadline

Here are some key findings:

• Boston obviously still remains a lock for the playoffs, but its per game win percentage dropped -2.9 percent. More importantly, the Celtics’ chances of winning the No. 1 seed fell from 36 to 32 percent. Miami is in firm control of the East.

• Oklahoma City only improved its per game winning percentage slightly at 1.3 percent, but the full benefit of picking up two centers in Perkins and Mohammed will be more evident in the playoffs agaisnt teams like the Spurs, Lakers and Mavericks. The Thunder have long coveted a defensive center, and now have the size to deal with the Lakers and Spurs in the West.

• Charlotte is currently in 9th in the East trailing Indiana by 1.5 games. While the Bobcats lost their best player and are projected for fewer wins, they actually gained two percent in playoff probability due to the overall movement at the deadline.

• Shane Battier is not projected for big numbers with Memphis, but the Grizzlies did improve their playoff chances the most at +8.8 percent. He will serve as a nice replacement to the player he was originally traded for, Rudy Gay. Memphis also unsuccessfully tried to trade O.J. Mayo to Indiana for Josh McRoberts.

EASTERN CONFERENCE
Cleveland has home-court advantage and that is a big factor as to why it has the best chance of winning the Eastern Conference and the NBA Championship.  AccuScore gives Cleveland a 52% of beating Orlando in the Conference Finals, but if Orlando had home-court advantage, it would have had a 56% chance of beating the Cavs.  That means finishing with the best record was worth 8% in win probability to Cleveland.

The biggest thing to note is that the top three seeds are massive favorites with each being at least 92 percent to win in the opening round.  Boston is also a pretty sizable favorite winning the series over Miami nearly 2 out of 3 times. Moving on to the 2nd round, it becomes readily apparent that the class of the East is again Orlando and Cleveland. Atlanta has had a nice season but has just a 27 percent chance of reaching the Conference Finals because the Hawks would more than likely have to go through the Magic.

WESTERN CONFERENCE
The West probabilities are much more even across the board because of the quality of every team in the field.  All eight seeds won at least 50 games with the Lakers finishing just 7 games ahead of Oklahoma City.  By contrast, Cleveland finished 20 games ahead of 8th seeded Chicago.  The late-season surge by Phoenix was key because now it is the second overall favorite in the West behind L.A. The Lakers, despite playing poorly down the stretch, are still the clear favorites at nearly 37 percent to win the conference.

AccuScore is predicting a first-round upset with the Spurs getting the slight 50.8% chance of beating the Mavericks in the first round.  Interestingly, the Mavs still have a better shot than San Antonio of winning the West and the title despite being slight first-round underdogs. This is because AccuScore believes Dallas matches up better against the rest of the top teams in the conference than San Antonio. The Spurs, though, are favored in this one particular match-up.

WEST IS BEST, BUT CHAMPIONSHIP LIKELY GOES EAST
AccuScore simulated each team playing every other team home and away (870 total combinations).  The eight Eastern Conference playoff teams won 63.9% of simulations.  The eight Western Conference playoff teams won 73% of simulations.  The Western Conference playoff teams are clearly better collectively based on simulation winning percentage.

The West may be the stronger conference, but there is a 66% chance that the NBA champion comes out of the East because there is such a high chance that Cleveland or Orlando reaches the Finals and both teams will have home-court advantage. This gives both Cleveland and Orlando a solid advantage over any potential opponent in the Finals including the Lakers.

One other thing to note is the fact that Orlando is actually a bigger favorite than Cleveland against everyone except Denver and Oklahoma City. The Magic appear to be underrated heading into the postseason.

HOTTEST TRENDS IN THE NBA PLAYOFFS
AccuScore racked up an impressive 1193-1071, 52.7% +1490 on all point spread and totals picks this season.  Few people bet on every single game, so we do track key trends and these are some you should be aware of heading into the playoffs.  Our NBA Advisor product updates these trends and makes pick recommendations using these trends.  Make sure to sign up now.

SEASON LONG TRENDS
POINT SPREADS
Simulation and Betting line is < 2 Pts Different:   272-202, 57.4% +4980
Home Team is Favored:  422-344, 55.1% +4360
Eastern Conference Games:  188-158, 54.3% +1420
Top Team Trends

TOTALS
Simulation and Betting line is 4.5 to 6 Pts Different:  171-143, 54.5% +1370
Total Betting Line is 205.5 or More:  207-162, 56.1% +2880
Southeast Division Game Totals:  25-13, 65.8% +1070
Western Conference Game Totals:  202-174, 53.7% +1060

Before Tony Parker’s injury, the Spurs were projected to finish 6th in the West with 49.3 wins – just ahead of the Thunder and the Blazers.  Now with the news that Parker will miss 6 weeks with a wrist injury San Antonio is projected to finish – 6th in the West.

Despite losing Parker, a 3-time All-Star, for possibly the rest of the regular the forecast for San Antonio does not change significantly. His absence will mean more minutes for George Hill and Roger Mason with Manu Ginobili assuming more ball-handling duties. Keith Bogans and Malik Hairston could see increased minutes on the wing as well. 

The non-change in the forecast is less an indictment on Parker – currently averaging 16.5 points and 5.7 assists – and more circumstances beyond his influence at this point in the season. The Spurs are basically locked into one of the final three playoff spots in the West. They currently sit 1.0 game behind Oklahoma City and 1.5 ahead of Portland.  More importantly, the Spurs are 5.5 games ahead of 9th place Memphis.  With only 22 games remaining, it would take a complete collapse for San Antonio to fall out of playoff position.  The presence of Hill, Ginobili, and Tim Duncan makes that scenario extremely unlikely.

As you can see, Memphis has only a 3% chance of passing one of the three teams ahead of it including San Antonio. In the West, only the seeding is left to be determined at this point.

San Antonio’s closing schedule is very tough featuring road games against Boston, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Orlando, and the Lakers. The upside though is that San Antonio would be underdogs in all these road games even with a healthy Parker. The home schedule is no cake-walk either with the Cavs, Lakers, and Magic but the situation here is similar as well.  The overall forecast remains the same so Spurs fans shouldn’t worry about the rest of the regular season too much.  Instead, the team just needs to get Parker healthy for the playoffs.

The Portland Trail Blazers have defied the odds this season battling through injuries to sit in 8th place in the Western Conference at the All-Star break.  Without their two centers – Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla – the Blazers looked unlikely to seriously compete this season.  GM Kevin Pritchard filled that void in the middle perfectly though acquiring Marcus Camby for Travis Outlaw and Steve Blake.  Camby is 2nd in the league in rebounding, and is still a defensive presence with his shot-blocking, and should assimilate perfectly into Portland’s lineup.

Portland is projected to improve by slightly more than a game over the remaining 27 games of the season (+4.1 percent per game).  While the Blazers are still projected to finish 8th, things could change rapidly as the current gap between themselves and the Jazz in 3rd place is just 3 games.  If Portland were to improve one game today, it would jump all the way to 5th in the standings so this move is huge.  Blake had become superfluous with the emergence of Jerryd Bayless in the backcourt, and Outlaw’s injury status is still murky.  While the team likely wanted to keep Outlaw, the need in the middle was greater and Camby is the best player available to fill that void.

Losing Camby is obviously a huge blow to the Clippers.  L.A. is more than 2 games worse over the remaining 30 games of the season (-7.7 percent a night).  Camby also reportedly loved Los Angeles, and wanted to re-sign with the team over the summer.  The Clippers, though, have yet to see rookie Blake Griffin on the floor, and are 8.5 games behind Portland for the final playoff spot in the West.  Competing this season is not the goal so losing 2-3 more games in 2010 is negligible. 

The trade works for the Clippers on several levels. The trade also frees minutes for the highly productive Craig Smith at PF.  It also opens minutes for youngster DeAndre Jordan who has shown flashes of being a nice player inside.  Getting him more playing time should be a focus for the team. Blake is probably a better back-up option than Sebastian Telfair, but he’s still just a reserve.  He will be a free agent after the season.  Outlaw could be a nice player on the wing, but he is still currently injured and it is unknown when he will be back this season.  Having Outlaw’s rights though is an advantage given the fact that he should be a wanted commodity in the offseason. Holding the rights to both players frees plenty of cap room this offseason.